Time to bomb Iran??

[blast05]

Well it looks like the big decision re Iran is going to have to happen in the next 6-12 months according to most media outlets. Very crudely seems to boil down to either Israel suffers a nuclear holocaust or else Irans nuclear facilities are destroyed with 101 implications on either side of course.
What do people think ?

Good intro article in todays Times for the unitiated:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2753953.ece

My own take - haven't really made up my mind to be honest. I can't see Iran under Ahmadinejad backing down and yet can't see Israel allowing Iran to develop a weapon, which they are 1 year away from according to IAEA. Scenario in the atricle above seems scarily probable.

[blast05]

Who actually decides which countries can become a Nuclear power?

Well given that the Iranians have stated they wanted Israel wiped off the face of the planet, then should the Israelis allow them develop nuclear weapons given that they have the capability to stop them ? What would you do if you were an Israeli ? It seems clear that for the Israelis to get the go-ahead from the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia etc, then a fully feldged Palestinian state would have to be created ...... i think we can expect some serious geo-political movements over there in the next 6 months

The greeness or otherwise of nuclear power is not the issue. Is Iran serious about putting all this time and effort into creating nuclear power given all the geopolitical tensions it is causing and given the vast oil reserves that they sit on ?

Have noticed that Connacht people's attitudes to "world events" get a quare mention on the "news".

[Gaoth Dobhair Abu]

Who actually decides which countries can become a Nuclear power? And what is the criteria?

The Americans, by all accounts, obviously with input from Israel!! 

[blast05]

Who actually decides which countries can become a Nuclear power? And what is the criteria?




The Americans, by all accounts, obviously with input from Israel!! 

What would people prefer? The current situation where America and other western nations like France, UK, etc having nuclear arms, the main purpose of which is to keep other nations in check, the]ose nations being the type of nation who would use them on the western world if they had them ..... or for it to be a free for all where everybody is allowed have them - US, Israel, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, Sudan, etc. ?

[whiskeysteve]

no

[muppet]

The current situation where America and other western nations like France, UK, etc having nuclear arms, the main purpose of which is to keep other nations in check

No so much keeping them in check as using them as a big stick to beat other nations. The Russians offered the Americans a deal whereby both sides would scrap almost all of their weapons. The Americans declined. As for Israel they don't even admit to having Nuclear weapons.

I don't buy the 'we have to have them in case they get them' argument.

Here is a simple solution:

The US arms all sides in the Middle East equally and not just Israel.

They would either start a war which would mean they annihilate each other completely or they would realise the folly of that (as the US and USSR did during the cold war) and sit in awkward peace.

The notion of arming one nation to the teeth with nuclear weapons while invading any of the oil rich but belligerent neighbours is a disastrous policy designed to ensure there will never be peace.

I don't particulary like Iran but its media status as a rogue nation that exists only to destroy Israel comes from the Murdock press and personally I think any country presided over by a neo-con administration is not any more reliable.

[blast05]

The solution of how to get rid of all nuclear weapons is really a seperate discussion for another day imho.
The reality of now is that Iran is 1 year away from having a nuclear bomb according to the IAEA while the president of Iran has said that he wants Iran wiped off the face of the planet ..... what to do ?

• Dismiss what the Iranians are saying as just hot air ?
• Bomb the nuclear sites in Iran and in parallel create a fully fledged Palestinian state to keep the other middle east countries happy
• Trust the UN to handle the situation

In fairness though, there does seem to be some confusion as to what the literal translation of what Ahmadinejad said, i.e.: whether he actually said he wanted Israel wiped off the face of the planet or whether he wants the current regime wiped. In any case, if Iran wants nulcear power for peaceful purposes, why have they refused Russia's offer to supply its almost completed reactor with fuel rods?

[Rav67]

Iran is no threat to America or Israel, the US media has just been feeding their government's scare tactics message as usual.  If he was to attempt to wipe a nation of the planet he knows exactly what would happen, he is just posturing and wants to be seen as the leader who isn't afraid of Bush.

I suspect America will not be so stupid this time as to attempt any intervention regards Iran given their foreign policy disasters over the past few years and the desire for more isolationism among their public.

[Niall Quinn]

Who actually decides which countries can become a Nuclear power? And what is the criteria?

The Americans, by all accounts, obviously with input from Israel!! 

It's a brilliant irony that the only country to ever actualize nuclear warfare is the one who 'protects' against nuclear capability falling into the wrong hands!!

[AFS]

Time for who to bomb Iran?

I can only assume you mean the USA, and consider the trouble they're having in Iraq at the minute I can't really see them rushing in to attack a country 4 times the size of Iraq with 3 times its population.

Not happening, probably ever, and certainly not anytime soon, especially with a presidential election in the near future in the States.

[mannix]

We are in a perilous time of world history.Bush/Cheney are  crazy and given half a chance would bomb Iran.The problem is for all their military might they cannot control iraq and have been deserted by the brits and others have only token troops there.
Bush himself is a questionable,does he  sound,act or look like anyone of intelligence required to run such a powerful country? the hyperpower as they call themselves.In 2000 Iraq were changing the pricing of oil from us dollars to euro, undermining the us dollar,not good.As soon as the us invaded it was changed back to the us dollar.Iran are in the middle of this process too and it could be bad for the dollar.
Interesting times ahead, i hope that sense prevails.

[deiseach]

Funny how when Iran had a liberal President in the shape of Mohammad Khatami, the post was dismissed by the neocons as being irrelevant as the real power was in the hands of the Supreme Leader. Now that a nutjob like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in the role, the Presidents every pronouncement is treated as gospel (so to speak),

No less a headcase than Mao Zedong said that nuclear weapons were a paper tiger. Let the Iranians have their bomb.

[muppet]

Iran are in the middle of this process too and it could be bad for the dollar

That is an understatement. It could cause the US economy to collapse.

Remember when you were a kid and you asked your teacher why the government didn't just print more money and give it out to everyone? The answer that you got applies to every currency, except the dollar. And the reason is that oil is traded in dollars.

Mr Bush using typically Dubya economics has literally just printed more dollars to pay for his war. If the US dollar loses its stranglehold on oil its value could very easily collapse. As we had discussed here before, Venezuela, Russia and other major oil producers are considering switching to Euros. The EU's only oil producers, Sweden and the UK, have stayed out of the Euro to avoid the problem but for how much longer?

Clinton had balanced the books by the time he finished in office so there is really only one administration to blame for this mess.

BTW the US constitution mandates the President to take military action against any perceived attack on the dollar. It would be nuts to attack Iran given the Iraq fiasco, but then we are not talking about rational people.

[blast05]

All right. Nuclear weapons are to be prohibited after the realization of the three principles

They would not be the same opinions of Mao if any of the books (ok, only 2) i have read on him are to be taken as fact. He desperately wanted China to be a nuclear power, and was even willing to test the effect of a weapon on his own people if need be. Thankfully they never succeeded in becoming a nuclear power in his time. Is the article you posted yet another one of countless millions of fabrications published about Maos life to continue his myth. I have talked to a few Chinese people about Mao (socials at work when i was half cut and they were sober !) and their thinking is still that he was the great leader and was to blame for nothing. Amazing.

[Hardy]

Muppet, the scenario you summarise is, to me, the most frightening of all. The US is a declining economic power but the only military power - a truly dangerous situation for the world to find itself in, especially when you consider that we are talking about the only country that has shown itself willing to use nuclear weapons. The people in the Pentagon and the White House possess the military power to do exactly as they please and are newly reminded once more of how messy ground wars can be. Would they hesitate to press the red button in the face of the imminent collapse of the dollar, or the inexorable rise of China or any one of a hundred other scenarios that threaten America's economic interests? I don't know. Does anybody?