Don't Bomb Iran

Read this post from the Guardian.  Send this simple message to our President.

DONT BOMB IRAN!

President Barak Hussein Obama
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Send this message to your Republican nominee for President.

DON'T BOMB IRAN!

Willard Mitt Romney
http://www.mittromney.com/forms/suggestions

[You'll get lots of junk mail in return, but "junk" takes care of that pretty well.  You won't make a difference, but you'll feel as if you and Sheldon Addison were equals.]


The Guardian home

Israel and Iran: Lethal game of bluffThe enthusiasm of Israel's prime minister and defence minister for an air strike on Iran appears to have united their country's defence and security establishment against them
The war drums have been beating – again – in Israel. The latest alarm was started by two usually well-briefed journalists, Nahum Barnea and Shimon Shiffer, who wrote that an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities could come in weeks, rather than months, and before the US presidential election in November. Their story contained a caveat: if the decision to attack were up to Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak alone. Because plainly, it is not.
The enthusiasm of Israel's prime minister and defence minister for an air strike on Iran appears to have united their country's defence and security establishment against them, including Israel's new minister for homeland security. The two have yet even to convince their own inner cabinet. But the report was taken so seriously that Barnea amended it on Monday by speculating that Barak, the thinly disguised source, may be trying to cover his own back, in the knowledge that such an attack will never be launched. Barak's reasoning depends only partially on Iran's alleged actions, and the latest US intelligence assessment that Tehran now possesses 170 kilograms of medium-enriched uranium, from which it is relatively easy to produce bomb-grade material. Barak is worried that so many centrifuges are being hidden underground that they will soon be out of Israel's military reach. After that point, Israel will have to rely on a US president it suspects will never order an attack .
Barak's case for an airstrike now is peppered with inconsistencies – not least the calculation that if Israel attacked, Iran would be rational enough not to retaliate against US military targets in the Gulf and hence the regional war everyone feared would not materialise. This confidence is not shared by his military chiefs. But to take Barak's war-gaming at face value, if Iran were rational enough to contain its response, it would prove that deterrence works for a state Netanyahu continues to describe as an irrational actor motivated by messianism. If Barak is right, the deterrence of mutually assured destruction would work all the more if Iran acquired a bomb, particularly as Israel has several hundred of them.
Loud talk of an impending airstrike could be no more than an attempt to twist Washington's arm. If it is, nothing should stiffen Barack Obama's resolve to prevent it happening more than the thought that Netanyahu is not just playing politics in his own country but in America too. Netanyahu foolishly dares Obama not to cast his veto, because if he did, Mitt Romney his Republican challenger would make hay with the idea that the Democat in the White House endangers Israel's security. This lever will no longer work after the election, hence the November deadline. Even as bluff it is dangerous, and eminently combustible in a tinder-dry Middle East.

Anticipating consequences of War with Iran

The New York Times, today:

Western powers “know that Iran is not after nuclear weapons, but their intention of creating such a commotion is to stonewall Iran’s progress and damage Iran’s reputation among Muslim countries,” Mr.[Ali] Larijani,, a former chief nuclear negotiator, was quoted as saying.  

Mr. Larijani, a philosopher and politician, is one of the two representatives of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to the Iranian Security Council,  In his post as secretary he effectively functioned as the top negotiator on issues of national security, including Iran's nuclear program.

Well, perhaps we in the West are interested in stonewalling Iran’s progress and damaging its reputation. We have been at it for 60 years.  The Iran-Pakistan Pipeline controversy shows that we still are, I’m saddened to say.  See, e.g., my March 6, 2012, post in The Newspaper Spoon.

More important, “Israeli officials” are quoted by the Times as urging a “credible military option,” which seems merely being to drop a few bombs on Iran, as Israel did on Syria, with no adverse consequence except, er, a war with Hezbollah and bombs raining down on Israel’s population (and, by the way, substantial harm to Lebanon, but who cares?).

It seems to me that the burden on the Bomb-Dropper advocate is to detail the worst-case consequences of the dropping.  The silence on that subject drowns out all other comment.

Saddam Hussein thought that he could win a quick victory over Iran when he invaded in 1980.  Iran was in confusion after the overthrow of the Sash.  The war  lasted eight years, cost half-a-million dead and many more wounded, wrecked both countries’ economy, and did not result in the hoped-for border changes.

Images of the Iraq-Iran War:

Bushco thought that a War with Iraq would be a “walk in the park"; that “Shock and Awe”  -- dropping more than a few bombs -- would quickly bring the enemy to its knees. Our present national debt and the occupants of Walter Reed Hospital are a continuing tribute to that folly.  See the February 5, 2012, post in The Newspaper Spoon.

President Obama knows some of the consequences of Bombing Iran.  I’m sure his intelligence services  and the Israeli counterparts have detailed worst-case consequences.  

Before the Bombs drop, those consequences and the consequences of “allowing" Iran to get the Bomb must be made public so the American public, the Israeli public, and the Western, Azerbaijani, Russian, Chinese, Afghan, Pakistani publics can know, too.  Dropping Bombs is now a World concern, not just a concern of one or three national interests.  Wouldn’t the Kazakhs be affected?  Of course they would.  The Brazilians too?  Show my how they wouldn’t.

”We have a mighty country and a strong army,” Mr.[Benjamin] Netanyahu said after he returned Wednesday. “We have many friends who stand by our side and who will stand by our side at all times.”

Show me the consequences," I say, "Then perhaps I'll stand with you."

So say I.  How say you?


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