US allows Iran its nuclear bomb

[PJABBER]

I finished breakfast a long time ago so I will not venture into any detail about how exquisite the organic Sumatran espresso was. Like almost all Sumatran varietals, the taste lingers long after the cup is done.

As does the global concern about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons in the very near future.

It seems the President of the United States, despite the oh so tough language of the past year and a half, does not plan on doing more than the same old song and dance about sanctions, of all things. That effective sanctions would require the cooperation of China and Russia, well, that is a pipe dream that, too, lingers.

Oh, and he will stop Israel, the only other country capable of militarily slowing down the Iranian nuclear weapons program, from doing anything, too.

Why would he do so?

Well, he did win the Nobel Peace Prize and might just feel he has to live up to it. I wonder if the Nobel Committee would ask for it back if he attacked the nuclear weapon development sites in Iran? Nah, they didn't ask for Yassar Arafat and Le Duc Tho to give theirs back (though Le Duc Tho was honest enough to decline his, considering what subsequently happened in Vietnam.)

There is always the practical consideration of how to do it. We've had some discussions here about that, but can reasonably conclude that the American military would effectively shut down the Iranians should they be tasked to do so. Could they occupy Iran, should they consider it? No. But occupation would not be required anyway.

Israel, with a little teeny bit of American logistical assistance could do it. After all, they destroyed the Iraqi and the Syrian nuclear weapons plants and lived another day. There was no Armageddon, hell, the Syrians never even admitted they had their nuke plant blown up so as to save face. But Iran is quite a more difficult nut to crack and without American cooperation may be delivered a less than fully effective strike. And that would be a bad thing.

Our President does not want Israel to take any such action, or take any action at all. He wants to berate Israel for planning to build some apartments in a Jewish section of Jerusalem. Huff and puff Obama does, striving to knock down plans for those apartments. And wastes valuable time and valuable political capital as he does so.

In Washington, as in the Rome of long ago, we can hear a fiddle play.

US allows Iran its nuclear vision

Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor
The Australian
April 03, 2010

US President Barack Obama has decided to abandon any serious effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He is determined instead to live with a nuclear Iran, by containment and, if possible, negotiation.

This is the shifting tectonic plate in the Middle East.

This is the giant story of the past few weeks which the world has largely missed, distracted by the theatre of the absurd of Obama's contrived and mock confrontation with Israel over 1600 apartments to be built in three years' time in a Jewish suburb in East Jerusalem.

Iran is the only semi-intelligible explanation for Obama's bizarre over-reaction against the Israelis.

In the Middle East, today, Iran is the story. It is the consideration behind all other considerations.

Obama has not explicitly announced his new position and he and his cabinet secretaries still make speeches saying they will try to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. But if you look at the statements closely you see a steady weakening of resolve, a steady removal of any threat of any consequence for Iran. Similarly, if you look at the actions of the administration, the sombre conclusion is inescapable.

Given Iran's missile program, which has no conceivable military use except to carry nuclear weapons, and which can now reach Europe and in due course will have a longer range, the fundamental change in US policy has global security consequences.

It has global security consequences in other ways, as well. It profoundly undermines American strategic credibility, which is the bedrock of whatever global order this troubled planet enjoys.

The troubling realisation that the Americans have given up, or are in the process of giving up, the fight to prevent Iran going nuclear is backed by the best informed security sources in Washington, London, Jerusalem and Canberra.

The bust-up between Washington and Israel only makes sense in this context. Last week, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Obama in the White House, and also met Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the State Department. On both occasions, all photographers and all TV cameras were banned. This was a studied humiliation of Netanyahu and all, ostensibly, because Israel announced that in three years' time 1600 apartments would be built in a Jewish neighbourhood in East Jerusalem. Yet the 10-month moratorium on new residential building in the West Bank which Netanyahu had announced in October to effusive US praise had specifically exempted East Jerusalem.

It is inconceivable that Obama would have treated any Arab or Muslim leader with the same considered contempt that he showed to Netanyahu. I speculated last week that Obama engaged in his furious over-reaction in order to pursue personal popularity in the Muslim world, and perhaps to force Israel to make so many concessions that the Palestinians would come back to negotiations. Although these negotiations would not produce a comprehensive peace deal, at least Obama could claim the talks themselves as a victory of sorts.

I still think these were important considerations but there was a much bigger strategic purpose, as well. In 2008, Israel told Washington it was planning to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. Washington talked Jerusalem out of the move, not least by showing its own determination to stop the Iranians.

In those days, senior Americans from then-president George W. Bush down, often said that "all options are on the table" in their determination to stop Iran acquiring nukes. All options explicitly included an American military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. When Obama spoke to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in 2008, he said he would use "all elements of American power to pressure Iran".

He won a tumultuous standing ovation by using a repetition of a key word to emphasise his determination. He said: "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon - everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon - everything." That was Obama's equivalent to Bush's "all options".

Obama doesn't talk anything like that any more. In his message to Iran on the Iranian new year a few weeks ago, he reiterated his determination not to meddle in Iran's internal affairs and said the nuclear matter should still be negotiated.

Clinton, in her address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last week, spoke only briefly about Iran, repeating a pro-forma US determination to stop it going nuclear. But there was no mention of all options, everything the US could do, or all aspects of US power. Instead, she said that while sanctions were taking a long time to work out at the UN, it was time well spent, and they would show Iran that its actions had consequences. But the bulk of her speech was all about the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Presidential and Secretary of State speeches on subjects like this are given a level of attention that wouldn't be out of place in the preparation of a papal encyclical. The sub-text of Obama and Clinton's recent speeches can only be that they have decided that the battle against a nuclear-armed Iran is over.

One thing they are determined to do is to stop Israel from taking its own unilateral military action to stop or retard Iran's nuclear program. Israel has taken this type of action twice before. In 1981, it destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak. And in 2007, it bombed into obliteration a North Korean-supplied secret nuclear reactor in Syria.

It is impossible to know with absolute certainty what Israel's intentions were, or are, for the Iranian nuclear program. But for several years the most senior US officials would agree that a nuclear-armed Iran represented an existential threat to Israel. Iran's rulers, after all, not only deny the Holocaust but have made militant anti-Americanism, confrontation with Israel and even anti-Semitism, defining ideologies of the Iranian state. Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has threatened to wipe Israel off the map.

Most analysts believe that for all their extremism, the Iranian rulers are rational actors and would not actually use nuclear weapons. But this is a slender analytical thread to ask Israelis to hang their very lives on. And the danger of Iran proliferating some element of nuclear material or technology to terrorists is much more plausible.

This is where the Obama-Israel dust-up comes in. By so isolating Israel, by irresponsibly unleashing a global wave of anti-Israel sentiment, especially in nations which normally support Israel, Obama has made the possibility of Israel considering unilateral action against Iran much more unlikely. The Israelis would weigh such action very carefully. There are many pluses and minuses. By creating the impression of Israel as a besieged, isolated and reckless nation, which the wildly disproportionate reaction to the East Jerusalem apartments accomplished, Obama has made the potential cost to Israel of action against Iran much greater.

Is it fair to conclude definitively that Obama has decided to give up, except for symbolic and meaningless actions, the fight against a nuclear-armed Iran?

Obama might still change his mind - he is nothing, after all, if not flexible - but that is the inescapable conclusion of his actions so far.

He has set so many deadlines for Iran. Each of them has passed and nothing ever happens. There are never bad consequences for the US's enemies in Obama world, it seems, only for its friends.

Remember, initially, that the Obama administration wanted to wait for the Iranian election in the middle of last year before it exhausted dialogue or went down the sanctions road? Remember then the deadline was September? Remember the proposal for Iran's uranium to go to Russia for enrichment? Remember the revelation of Iran's secret nuclear facility at Qom? Remember Iran's announcement that it intended to enrich uranium up to 20 per cent, a vast leap on the technological road to weapons? Did you notice a couple of weeks ago Iran's announcement that it would build new nuclear facilities?

And where are we today? Now it is April and Obama is still talking in his feckless way about possible UN sanctions. Anything that is passed by China and Russia at the UN Security Council will be weak and ineffective. A serious US administration would have built a critical mass of like-minded countries to impose crippling sanctions on Iran outside the Security Council.

The only explanation that fits with all the facts is that the US administration is no longer serious about stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

James Lindsay and Ray Takeyh, writing in this month's Foreign Affairs, declare that: "If Iran's nuclear program continues to progress at its current rate, Tehran could have the nuclear material needed to build a bomb before US President Barack Obama's current term in office expires." The Foreign Affairs article, After Iran Gets the Bomb, is important in another way. It demonstrates the drift in the serious discussion in the US.

It is no longer a discussion of how to stop Iran getting the bomb, but how to cope with a nuclear-armed Iran.

Here's something else you should know about Iran. US General David Petraeus, in written testimony to congress, has revealed that Iran is co-operating with al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan and Pakistan, facilitating the movement of its leaders. The Sunday Times of London recently carried interviews with Taliban leaders who were trained in Iran.

There is no chance Obama will produce a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in his first term in office, which is how he would like to be remembered by history.

There is every chance history will remember him for something altogether different, as the American president on whose watch Iran became a nuclear-weapons state.

 

[Sclamoz]

Well, he did win the Nobel Peace Prize and might just feel he has to live up to it. I wonder if the Nobel Committee would ask for it back if he attacked the nuclear weapon development sites in Iran? Nah, they didn't ask for Yassar Arafat and Le Duc Tho to give theirs back (though Le Duc Tho was honest enough to decline his, considering what subsequently happened in Vietnam.)

There is always the practical consideration of how to do it. We've had some discussions here about that, but can reasonably conclude that the American military would effectively shut down the Iranians should they be tasked to do so. Could they occupy Iran, should they consider it? No. But occupation would not required anyway.

Israel, with a little teeny bit of American logistical assistance could do it. After all, they destroyed the Iraqi and the Syrian nuclear weapons plants and lived another day. There was no Armageddon, hell, the Syrians never even admitted they had their nuke plant blown up so as to save face. But Iran is quite a more difficult nut to crack and without American cooperation may be delivered a less than fully effective strike. And that would be a bad thing.

Our President does not want Israel to take any such action, or take any action at all. He wants to berate Israel for planning to build some apartments in a Jewish section of Jerusalem. Huff and puff Obama does, striving to knock down plans for those apartments. And wastes valuable time and valuable political capital as he does so.

The Iranian nuke facilitates are hardened and built under mountains. Israel does not have a single heavy bomber. Even if it did, neither US or Israel has a conventional bomb capable of destroying their deepest built facilitates. Even if Israel could destroy these plants Iran already has developed the technology and has all the personal to restart the program.

The only way of stopping Iran's nuke program would be preemptive nuclear strikes, which would be pretty ridiculous.

 

[Fear No Evil]

Imagine if Iran would nuke San Francisco or something. We'd have the entire left of this forum screaming for war and torture. Its too bad it takes things like 9/11 to wake us up.. then we quickly forget. Lets hope we don't have to lost 10's of thousands of people to learn a lesson here.

 

[piasabird]

Just use some dirty bombs that will contaminate the surrounding area. Eventually they have to come out. We could just bomb the mountain till it was a pile of gravel with nuclear bombs. However, that might not be in our interests either. After all we have thousands of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq who might be bombed or attacked by Iranian troops.

The real issue is the entire world would be affected by the loss of the Oil in that region, and the price of gas would probably sky-rocket up again. So is it better to attack or do nothing? In the long run it may be better to do nothing!

 

[her209]

Imagine if Iran would nuke San Francisco or something. We'd have the entire left of this forum screaming for war and torture. Its too bad it takes things like 9/11 to wake us up.. then we quickly forget. Lets hope we don't have to lost 10's of thousands of people to learn a lesson here.

Too bad it takes things like the Iraq War to make us realize why we shouldn't start elective wars, especially when you have another war already ongoing.

 

[nonlnear]

So few people mention sovereignty any more...

 

[DaveSimmons]

Israel, with a little teeny bit of American logistical assistance could do it. After all, they destroyed the Iraqi and the Syrian nuclear weapons plants and lived another day.

It sounds like you haven't researched how well-protected the Iranian nuke program is compared to Syria's.

If Rambo existed we could send him in with a quiver full of explosive-tipped arrows to infiltrate the mountain and blow it up from the inside. Sadly, he isn't real.

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

 

[StageLeft]

Of course it does, but Bush was, too. After the Iraq debacle there was never, ever anything the US was going to or could have done to prevent Iran getting its bomb.

 

[CycloWizard]

So few people mention sovereignty any more...

Fiefdoms exist according to the will of the king.

 

[Sclamoz]

Just use some dirty bombs that will contaminate the surrounding area. Eventually they have to come out. We could just bomb the mountain till it was a pile of gravel with nuclear bombs. However, that might not be in our interests either. After all we have thousands of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq who might be bombed or attacked by Iranian troops.

The real issue is the entire world would be affected by the loss of the Oil in that region, and the price of gas would probably sky-rocket up again. So is it better to attack or do nothing? In the long run it may be better to do nothing!

A much better strategy would be to improve relations between Iran and the US (or more importantly improve the opinion of Iranian populace of the US) and wait for the current government to be overthrown which is possible after the last election, or do it covertly through the CIA. Then do whatever it takes diplomatically to ensure they don't pursue nukes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9uaIkH30rY

 

[Patranus]

The Iranian nuke facilitates are hardened and built under mountains. Israel does not have a single heavy bomber. Even if it did, neither US or Israel has a conventional bomb capable of destroying their deepest built facilitates. Even if Israel could destroy these plants Iran already has developed the technology and has all the personal to restart the program.

Hint: Bunker Buster

Officials acknowledge that the new bomb is intended to blow up fortified sites like those used by Iran and North Korea for their nuclear programs, but they deny there is a specific target in mind.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/wor...r-U-S-military-speeds-plans-biggest-bomb.html

There is always the nuclear bunker buster...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_bunker_buster

Pretty sure that one would blow up the iranian bunker.

Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. We can make him better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster

Man will always find a way to build a better mouse trap.

 

[MotF Bane]

Imagine if Iran would nuke San Francisco or something. We'd have the entire left of this forum screaming for war and torture. Its too bad it takes things like 9/11 to wake us up.. then we quickly forget. Lets hope we don't have to lost 10's of thousands of people to learn a lesson here.

Oh come on. If Iran did decide to launch a nuke, it'd certainly be for Israel. They won't even have the range to hit SF.

Just use some dirty bombs that will contaminate the surrounding area. Eventually they have to come out. We could just bomb the mountain till it was a pile of gravel with nuclear bombs. However, that might not be in our interests either. After all we have thousands of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq who might be bombed or attacked by Iranian troops.

The real issue is the entire world would be affected by the loss of the Oil in that region, and the price of gas would probably sky-rocket up again. So is it better to attack or do nothing? In the long run it may be better to do nothing!

Are you fucking serious? You want to use the worse aspect of nuclear weapons as the primary goal, and irradiate land for untold years to stop their nuclear program? WTF.

 

[Moonbeam]

PJ: I finished breakfast a long time ago so I will not venture into any detail about how exquisite the organic Sumatran espresso was. Like almost all Sumatran varietals, the taste lingers long after the cup is done.

M: I had Folger's Instant and instantly left my body and traveled to several of my favorite stars to share my coffee with friends I've made there.


PJ: As does the global concern about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons in the very near future.

M: What concern is that. I know folk who had to hide under their desks in school because of the Soviet Union, who actually had the means to destroy us. Maybe you're just a big chicken or a turkey.

PJ: It seems the President of the United States, despite the oh so tough language of the past year and a half, does not plan on doing more than the same old song and dance about sanctions, of all things. That effective sanctions would require the cooperation of China and Russia, well, that is a pipe dream that, too, lingers.

M: You are speaking out of a pipe dream that's all your own or you stole somebody else's talking points. In either case what seems to you doesn't seem to me and what is possible on the diplomatic front is unknowable without trying. Remember, you really know nothing. You are just full of opinions, ones the motivation for which, are invisible to you in my opinion.

PJ: Oh, and he will stop Israel, the only other country capable of militarily slowing down the Iranian nuclear weapons program, from doing anything, too.

M: Pure bull. Israel is not capable of this and we may not be either. There is no military option here that will work, long term. A military option would set them back but they would start over this time with a totally united population under the control of mad men.
You drink too much coffee and taste too much wine and indulge your ego to too extensive an extreme, so much so that the reality of death and war has been lost on you. Volunteer to hand guide the bomb down personally. I don't have much good to say about folk who drink fancy coffee and push for other people's death.

PJ: Why would he do so?

M: Because he's a serious person with a brain who listens to others of his kind like James Baker.

PJ: Well, he did win the Nobel Peace Prize and might just feel he has to live up to it. I wonder if the Nobel Committee would ask for it back if he attacked the nuclear weapon development sites in Iran? Nah, they didn't ask for Yassar Arafat and Le Duc Tho to give theirs back (though Le Duc Tho was honest enough to decline his, considering what subsequently happened in Vietnam.)

There is always the practical consideration of how to do it. We've had some discussions here about that, but can reasonably conclude that the American military would effectively shut down the Iranians should they be tasked to do so. Could they occupy Iran, should they consider it? No. But occupation would not required anyway.

M: Occupation would be required or they will just rebuild. It would also end the growth of a home grown opposition to the rule of the Mullahs.

PJ: Israel, with a little teeny bit of American logistical assistance could do it. After all, they destroyed the Iraqi and the Syrian nuclear weapons plants and lived another day. There was no Armageddon, hell, the Syrians never even admitted they had their nuke plant blown up so as to save face. But Iran is quite a more difficult nut to crack and without American cooperation may be delivered a less than fully effective strike. And that would be a bad thing.

M: Not in our national interest for Israel to do it, sorry.

PJ: Our President does not want Israel to take any such action, or take any action at all. He wants to berate Israel for planning to build some apartments in a Jewish section of Jerusalem. Huff and puff Obama does, striving to knock down plans for those apartments. And wastes valuable time and valuable political capital as he does so.

M: Yup, peace between the Arab states and Israel is in America's vital interest.

PJ: In Washington, as in the Rome of long ago, we can hear a fiddle play.

M: Those sounds you hear are gas escaping your fundament.

 

[PJABBER]

It sounds like you haven't researched how well-protected the Iranian nuke program is compared to Syria's.

If Rambo existed we could send him in with a quiver full of explosive-tipped arrows to infiltrate the mountain and blow it up from the inside. Sadly, he isn't real.

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

Actually, I have been looking at the military options, as well as the political ones, for some time as this above all else is the most important topic relating to global security. You might do a search of this forum that encompasses even just the past year on this topic and you will see quite a bit of informed conjecture from myself and others.

Obviously, unless someone here works in an Israeli or U.S. plans and operations capacity dealing with this scenario, all we can do is speculate and conjecture as to war plans.

It was apparent in 2008 that Israel was ready to take a military action and tabled it. I doubt that they would have undertaken a critical mission like this, with all the attendant risks, unless they thought they would have a likelihood of success.

While the U.S. leadership may feel they have all the time in the world to wait, Israel most certainly does not.

If conventional weaponry, the best bunker busters of which the U.S. has now delayed or canceled sending to Israel (387 JDAM kits for attachment to the warheads of 2,000-pound BLU-109/MK-84 or the 1,000-pound BLU-110/MK-83 bunker-busters for their conversion into smart bombs were on their way to Israel and diverted at the last minute in the beginning of March) then the Israelis may actually be painted into a corner by the Obama Administration into using their own nuclear weaponry.

I am heading out for a bike ride right now but might rejoin the discussion later. In the meantime, let me refer anyone interested to the following excellent and just published study on the various military options -

Options in Dealing with Iran’s Nuclear Program
By Abdullah Toukan and Anthony H. Cordesman
March 26, 2010
CSIS

The following CSIS studies from last year tackle the problem from different perspectives and are worth reading -

GCC - Iran: Operational Analysis of Air, SAM and TBM Forces


Iran, Israel, and the Effects of Nuclear Conflict in the Middle East


Study on a Possible Israeli Strike on Iran's Nuclear Development Facilities


Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction: Strategic and Warfighting Implications of a Nuclear Armed Iran

An older study that still offers insight, though the Iranians have reportedly published multiple copies and tailored their defenses in response after reading it -

“Osirak Redux? Assessing Israeli Capabilities to Destroy Iranian Nuclear Facilities”
Whitney Raas and Austin Long
SSP Working Paper
April 2006

 

[Lemon law]

To start out with, there is zero hard evidence Iran is working on a nuclear weapons program. That decision is years into the future. And Iran shares a right with every other nation to use atomic energy for electrical power generation.

So why are the pro-Israeli fan clubbers acting as if Israel has a God given right to bomb Iran??? Using the nuclear weapons Israel already has.

And because Iran is largely in compliance with IAEA rules, Obama, despite numerous attempts, can't get the UN to get serious with sanctioning Iran.

As for Obama dope slapping Israel, Netanyuhu asked for it and got it. Any realistic mid-east peace is impossible if Israel keeps settling on disputed land it does not own, a policy Israel has kept up for the past two decades, and finally we have a US president with the courage to put a just mid-east peace as the highest priority.

Current US policy is still biased in favor of Israel, but horrors of horrors, it is not the former total blank US check Israel enjoyed before. And Israel is very probably going to have to be a peace partner rather than demand a totally one sided deal.

 

[nageov3t]

I never quite understood why Bush made Israel hold back from bombing Iran if Israel was willing to bear the retaliation unless there's fear that Israel bombing Iran would lead to another everyone versus Israel war in the middle east.

 

[PJABBER]

PJ: I finished breakfast a long time ago so I will not venture into any detail about how exquisite the organic Sumatran espresso was. Like almost all Sumatran varietals, the taste lingers long after the cup is done.

M: I had Folger's Instant and instantly left my body and traveled to several of my favorite stars to share my coffee with friends I've made there.

Moonie, I love your writing, I really do. But on topics like this one, along with nuclear power generation and anthropogenic climate change I think you establish your competence level with your first statement.

Oh, if you want a REAL buzz, Folger's isn't up to the task. Try Bustelo.

:awe:

 

[irishScott]

I never quite understood why Bush made Israel hold back from bombing Iran if Israel was willing to bear the retaliation unless there's fear that Israel bombing Iran would lead to another everyone versus Israel war in the middle east.

Remember how well they did in the first of said wars? Imagine that on crack. Never mind the fact that we own Iraq for the time being.

The way I see it, the middle east is about to have its own little cold war.

 

[irishScott]

To start out with, there is zero hard evidence Iran is working on a nuclear weapons program. That decision is years into the future. And Iran shares a right with every other nation to use atomic energy for electrical power generation.

So why are the pro-Israeli fan clubbers acting as if Israel has a God given right to bomb Iran??? Using the nuclear weapons Israel already has.

And because Iran is largely in compliance with IAEA rules, Obama, despite numerous attempts, can't get the UN to get serious with sanctioning Iran.

As for Obama dope slapping Israel, Netanyuhu asked for it and got it. Any realistic mid-east peace is impossible if Israel keeps settling on disputed land it does not own, a policy Israel has kept up for the past two decades, and finally we have a US president with the courage to put a just mid-east peace as the highest priority.

Lol

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2010/gov2010-10.pdf (February 18, 2010)

F. Summary

46. While the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran, Iran has not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the Agency to confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.

47. Iran is not implementing the requirements contained in the relevant resolutions of the Board of
Governors and the Security Council, including implementation of the Additional Protocol, which are
essential to building confidence in the exclusively peaceful purpose of its nuclear programme and to resolve outstanding questions. In particular, Iran needs to cooperate in clarifying outstanding issues which give rise to concerns about possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme, and to implement the modified text of Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements General Part on the early provision of design information.

48. Contrary to the relevant resolutions of the Board of Governors and the Security Council, Iran has continued with the operation of PFEP and FEP at Natanz, and the construction of a new enrichment plant at Fordow. Iran has also announced the intention to build ten new enrichment plants. Iran recently began feeding low enriched UF6 produced at FEP into one cascade of PFEP with the aim of enriching it up to 20% in U-235. The period of notice provided by Iran regarding related changes made to PFEP was insufficient for the Agency to adjust the existing safeguards procedures before Iran started to feed the material into PFEP. The Agency’s work to verify FFEP and to understand the original purpose of the facility and the chronology of its design and construction remain ongoing. Iran is not providing access to information such as the original design documentation for FFEP or access to companies involved in the design and construction of the plant.

49. Contrary to the relevant resolutions of the Board of Governors and the Security Council, Iran has also continued with the construction of the IR-40 reactor and related heavy water activities. The Agency has not been permitted to take samples of the heavy water which is stored at UCF, and has not been provided with access to the Heavy Water Production Plant.

50. The Director General requests Iran to take steps towards the full implementation of its Safeguards Agreement and its other obligations, including the implementation of its Additional Protocol.

51. The Director General will continue to report as appropriate.

Oh yeah, they're in full compliance with the IAEA.

 

[Sinsear]

Wow, the iran apologizing anti israel brigade all in one place.

 

[Patranus]

Remember how well they did in the first of said wars? Imagine that on crack. Never mind the fact that we own Iraq for the time being.

Exactly, what is between Iraq and Afghanistan?

There are ~150,000 troops in Iraq and another ~100,000 troops in Afghanistan.

I would be interest in the number of tanks/ect. in the region compared to Iran's estimated capabilities.

I think America has Iran covered if they tried anything against Israel. This is assuming that Obama (doesn't continue to) throw Israel under the bus.

 

[Red Dawn]

Wow, the iran apologizing anti israel brigade all in one place.

Maybe they'll take each other out along with the Palestinians

 

[cubby1223]

Oh come on. If Iran did decide to launch a nuke, it'd certainly be for Israel. They won't even have the range to hit SF.

Wow, you *completely* missed his point

 

[piasabird]

Maybe Iran will make a mistake and blow themselves up. Once they use a nuclear bomb others will want us to attack Iran, and their fate will be death and misery. Not even Russia would appose at that point.

 

[Sclamoz]

Hint: Bunker Buster


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/wor...r-U-S-military-speeds-plans-biggest-bomb.html

There is always the nuclear bunker buster...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_bunker_buster

Pretty sure that one would blow up the iranian bunker.



Man will always find a way to build a better mouse trap.

Israel has nothing that could carry the MOP afaik, and the article doesn't even say if they finished development of it yet. And if you think nuking a country to keep them from possibly getting a nuke is a sensible plan...

Hint: It would take something like 24 bunker busters to knockout the Natanz plant, I don't even know if Israel could do anything to Qom.

Iran has a shitty air force but they have plenty of air defenses around these sites. Israel would take some heavy losses. Because of their lack of heavy bombers they would need a large force and would loose planes/pilots in the process, Iran might end up with some POWs. In the end all that "successful" air strikes would accomplish is a speed bump in Iran's Nuclear program and uniting the Iranian population behind the mullahs and against the US/Israel, the shiite militias going apeshit in Iraq and Iran trying to fuck up the oil market.

A military strike will not completely stop Iran's nuclear program, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said in a Pentagon briefing on Monday.

"No strike, however effective, will be in and of itself decisive," Admiral Mike Mullen said, adding that he supported using diplomatic and economic pressure against Iran.