THE NEW YORK POST
September 19, 2005

WHY TEHRAN HOPES FOR WAR
By AMIR TAHERI

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/52954.htm

INCREDIBLE though it may sound, there are signs that Tehran may be preparing for a military confrontation with the United States — and has convinced itself that it can win.
The first sign came last June, with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of the Islamic Republic, an event that completed the conquest of all levers of power by the most radical elements of the establishment.

Since then, the revolutionary factions have conducted a little-publicized purge of the military, the security apparatus, the civil service and state-owned corporations and media.

Among those replaced: the defense minister, the commander-in-chief of the regular army and his four deputies, 11 senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and five commanders of the paramilitary Mobilization of the Dispossessed — plus the intelligence and security minister and the interior minister (who controls the police and the gendarmerie). Also noteworthy is the appointment of military officers to posts normally held by civilians, such as governors, mayors and directors of major public corporations.

But perhaps the surest sign is the military buildup under way in the five provinces bordering Iraq. The region, with a population of 20 million, has been put under the control of the IRGC, which has also taken over units of the regular army (including the 88th Division) and the border police. Iran is estimated to have 250,000 troops in the area, its biggest military buildup since the 1988 end of the Iran-Iraq war.

One of the first acts of the new Ahmadinejad-led Cabinet was to approve a $700 million "emergency" fund to be spent at the discretion of "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for "sacred defense purposes."

The new administration is also speeding up defense spending. The five-year plan approved by Khamenei last year aimed at doubling the military budget by 2010 — but, thanks to rising oil revenues, most of it could now be done by 2008.

In recent weeks, top regime figures — including Khamenei and Ahmadinejad — have made a series of unscheduled visits to Mashad, Iran's second-largest city. One curious fact revealed in these visits is that a bunker-like structure to house the "supreme guide" is being finished near the holy shrine of Reza, the Eighth Imam. The complex could also house the top echelon of government, including the president, the Cabinet and members of parliament.

Mashad is 600 miles from Tehran and as far as possible from U.S. firepower in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. America is also expected to shrink from attacks against the Mashad bunker for fear of collateral damage to the "holy shrine" of the imam a few hundred yards away.

One may guess the outline of Tehran's scenario for what it believes is an inevitable clash with the United States.

Suppose that the tussle over Iran's nuclear plans goes to the Security Council — which fails to take a decision, thanks to Russian and Chinese vetoes, and America (after much huffing and puffing) launches airstrikes against Iran's nuclear installations.

Iran's retaliation could begin with orders to the forces it controls inside Iraq to attack U.S. and British troops. The Lebanese branch of Hezbollah would launch massive rocket attacks against Israel, while Hamas and Islamic Jihad (whose leaders spent the past month in Tehran, meeting Khamenei and his aides) would begin suicide operations against Israel from Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Iran-allied Hazara Shiites might begin strikes against Kabul, the Afghan capital, from the west, while Pushtun warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the remnants of the Taliban attack across all of Afghanistan.

U.S./U.K. forces might answer with a conventional attack out of Iraq. But the Iranians could retreat to the Zagross mountain range, the first line of Iran's natural defences. The IRGC is now building several new bases to bolster this line. The bases would assure supplies for a quarter of a million troops, and provide shelter for half a million refugees from the border.

The Americans could attempt to "decapitate" Iran with cruise missiles against "regime targets" in Tehran. But the regime would already be in Mashad, protected by the Eighth Imam.

Meanwhile, Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz — thereby choking off the world supply of oil, which would surely top $100 a barrel, plunging the global economy into a crisis.

The U.N. Security Council would surely meet in emergency, perhaps forcing the U.S. to veto a vote for a ceasefire. Global TV networks would air images of "indiscriminate carnage" and "wanton destruction" in Iranian cities, while marches in Washington and dozens of other cities would feature Hollywood celebrities and others calling for impeachment.

At this point, the Iranian strategy/fantasy would expect the U.S. media and Congress to revolt against President Bush and his "pre-emptive" strategy — obliging Bush to accept a U.N.-brokered cease-fire and withdraw his forces, and the Americans to leave Iraq and Afghanistan.

The victory would bring the Islamic Republic new domestic legitimacy, allowing it proceed to crush its internal opponents as "enemies of the nation and of Islam." It could also speed up its nuclear-weapons and long-range missile programs without being harassed by Washington.

At the next stage of what Ahmadinejad sees as "a clash of civilizations," Iran would become "the core power" of a new "Islamic pole" in a multipolar system with China, the European Union and Latin America (under the leadership of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez) emerging as other "poles."

The Islamic Republic would then be free to proceed to address what Khamenei has described as its "greatest historic task": the destruction of Israel.

Sounds outlandish? Well, it is. The Islamic Republic is a fragile structure in a zone of political earthquakes. Logically, the last thing it should want is war.

Nevertheless, former President Muhammad Khatami has warned that Tehran may be boxing itself into a position in which it will either have to surrender or fight.

bring it.

We need to build a highway between Baghdad and Bagram, anyway...

Shit....they just realize that after we kick their ass the US will spend billions rebuilding their countries' infrastructure. Iranian urban renewal.

The Iranians are delusional if they think they can close the straits, just like Saddam and his 'ecological oil bomb'...

The last time we were over there, we weren't actively 'at war'... It's alot easier to prevent someone from closing a chokepoint when you can just land troops and take it over, then when you can only provide 'protection'....

And in case they wern't watching, 600mi is a drop in the bucket for aircraft that can hit A-stan from CONUS....

TAG

Also being covered on Glenn Beck currently.

Quoted: bring it. We need to build a highway between Baghdad and Bagram, anyway...

Hell Yeah!!!

Here's hoping that the Iranians are actually as dumb as this reporter makes them sound.



They wouldn't last 5 minutes.

Closing the Straits and cutting off oil would piss off just about everyone. The world would expect us to take further action.

Bomber

Surprise them: use the nukes.

We could just let Isreal take the trash out for us.

Don't we owe them one anyway ?

www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0825448.html

Quoted: Shit....they just realize that after we kick their ass the US will spend billions rebuilding their countries' infrastructure. Iranian urban renewal.

Yeah.  

Quoted: Don't we owe them one anyway ? www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0825448.html

Word.

the Isrealis will take out the nuclear program well before the are able to produce a weapon

They want us to come in guns a blazing. Many of their people want to reform and actually dont mind us, BUT like all middle eastern muslims they are fical and weak. they are sitting on the fence and like the Italians in WWII, they will be easy to sway in opinion. If we go in fighting, all the rhetoric the Mulklahs have been preaching about the Imperialist Americans will seem true and they will join the fight against us. Yes they will be stupid and a real cluster fudge of idiots, but imagin if Al Sadr in Iraq had a hundred thousand followers instead of maybe ten thousand. It will be a bigger fight and any hope for the local populations support will flatline real quick.

This would bring great clarity to the East-West confict. In their greed to be great Islamic leaders, they are acting prematurely. Prior to 9/11 most people weren't even aware of the ancient East-West war. The sooner it goes full scale, the better the chance of the West winning.

Quoted: Hmm, we know where it is, we know where their two largest cities are and we have nuke equipped cruise missiles.  Sounds like time for a very surgical nuke strike and they will see the light.  No more long drawn out occupations.  One warning shot with HE or incendiary with a clear message that the next one containes canned sunshine?  I got your Allah right here pal.

+1

Two points,

1. the Zagros mountains are Kurdish, rest asured that in a fight the peshmerga (along with US SF) would be all over an army of conscripts that cant maintain comms with higher

2. The further away Iran's corrupt mullahs get from the Iraqi border and the Persian gulf the closer it gets to Azerbijain and Afganistan, both partners in the global war on terror with old scores to settle with Iran.

If they bring it on we can defeat them, and then leave... letting the locals run the show.

How many fronts can we cover at a time? Time to use the tactical nukes.

less arabs on this planet is good for us and them also, because they can have their virgins now

All you guys saying to nuke them really make me laugh.  Do you really think the US would launch a nuclear first strike like that?  Give me a break.

Quoted: America is also expected to shrink from attacks against the Mashad bunker for fear of collateral damage to the "holy shrine" of the imam a few hundred yards away.

We can choose which window of a building to fly a TLAM through. "A few hundred yards"? We have better accuracy than that with our ballistic missiles!

Iran's retaliation could begin with orders to the forces it controls inside Iraq to attack U.S. and British troops. The Lebanese branch of Hezbollah would launch massive rocket attacks against Israel, while Hamas and Islamic Jihad (whose leaders spent the past month in Tehran, meeting Khamenei and his aides) would begin suicide operations against Israel from Jerusalem and the West Bank. Iran-allied Hazara Shiites might begin strikes against Kabul, the Afghan capital, from the west, while Pushtun warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the remnants of the Taliban attack across all of Afghanistan.

Wasn't this all supposed to happen when we invaded Iraq? Or when we liberated Kuwait? Or when we landed in Lebanon? Or when we landed in Beirut?

U.S./U.K. forces might answer with a conventional attack out of Iraq. But the Iranians could retreat to the Zagross mountain range, the first line of Iran's natural defences. The IRGC is now building several new bases to bolster this line. The bases would assure supplies for a quarter of a million troops, and provide shelter for half a million refugees from the border.

Nukes.

The Americans could attempt to "decapitate" Iran with cruise missiles against "regime targets" in Tehran. But the regime would already be in Mashad, protected by the Eighth Imam.

Who would wave his magic wand and scream out "Allah Peanutbuttersandwiches!" and make us go away, right?

Meanwhile, Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz — thereby choking off the world supply of oil, which would surely top $100 a barrel, plunging the global economy into a crisis.

And just how would it do that with it's navy on the seabed and every weapon system within 200 miles of the water in a smouldering ruin?

The U.N. Security Council would surely meet in emergency,

Be still, my foolish heart!

Global TV networks would air images of "indiscriminate carnage" and "wanton destruction" in Iranian cities, while marches in Washington and dozens of other cities would feature Hollywood celebrities and others calling for impeachment.

You mean like they're doing already?

At this point, the Iranian strategy/fantasy would expect the U.S. media and Congress to revolt against President Bush and his "pre-emptive" strategy — obliging Bush to accept a U.N.-brokered cease-fire and withdraw his forces, and the Americans to leave Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hate to break it to you, Haji, but Bush won, not sKerry.

At the next stage of what Ahmadinejad sees as "a clash of civilizations," Iran would become "the core power" of a new "Islamic pole" in a multipolar system with China, the European Union and Latin America (under the leadership of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez) emerging as other "poles." The Islamic Republic would then be free to proceed to address what Khamenei has described as its "greatest historic task": the destruction of Israel.

Oh, yeah. Real peaceful, Islam is.....

Logically, the last thing it should want is war.

Logic? Please! That's like applying the rules of logic to DUh!

Nevertheless, former President Muhammad Khatami has warned that Tehran may be boxing itself into a position in which it will either have to surrender or fight.

Get the white sheet ready, fuckstick.

I hate to break it to youz guys but Bush's presidency is OVER! At least as far as doing any long term stuff like start a third front. Unless Iran does something serious in the next year. Do you think If say in 2008 that Bush would be able to invade Iran with only 1 year left in office? It would be too dangerous for the Republican party with elections coming up. Also where would he come up with the troops? The military is already streched too thin.

Quoted: Don't we owe them one anyway ? www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0825448.html

The way I see it, we owe them 444 X 52 = 23,088.

Pick your currency: Bombs, Missiles, Sorties, Megatons, whatever.

Quoted: All you guys saying to nuke them really make me laugh.  Do you really think the US would launch a nuclear first strike like that?  Give me a break.

And Lord knows, it's so much better to drop our troops into a meatgrinder than to simply cauterize the infection outright, eh?

I'm through pussyfooting with these scumbags. I'm also through trying to make them see the light, escpecially the Iranians, who are responsible for 99% of the Islamic insanity we see today. Nuking them would be a wonderful thing. It would even make the greenies happy by reducing our stockpile.

Laugh away.

Quoted: I hate to break it to youz guys but Bush's presidency is OVER! At least as far as doing any long term stuff like start a third front. Unless Iran does something serious in the next year. Do you think If say in 2008 that Bush would be able to invade Iran with only 1 year left in office? It would be too dangerous for the Republican party with elections coming up. Also where would he come up with the troops? The military is already streched too thin.

Exactly why Iran's main Uranium processing facility is just about due to have a 200 - 300 kiloton "accident"...

Quoted: I hate to break it to youz guys but Bush's presidency is OVER! At least as far as doing any long term stuff like start a third front. Unless Iran does something serious in the next year. Do you think If say in 2008 that Bush would be able to invade Iran with only 1 year left in office? It would be too dangerous for the Republican party with elections coming up. Also where would he come up with the troops? The military is already streched too thin.

You have been listening to Ted Kennedy and, just like him, you are clueless.

Quoted: Hey! don't you guys know that George Bush has no idea what he is doing.  I mean really, he went after Iraq and Afghanistan when the big $$ supporters of international terror have always been the Iranian Mullahs.  I mean its not as if he has them surrounded or anything like that.

Yeah, just ask t-stox, that great political and military expert.

Quoted: All you guys saying to nuke them really make me laugh.  Do you really think the US would launch a nuclear first strike like that?  Give me a break.

Do you think Hiroshima and Nagasaki are Japanese baseball players ?

Quoted: All you guys saying to nuke them really make me laugh.  Do you really think the US would launch a nuclear first strike like that?  Give me a break.

I'll do a little speculating for you.

The Pentagon is reviewing the first strike policy; perhaps allowing nuke first strikes.

The Air Force is playing with nuke bunker busters.

1+1=?

My guess is there are preparations to take out rogue nuke facilities hidden underground. You don't have to kill a city with a nuke. You can use nukes in a precision role.

Quoted: less arabs on this planet is good for us and them also, because they can have their virgins now

ah.. they are persians.. not arabs...

if they tried to close the straights.. lettem.. then let the europeans whine for a while.. would almost be worth it..

dollars to donuts say they wont close the straights.. but they will keep up the rhetoric.. like NK..

Quoted: How many fronts can we cover at a time? Time to use the tactical STRATEGIC  nukes.

A job worth doing is worth doing right!  

Quoted: Quoted: How many fronts can we cover at a time? Time to use the tactical STRATEGIC  nukes. A job worth doing is worth doing right!

+1

Break out the canned sunshine.

Time to turn that shithole into a giant sheet of glass.

Tagged...

This is a pretty enjoyable thread.  There are some folks here that really have a pretty good grasp of the Realpolitik involved in dealing with the Islamofacist state of Iran.   Then...there are those among us who remain relatively clueless.

(Oh...and in this context, I refer more to the pragmaticism of Bismark rather than the theory of Thucydides.).

Bottom line:  As long as we have Bush in the White House, the Constitution is safe and we are safer.  If a liberal like Carter say takes the foreign policy reins however...

Keep it rolling though...this is a good one!  

Quoted: One of the first acts of the new Ahmadinejad-led Cabinet was to approve a $700 million "emergency" fund to be spent at the discretion of "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for "sacred defense purposes."

He's loading up on hookers and blow because he knows the Marine Corps is coming to shorten his life span.