[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Iran (Page 1 of 4)
Posted: 4/18/2008 9:46:38 AM EDT
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My opinion on Iran is that if we were going to do something about Iran then we would have done it by now. The longer we wait the bolder they become. Bush is a lame duck and he is struggling to keep congress from hamstringing the war in Iraq. On top of that we are in a presidential election cycle where the next president will be handed two wars to manage at a time where the biggest one is wildly unpopular. No, I think that despite the fact Iran is building nuclear weapons, engaging in terrorism, sponsoring and training terrorists and threatening the security of the entire ME, we will not be doing anything about them anytime soon. We have too much going on with Iraq and Afghanistan to take on a third ground war right now and we don't have the political or popular will to take them on militarily (even if we did have the resources). Airstrikes would be the only possibility and I don't see that as being likely before the next president takes office in 2009. So, Iran will continue to develop nuclear weapons unless someone else stops them. In my opinion this seals the deal on Iraq being a huge mistake for us. We expended far more resources, lives, money and Bush expended all of his political capitol on the little fish while the big fish taunts us, undermines our efforts in Iraq, sponsors our enemies, encourages terrorists and builds the deadliest weapons known to man. I'm not saying that we shouldn't finish what we started in Iraq, on the contrary I believe that we MUST finish what we started. However, Iraq was a mistake. It could have at least taken a back burner while we dealt with the REAL threat in the region. That's my take on it. |
Sooner or later? Probably. However, it looks like this is going to be a one or the other situation. We should have picked Iran. |
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Perhaps Iraq and Asscrackistan were putting us in a better strategic position to attack Iran from both borders. The GWoT is not a single campaign war, but rather a long conflict. Strategically thinking, we are holding very good real estate for a campaign against Iran. -K |
Saddam hated Iran. He would have talked shit, but he wouldn't have stuck his neck out for them. He would have been happy that he was being left alone. The difference between Iraq and Iran is that Iraq's Shia population was tightly controlled under Saddam and would not have been able to aid Iran against us. Iran is a majority Shia nation with where the Shia have the power and they have ties and a natural cultural link back to Iraq through the Iraqi Shia population. That's my understanding of it anyways. Hell, Saddam might have even pulled a Khadafi and surrendered without a fight if we took out Iran first. |
QFT. Plus, we really don't need a full scale invasion to stop a nuclear weapons progam, now do we. |
Huh? Iraq was a legitimate threat because it was a state sponsor of terror and was building weapons of mass destruction, but Iran is not legitimate threat because it is a state sponsor of terror (more so that Iraq ever was) and is building weapons of mass destruction (with an actual nuclear program). I see. 
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Yea, lets not forget the whole hostage crisis thing.... ETA:spellcheck |
Wrong. Try again |
We also had better legal standing for Iraq, because Saddam violated the terms of the cease-fire agreement. One war at a time..... |
It depends on how much they have spread it out across the country. I recall seeing a map of Iranian sites related to their nuclear program that spanned pretty much the entire country. Besides, if all you do is destroy their equipment pertaining to the program then all you do is postpone the inevitable. As long as the mullahs are running the show and wanting nukes, and as long as the scientists are alive and their information is still available, and as long as the Russians are willing to sell them what they need then they will move forward. If you simply attack from the air then you solidify the positions of the mullahs with the people who become patriotic after such an attack. |
Iran is indeed a threat . We are fighting a Proxy War with them as we speak. |
You don't need to knock them all out, like a puzzle a few key pieces and it can't be completed. Besides, I fully expect the Israeli's will handle it for us, in a fashion we don't want to take the bad press for, with some assistance from us in locating important targets. Failing that, nuclear refining is a very, very high consumer of electricy...in amounts generators can't provide. Take out the grid supplying these places, and they can't do shit. There are many options aside from full scale invasion. |
Again like most americans you don't know anything about the hostage crisis. I was born here. I am combat vet, I am still in the army. My GF of 5 years, her parents are from Iran. Like most of the shit you hear on the news and in history books its ones sided. If you want to know why the hostages were taken look at history. We overthrew the iranin government and installed the Sha. The sha, who my gf's parents worked for (part of royal family FYI) were great for americans. Pro US and very western. Well he didn't treat the people so well. So in around 1979 there was a revolt. My gf family had to leave the country or they would have been killed by the revolutionaries. Even they said that the Sha treated the people like shit and it was very unfair. The Iranins took the US hostages as leverage. They THOUGHT we were going to come in with military force and reinstate the Sha and/or another dictator. I am not condoning what they did or anything, beacuse it was fucked up for them to take hostages. They took them as a bargining chip. Again like most of the problems in the middle east, They root back Decades to problems and conflicts. But you don't hear about them. We as Americans are so short sighted and ready to belive what we are told. Most of the shit in the middle east right now is over trust. Most musliums dont trust us beacuse we fucked them over, and we dont' trust them because they blow our shit up/are different/Live in the -10th centurey. |
That's debatable. GWI was a UN sanctioned war which was ended by a UN brokered cease fire which placed UN enforceable sanctions on Iraq. However, when Iraq violated the terms of that cease fire the UN refused to authorize military action as a response. Yes, it was because the UN is corrupt and because it was profiting from the situation. But, the legal standing argument is still very thin.
Do you really think that there is going to be another war? Do you really think that we are in a position to attack Iran? |
The IDF does not have the capability to launch any meaningful attack on Irans WMD programme. Iran has been digging in and hardening their faciliies for over two years. 25 F-15I's and 25 F-16I's are not going to amount to much and would be operating at the extreme end of a suicidally long support chain and attacking targets defended by high end SAMS. |
Ok, then we should have invaded China durring korea, Russia during Vietnam, and what? Invaded ourselves durring the Afgan/Russian debocle. |
But you still only postpone it. They have to rebuild what you destroyed, and that will take time, but as long as the madmen who want the bomb are running the show then they will continue towards that goal. You couldn't have bombed Hitler to the negotiating table. |
Neither are the common criminal murderers and rapists, why should we arrest them? we simply don't understand them, right? If we did exactly as the murderers and rapists told us to do, and leave them alone to go about their business, there won't be any problems (for them). No such intelligent idea has been around since Einstein's latest theory. |
This is my source. I guess I dont know anything about it...   Taking hostages is a pretext for war. We should have taken care of it when it happened. |
100% correct, anyone who lived/worked in Iran at the time knew just how brutal SAVAK was to ordinary Iranians. On more than one ocassion I went home and came back the next day to find one of my fellow Officers has been 'dissapereared' for some remark deemed to be critical of the Shah. |
Like key members of this site and much of the American Population, keep running around with a bag on your head, Screaming the Sky is falling |
No, we should not have picked Iran... It had to be an arab country... Al Queda will not fight for Iran... |
Evreyone knew what was going to go down that day and took steps to get under the radar or get the fuck outta Dodge. Your Embassy was also warned to get all non essential staff out of the way but chose not to. It was not a very bright move in the circumstances. |
Oh I understand the circumstances leading up to it. The embassy SHOULD have been e'vaced long before, however the event still occurred. |
If Iran is not a ligitimate threat, why are we fighting Iranians in Basrah and An Nasariyah? Why am I getting shelled by Iranian Rockets? |
The same reason you are being shot at by Russian RPG 7/8's and Steyr .50's But its ok, continue thinking with your tunnel vision |
They have not developed nuclear capable submarine launched cruise missles just to toss at Hamas..... |
I see where you're coming from pal. Keep in mind that the GF and her family are not the kind of Iranians that we're talking about attacking. There are good and bad in every nation, in Iran's case, it seems like the worst possible kind of low life terrorists have taken over, and they DO have a large portion of their people supporting them, under the Iranian regime, the more somebody kills and oppresses "non-islamists" the higher their ranking, the insane terrorist Ahamginejad himself has killed hundreds of people. Make no mistakes about it, there is no misunderstanding about who our enemies are. Also do a deeper research about the history, if you want to think in terms of causes and effects, go all the way down to the original cause. We did support Shah at the time, and he was a good choice for the time, he brought a country with literally no industry and 90% illiterate population into the modern age, sure he had opposition, but who exactly were the opposition? the communist and the islamist terrorists. Both groups worked together in over throwing Shah, and then the islamist terrorists massacred the communist 10,000 times more than Shah did, then they massacred a large number of the so called moderates, and now we have the most active terrorist State, and I tell you beyond any doubt Iranian regime is not just a terrorist sponsor, they ARE behind most of the major terrorist attacks world wide, not to mention what they do to their own people is far worse. I have been studying the history and religions for two decades, and I have several Iranian resources also, I don't do propaganda, or partial truth. Iranian mullah's regime is the greatest danger to the world since Nazi Germany, be very very careful about what Iranians to trust, they are very manipulative and master liars, they have their agents all over the place and they are very good in covering their true support for terrorism and the mullahs regime. |
Israel is not going to launch any pre-emptive nuclear strikes |
I see your point......sorta.... While the PEOPLE of Iran for the most part may not be a threat to the USA the governement of Iran is that is a fact! I think we passed up a golden chance a few years ago when there were open demonstrations against the governemnt.... |
I see your point......sorta.... While the PEOPLE of Iran for the most part may not be a threat to the USA the governement of Iran is that is a fact! I think we passed up a golden chance a few years ago when there were open demonstrations against the governemnt.... |
Maybe, maybe not. Those same missles can carry conventional warheads also. |
I think there is only two options. One is for the secular Iranian to over throw the mullahs terrorist regime. They have been trying for two decades, but the mullahs regime is too brutal, and massacres the opposition by thousands, the people are powerless. The other is a full scale war, not just to change the regime, but to completely destroy the mullahs regime and all their supporters, just like a war is meant to be. The third option is to do nothing, which means the terrorism will continue world wide until everybody is living under the barbaric Sharia laws, don't doubt that it will happen, it may take a couple of generations but it will happen, the time to stop it is NOW. |
What has happened in the past with those conflicts is NOT what we are talking about, so forget about bringing up the past. We are talking about the Iranian support of the Shia radicals in Iraq, the capture of Iranian Advisors in Iraq. I am not suggesting we invade Iran either, but rather shut down the border and hold the Iranian Regime accountable for their actions of the above. As far as their Nuclear ambitions are concerned, I'm afraid we'll have to wait for the smoking gun. |
Well a lot of the 'opposition' the Shah was so assiduously killing off were people wanting a representaitive democracy and free and open elections… And as for life pre and post Revolution? I found it a lot less unpredictable after as the 'do not do' rules were pretty simple to follow. |
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TurretGunner, Iran IS a legitimate threat. And their threat is only getting larger. We may indeed have worked ourselves into a position where doing anything will be extremely difficult. Invading Iraq and Afghanistan were two necessary invasions in order to invade Iran just as taking care of France and Italy were necessary to invade Germany. We did some things wrong in Iraq and passification has taken too long. They were never going to have a fully functional democracy by now, but they could have had law and order. I thought that if anything was going to happen it would have been this month or last month. It's looking less and less likely that's going to happen. Though I will say I still believe Bush will launch at least an air attack if Obama or Clinton win the election. |
Yes, the Sha was brutal and yes we supported him despite his brutality. That is an unfortunate fact of history, and that justifies to an extent the Iranian feelings towards us. That said, Iran is building nukes and hates us. That is the only thing that matters. Their feelings, the legitimacy of those feelings and our history in the situation are unimportant. Iran is building nukes and we can't let them. But unfortunately, we can't do anything about it either. |
And the Iranian advisers? The Iranian Financiers? No they haven't rolled tanks yet. That would be stupid. By the way there, get with current events, no Russian RPGs in over 6 months, Yup all Iranian, we do check things out with an open mind. The latest sniper rifles, yup Iran. So try and insult me all you want by saying I'm 'tunnel visioned' that doesn't change the facts, Sorry  . If you wake up and someone is stabbing you, it's safe to assume he wants you dead.
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Your going to need more than literally a handfull of turbo popeyes for the mission. It will require a huge and sustanained USAF/USN operation to make any significant impact. |
Exactly and we need to return the favor... Groups in Iran are not happy with they way things are and surely some AR'sMANPADS,HE,and knowledge and intel could fall off a truck into Iran
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