War! The fear mongering is here, again!

The head of US intelligence has warned that there is an increasing likelihood that Iran could carry out attacks in America or against US and allied targets around the world.

The warning from the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, reflects rapidly rising tensions over Iran's nuclear programme after the US and EU announced embargoes on the Iranian oil trade in the past few weeks, Israel leaked details of its preparation for a possible conflict and both the west and Iran boosted their military readiness in the Gulf.

"I don't think they are playing Iran anything like as well as they think they are," said Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Tehran. "The oil embargo tends to give those elements in Iran who want to have maximal defences, including nuclear defences, added weight to their arguments. Also they are poking Iran with a sharp stick but this is not accompanied by a new negotiating incentives."

So I think the neoconservative found their new target--Iran. As if it not enough that they kill over a million innocent Iraq people, and cause the country to be a living hell now.

Note that the top two comments are:

2. "Iran has invaded no country since 1945. The US has aggressively invaded 75. Who should the world be more afraid of? A country that has nuclear weapons, a history of aggressive invasions or a country that has no nuclear weapons and no history of aggression.
You decide."

In my view( and it is share by many), sanctions are an act of war.

Ultimately, who are we harming with these sanctions, but the Iranian people. Iranian people are just like average Americans, or average people all over the world. They have families that are just trying to get by.

Normal people are going to suffering, because the neocons in the US want to extend their empire even more.

A few thoughts:
- Neocons have always had Iran in their sights but much to the apparent frustration of Israel, they are not getting any traction with this one.

- I don't see how sanctions are acts of war. If I don't like you, I don't have to purchase your products. Are you saying the US must purchase Iranians products or it is an act of war? Seems like a long stretch.

- Iran is complicit in the current state of affairs regarding the US. If Iran did everything else the same but ignored the US (at least publicly), the US would ignore Iran. The US ignores lots of countries all the time. By continuously using the US as a foil to quell domestic unrest, they keep feeding the very small group in the US that has some axe to grind with Iran. Prior to the current hardliners coming into office, events in Iran were mainly the concern of a small group at the State Department working towards normalizing relations.

All Iran has to do to avoid military action is not back the US into a corner where it has to attack to maintain credibility. That's it. Let's hope they are smart enough to realize that.

engineer wrote:

There would be no boots on the ground.

I don't think you can say that with any certainty.

The "shocking & awing" of Baghdad was supposed to have led to a quick US victory .... & look what eventuated.

engineer wrote:

All Iran has to do to avoid military action is not back the US into a corner where it has to attack to maintain credibility. That's it. Let's hope they are smart enough to realize that.

And perhaps all the US has to do (at this stage anyway, rather than even considering military retaliation) is to treat the rhetoric coming from Iran as the deranged rhetoric that is is .... not escalate the situation, certainly not threaten military retaliation to it.
"Attacking to maintain credibility" is a very poor excuse for military intervention into another country. Far worse that any crazy rhetoric which might be used as an excuse for it.

Btw an Iranian scientist was murdered today by terrorists, what's sauce for the goose and all that.

Al Qaeda means "the Base," and which refers to a support base for the Mujihadeen of Afghanistan during the Russian occupation--it was set up and funded by the United States and it's members were trained by Central Intelligence. Saudi Arabia matched us dollar for dollar in our funding, and their man on the scene was Osama bin Laden, a Saudi national of Yemeni descent, and a fervent believer in Wahhabism, which is extremist, fundamentalist Sunni Islam.

I fear that Israel will lead us into another war that we dont need because our politicians are once again being led by a minority.

It's a terrorist act, so Iran should take it to the security council.

The fact that you're terrified of visiting your grandfather's birthplace without being armed, shows how far from reality you've allowed yourself to drift.

In my understanding, a .44 special will have more STOPPING POWER
than a .357 magnum.

Remember, despite all the rhetoric, Iran has not attacked anyone since the revolution.

An air campaign alone has little prospect of taking out their nuclear capacity, the more so given how long and how loudly sabers have been rattled. It's not as though the Persians are so stupid that they have needed to be told to disperse their facilities and to put them underground.

Bridges end up at the bottoms of rivers precisely because they are (given the state of the art) relatively easy targets. Underground bunkers? Not so much. In the Second World War, the Japanese on New Guinea built defensive bunkers for infantry using only the logs of newly cut palm trees and dirt heaped on it. The USAAF and the RAAF pounded the bejeezus out of those bunkers for days one end. In the end, infantry had to go in there and dig them out, because tons and tons of HE hadn't done the job.

Yeah, we've got smart bombs, and we've got cruise missiles. First, you have to know precisely where to put them, and then, you get the obvious entry points--with no guarantee that you've done any significant damage to the facilities below.

BillRM wrote:

LOL It you can not power the nuclear enrichment centrifuges because all your power plants had been wipe the centrifuges are junk just to start with.

What the **** are you trying to say? This is gibberish, the only thing that makes sense is LOL. Stick to acronyms, words are just too tricky.

It apparently does not occur to you that uranium can be "enriched" in a breeder reactor. Those need to be refueled only when all of the original fissile material has been processed.

How long to you think western nations can keep bombing everything that moves in Iran, bright boy? Longer than the uranium or thorium core in a breeder reactor takes to convert?