Friday 27 November 2009

Consequences Of Attacking Iran

Worrying developments over the Iran nuclear issue with today's UN resolution demanding Tehran heed UN Security Council resolutions calling on it to stop uranium enrichment.
Of course nobody wants to see a nuclear armed Iran but then the idea of anybody with nuclear weapons in their arsenal is a frightening thought.
Just as frightening is the track we seem to be on which ends with Iran being the recipient of a massive amount of Ordnance courtesy of our armed forces.
There was already a growing clamour for this from some countries showing that we have learnt nothing from Iraq.
I do expect the Nuclear armed Israel to strike at Iran's Nuclear installations at some point in 2010 and they will do it with the tacit approval of the West, very likely using Western supplied weaponry.
I have written previously on the blatant hypocrisy and of the lack of evidence of Iran building a nuclear arsenal which resonates with the Iraq WMD fiasco only this time the American intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency have stated loud and clear that they have no evidence.
What is also being overlooked by the foolhardy armchair generals and leaders of countries that seem hell bent on bombing yet another Middle Eastern country are the repercussions a campaign against Iran would bring.
Iran has a huge military capability and a strike would see massive rocketing of Israel's cities not only by the Iranians but without a shadow of a doubt, also from Lebanon and from Gaza. This would trigger Israeli fighting on 3 fronts with a catastrophic death count all around.
Internationally, terrorism by Iranian agents against Israeli and Western targets would spiral and oil prices would rise steeply. American troops in Iraq and the NATO forces in Afghanistan would face renewed hostilities against an even wider ranging and wilder uprising.
These are the facts, and they are not the whinings of a pacifist or an Ahmadinejad fanatic hyping up an imaginary threat, these are the stone cold certainties of how it will unfold.
So what are the alternatives? Maybe we should think about making peace with Iran rather than threatening it with war, or is such an obvious solution too far-fetched for those who see dropping bombs on people and to hell with the consequences as the only answer to our problems?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lucy,

War with iran is undesirable. But, history books tell us that it is impossible to "make peace" in every situatio - unless you equate surrender with peace...

i'm not advocating war, but your approach would quickly lead to dozens of nations having nuclear weapons... surely that isn't good either...

so how is "making peace" obtained?

q

Falling on a bruise said...

We have the perfect examples in Libya, S Africa and N Korea in recent times. All run by men crazier and more volatile than Ahmadinejad but leaders we have given a carrot to rather than a stick. Through just talking to them and offering incentives we have not had to bomb any of them so why should we treat Iran any different?

Nog said...

I would agree with the desire to be cautious about starting wars with anyone.

On the other hand, I wouldn't fault Israel for giving the Iranians a bit of a pounding for all that the Iranian regime has done to Israel. And I wouldn't worry about Israel getting overrun. They've been surrounded before/for a while. But then again, picking a fight with Iran probably won't help Israel in the long run.

On the other hand, is there a fundamental problem with a nuclear armed Iran? They could have 1 or 100 ICBMs, and we Americans (or even the French for that matter) could still glass every inch of ground from the Euphrates to the Tibetan Plateau on a moment's notice. It isn't as if a nuclear armed Iran could actually threaten the United States, Western Europe, or Israel.


So I'm with you here Lucy. What is to be gained from war? Probably nothing...

-Nog

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