Harry's Place

It may be that the split among the clerical totalitarian dictatorship in Iran may relate to fears that Ahmadinejad has every intention of using Iran’s weaponry to wipe out Israel. Perhaps the saner heads realise that this would be the end for their regime one way or another.

I don’t want to be caught “meddling”. It’ll just raise the need for further apologies down the road.

The ‘united’ EU front on the subject of sanctions against Iran doesn’t seem to be fairing very well. Despite the expelling of British diplomats and the arrest of British embassy staff, the EU is apparantly still arguing about imposing sanctions, most of the opposition coming from countries with lucrative trade with Iran.
So much for European solidarity!

I always expected the Bush/Obama interregnum to provide the opportunity for an Israeli strike on the Iranian nuclear plants. Instead, they chose to attack Hamas in Gaza. Perhaps Israel has now reconsidered.

For my part I think those boats should have been kept as secret as possible. Unveiling them for mere sabre-rattling is typical of Netanyahu’s bluster. He talks tough but he won’t do anything. Better to act without talking than talk without acting.

Everyone knows any effective attack on Iranian nuclear installation will have to be deep penetration Jerichos with nuclear warheads, cruise missile nukes to finish the infrastructure above. A conventional air attack is pointless, a nuclear one risky with no guarantee of success.

All this talk of sanctions and boycotts, veiled threats of war and nuclear strikes and a desire to wipe the Islamic Republic from the map just sounds like anti-Parsimitism to me. Nice to know you have the best interests of the Iranian demonstrators at heart by saying that if they aren’t successful in their bid for reform and greater rights then the problem can be solved with a few buckets of sunshine. It’s also ironic that the Iranian state, while clearly run by less-than-wonderful people are not the ones openly ‘weighing up’ the possibility of war and yet are painted as the most likely threat to peace. A little Orwellian inversion, no?

Now the same submarine has been spotted on the return journey from Eilat to the Mediterranean, the Jerusalem Post reports.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1246443726415&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Mullah; When Ahmedinejad cries ‘death to Israel’ would you say that he is weighing up the possibility of war? Or not?

Jews Under Water!

It’s not for Ahmadinejad to decide. Just as it isn’t for John McCain or Hillary Clinton to decide whether to bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb…

Ha ha! Yes, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy that the Israelis have been driven into the Sea!

Deterrence worked against the commies because at the end of the day they were still materialists – no virgins in paradise awaited their martyrs.

Rabic Islamists who strap bombs to themselves to ensure a ticket to a heavenly reward? Different beast altogether.

I would never urge the Israelis to bomb Iran because I am not on the frontlines there, and am not running the risks they are.

European solidarity

Hahahahahahahaha….

David Milliband is one talented individual, not a career politico with absolutely no language skills, experience of living in foreign climes and no opinion outside of the Millbank oikocracy

Hahahahahahahahahahahah…..

Ths is surely clutching at straws, given how easy it is to block the Suez. If Israel is relying on subs to get a nuke on Teheran (or to present a credible threat of doing so), I’d be concerned if I was an Israeli.

The whole they-are-theocrats-and-completely-prepared-to-die scenario doesn’t quite work. The Iranians did use brainwashed kids to blow up mines in the Iran-Iraq War but Shi’ism seems to have bred far fewer suicide bombers than Sunnism. In fact, since the bombing of the US barracks in Beiruit, even Hezbollah seem less inclined towards that tactic. It’s also a bit of a stretch to say that the Iranian leadership are Hell-bent on their own destruction. There’s not much evidence that they merely seek an incineration of the whole world. How is that supposed to fit in with their theology? It doesn’t, it’s just a canard to show how irrational they are.

Mullah –

Not much evidence?

So “Death to America, Death to Israel” – that’s just them having a joke I guess.

field, you presumably think that such yelling is more than posturing and reveals a quixotic scheme to wipe the US from the map with nuclear weapons but I don’t think even the Iranians believe they can achieve that. Have you ever considered that, as with North Korea, the survival of the regime essentially depends on the promotion of grievances, some real and some mythical, to promote its legitimacy? It probably makes some Iranians feel better to think they could vanquish external threats, and to bellow ‘Death to…!’ and when John Bolton, John McCain, Norman Podhoretz talk about bombing the country or when Israel rattle some sabres, or when a few bombs attributed to separatist groups go off in Iran many of those may feel they’re not just paranoid after all.

Russia wasn’t fighting wars inside US borders with state supported proxy armies. When they did try to move the cold war close into US geographical territory we actually did get a nuclear war. Israel doesn’t want to play deterrence with Iran and they won’t.

we actually did get *close to* a nuclear war. (!)

Those Israeli subs are actually on the look-out for the smuggling of killer crayons to Hamas! LOL!!!

The nutjob Jew-hater Cynthia McKinney tells all http://www.mpacuk.org/content/view/5826/102/

shmuel, I was just going to say that’s quite some hyperbole.

franko,

a) I doubt a Suez passage is essential,

b) how do you know Egypt would object?

“Have you ever considered that, as with North Korea, the survival of the regime essentially depends on the promotion of grievances, some real and some mythical, to promote its legitimacy?”

Sure, “Mullah. ” Have you ever considered that the world is full of decent, sane, liberal, humanitarian, rational democrats who are willing to shoot self-professed totalitarian maniacs first, ask questions later?

You are a pathetic, contemptible apologist for totalitarian mass-murderers.

You’ve got to hand it to Mullah. For him, an “Orwellian inversion” isn’t that the same regime that lies to their own people about their votes, is being truthful to the international community about only seeking a completed nuclear fuel cycle for “peaceful purposes”.

And what Mullah finds “ironic”, isn’t that the Mullahcratic regime that is involved in militant subterfuge in Iraq, Morocco, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Egypt, Gaza and even in South America has any imperialist ambitions, or that their military parades center around skits depicting Iranian rockets destroying the US and Israel has anything to do with saber rattling. No, perish the thought.

What Mullah finds “ironic” is that Israel would have any good reason to defend itself against the IRI because the Mullahcracy “are not the ones openly ‘weighing up’ the possibility of war”.

Orwellian inversion indeed. What a clown.

Perhaps Juan Cole’s blog’s comment section reached its bandwidth limit and can’t accept any more sycophantic drivel from his admirers and Mullah now has nowhere to go? Or maybe, Juan Cole is now doing unsolicited free deliveries to other blogs? Or maybe it’s Benji posting under a new moniker?

So, it’s nuke Iran cos they stole elections and stuff and because they interfere in other countries like Iraq and Afghanistan and because it’s the Decent, ‘humanitarian’ ‘liberal’ thing to do and we’ll sort out the facts later. Okay chaps, I’ll go along with that so long as you don’t call me beastly words such as ‘apologist’ for totalitarians again.

It’s odd that multiple commenters seem too stupid to understand Mutually Assured Destruction. My God, how stupid do you have to be to not grasp it? It’s not about destroying the enemy’s military it’s about presenting a response so brutal that they can’t possibly risk attack.

So it doesn’t matter if nukes are uncertain to destroy Iran’s missiles, it’s sufficient that they can decimate Iran’s population. Similarly the brutality of the thread is a feature not a flaw. The whole point is to prevent war by having brutal consequences to the crossing of red lines.

Also that’s “threat” not “thread”

And for the morons who always pop up to claim that the Iranian regime’s occasional promise to kill all the Jews is an example of MAD, they’re doing it wrong! MAD is a threat used to prevent war, not a promise to commit genocide one day.

zkharya

For my part I think those boats should have been kept as secret as possible. Unveiling them for mere sabre-rattling is typical of Netanyahu’s bluster. He talks tough but he won’t do anything. Better to act without talking than talk without acting.

True

Everyone knows any effective attack on Iranian nuclear installation will have to be deep penetration Jerichos with nuclear warheads, cruise missile nukes to finish the infrastructure above. A conventional air attack is pointless, a nuclear one risky with no guarantee of success.

Not true.

A successful attack on project ‘hubs’ will put back the Iranian effort for 10 perhaps 20 years. The material that they have been using to build centrifuges for instance, may no longer be available to them. The highly accurate aluminum tubes used in their production for instance.

If Israel manages to destroy these hubs with a minimum loss of life, it could be a great success.

However, Iran may send conventional missiles to Israel like Iraq did in 1991. Some would do damage and retaliation may be necessary.

That is quite open ended.

Th US could do a much better and sustained job.

The US and Israel would be the optimum solution.

Both countries need to test the effectiveness of newly developed weapons. Especially the actual ’stealth’ features of new war planes and the explosive power of newly developed penetrating weapons on concrete layers used by the Iranians.

It would be an excellent testing ground.

I hope that the monkey man is reading my post.

“There are of course ways to frustrate Iran’s progress, such as diplomatic pressure on Iran itself and its supporters, targeted technical sanctions, and subterfuge in the nuclear project’s international supply chain.”

There is no way to do that. If Russian wants Iran to have nuclear weapons, Iran will have them, and the cancelation of a stupid contract for buying vaseline to Germany won’t make a difference.

The only issue is whether the US will attack Iran before Israel has to do it alone and suffer all the costs of keeping the world (that includes, you, Europe) safe for humankind.

Franco – we are a tad more than concerned by now…

So when Israel is glassified by the obvious impending nuclear attack, perhaps the world’s remaining liberals can meet up at Davos and have a sincere discussion about why the diplomatic approach failed with Mahmud.

Of course we could stop fucking around with these deranged death cult fascists and destroy their capability.

Then you all can get as diplomatic as you like.

Disarm the fucker. Forcibly. Do it NOW!

habibi, you seem to come down on the side of deterrence. Sounds eminently reasonable, but have you ever asked yourself what deterrence in this specific context actually means? It means, as we are already seeing, that pretty much every Arab state starts to think about getting their own nuclear (break out) capacity. I think France is doing a roaring business on this… Given the fact that it is entirely conceivable that some of the autocratic Arab regimes that are now more or less openly aligned with the US and are therefore misleadingly labeled as “moderate” might be replaced in the not too distant future by Islamists, deterrence doesn’t seem such a reasonable option, particularly if you take into account that it’s not just about nuclear warheads delivered by high-tech long-range missiles, but that in many cases, a “dirty bomb” would do quite a bit of damage — and this is a scenario that is very hard to “deter” in a Middle East brimming with nuclear facilities.

mullah, you might want to take into account that quite a few serious analysts believe that Israel and Iran are already at war, given the fact that Hezbollah and Hamas would amount to little if it wasn’t for Iranian support. You probably are also unaware of many relevant details, like e.g. a few Hamas commanders were recently demoted for their lousy performance — and the decision to demote them was made in Tehran.

The fact of the matter is that Iran uses its anti-Israel stance to appeal to the “Arab street”, and it is doing so successfully: polls show that Ahmadinejad is regarded as one of the most popular political leaders in the Arab world. From the beginning of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, the mullahs very consciously worked to take the Arab dictators favourite ploy, i.e. the idea that everything that is wrong in the Middle East was due to Israel’s existence, and use it to gain popularity for themselves (think e.g. of Khomeini’s “Qods Day”).

And no, the issue is not Palestinian statehood, as countless relevant statements out of Tehran and from Hezbollah and Hamas illustrate; the issue is the existence of Israel, which is always depicted by the Islamists as an illegitimate foreign/Western outpost in Islamic lands.

Mullah is Benji. Tedious. Ignore.

Petra, I agree with you that Iran’s leaders hate Israel substantially more than they love the Palestinians and that they are making a bid for hegemony of the Middle East. What I disagree with is the mantra of other commenters that MAD is incomprehensible to Iran because its ruling mullahs are already MAD and simply want to find the most spectacular way of committing mass suicide. If Ibn Warraq is correct they’ll only get a bag of dried fruit for their troubles anyway. I am also pointing out that while Iran may well be funding Hezbollah and Hamas, the introduction of a dirty bomb would be a provocation even they know is too far and likely to result in annihilation for them. (I have heard however that Hezbollah have begun waving ‘mushroom cloud’ flags. If this is true does anyone have links to any pictures of them?)

My point about Iranian/North Korean propaganda was hardly to defend it, although it made some commenters shriek hysterically, but to point out that it is typical of a regime that wants to project itself as tougher than it is to appeal to external threats and tell its people that only a hardline can protect it.

Anyway Petra, thanks for the information and thanks for the more reasonable tone that is apparently quite scarce around here. :-)

“mullah

field, you presumably think that such yelling is more than posturing and reveals a quixotic scheme to wipe the US from the map with nuclear weapons but I don’t think even the Iranians believe they can achieve that. Have you ever considered that, as with North Korea, the survival of the regime essentially depends on the promotion of grievances, some real and some mythical, to promote its legitimacy? It probably makes some Iranians feel better to think they could vanquish external threats, and to bellow ‘Death to…!’ and when John Bolton, John McCain, Norman Podhoretz talk about bombing the country or when Israel rattle some sabres, or when a few bombs attributed to separatist groups go off in Iran many of those may feel they’re not just paranoid after all.”

Yes, I’ve considered all those things. But looking at the history of the last 70 years on this planet, one can make out a good argument for saying that much of the time when people shout things really loudly that is indeed what they want e.g.

- Hitler threatening that war would mean the death of European Jewry.

- The allies demanding unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan.

- Zionists saying they wanted to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.

- Gandhi saying he wanted independence for India.

- Mao saying he wanted a cultural revolution.

- Osama bin Laden declaring war on the USA and its allies.

A lot of the time we have been told by people like you
that people don’t mean what they say. I think the important thing is to enquire closely whether there is any evidence to support that contention. In the case of Iran I don’t think there is. The regime is a totalitarian one ruled over by clerics who are deeply committed to the global victory of Islam and Shariah. Why wouldn’t they want the death of America and Israel.

All Iran has to do to completely change the balance of power is smuggle a nuclear weapon into the USA.

mullah, am a bit short of time now to post, so just quickly: I think the Hezbollah mushroom cloud story is from here (and the sources linked there):
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2009/04/hezbollahs-mush.php

Also fascinating, at the same site, is this very long piece, where Iran gets mentioned somewhere in the middle; if you can’t take the time to read it all, scroll down to the stunning picture of a church in Northern Iran, and have a look at the ideas raised about Iran there:

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2009/07/a-conversation.php

Mao wasn’t ‘deterred’. When the Chinese and Russians were still allies, Mao’s regime questioned the Russians as to why they had not launched an attack on the US. I’m sure it was Gromyko who mentioned this and only the fact that China under Mao did not have the capacity to destroy the west prevented such an attack.
Iran’s regime will not be deterred: they don’t have the rational mind-set needed for MAD to work because they are zealots. So a scenario such as True Lies is perfectly possible, and plausible.

field, the last few weeks in Iran show a bungling and divided group that are far from totalitarian in actuality whatever their aspirations are.
The hardliners are unmistakably the ones in most control right now but the ‘reformist’ elements are growing and have intermittently been the most popular course a number of times in the last thirty years. The hardliners have always been stronger when external threats appear most credible.

Benji Alert, I agree.

…far from totalitarian in actuality whatever their aspirations are.

What a dimwit.

And Benji, it doesn’t matter who is the most popular in a totalitarian state.

No, don’t argue, just please respect your ban.

I would call Stalin’s Russia totalitarian and Pol Pot’s Cambodia totalitarian and the current regime in North Korea totalitarian. Any totalitarian regime worth its salt does not have weeks of open dissent on its capital’s streets or chants of ‘Death to the dictator!’

Thanks for the links Petra, I’ll check them out soon.

P.S I am not Benji, whoever else isn’t permitted to dissent from ‘Bomb the fuckers now!’ rhetoric.

Mullah, desparate comments…your clutching at straws….

Mullah, you’re a moron who missed the point entirely.

Maybe you’re not Benji. Benji isn’t really stupid, he just pretends to be because he likes annoying people.

I think its a disgrace that Israel is the only country posturing aggressively against Nuclear Iran…How many British Soldiers where killed by Iranian IED’s British commanders knew and said openly the level of sophistication in them showed an iranian source….A declaration of war in my book…..

Josh, you may be a scholar but you aint no thinker. You’ve done nothing but hurled invective when you could have provided some of the fruits of your studies.

Don’t call me a moron either. It’s an offensive term, like retard, which I haven’t called you despite having ample more justification.

Azza, ‘you’re’, not ‘your’…clutching at straws.

Can we nuke mullah’s house?

lol…mullah! lets avoid the subject….that comment fits in the we want nuclear reactors as an energy source avoidance draw..LMFAO

You don’t think the majority of insurgent operations in Iraq are being funded by Saudi sources? This would never be considered an open declaration of war, too inconvenient. Can you say, with a straight face, that the US has provided no support of separatist groups in Iran and no bombings in that country have been funded through the CIA?

That would be a declaration of war too by the Suadi extremist’s but i guess 9/11 was a more poigniant one…. who’s talking about the US? we know they barely got a piece of foreign policy right in thier existance..

Speaking from a position of totally cybnacism, can I say that I don’t think the Iranians would use nuclear weapons on the West as they enjoy the fruits of Western productivity too much. Who else would buy their oil? Where would they go for their luxury holidays? I suppose there are the Gulf States, but it may be that they prefer the indidel West to the Sunni East? As for hospital treatment, as far as I know Europe and America still lead the world in that.

wardytron, I think you’re just saying that and you don’t mean it. field would probably show you that history has it otherwise though.

I maen ‘cynicism’.

Anyway, sabre-rattling can’t be considered the best option right now. It’ll strengthen the hand of the hardliners at a time when lran has never looked as hopeful in terms of change.

Bringing a dirty bomb to the US or into Israel would be like dousing the whole of Iran with petrol and the Supreme Leader lighting a cigar, complete madness! No one has shown that the mullahs, and presumably we are talking about all of them from Montazeri and Khatami to Rafsanjani to Khameini have no worldly interests other than spectacular self-immolation. Ahamdinejad is the one everyone keeps pointing to as the crackpot yet short of a military coup by him he’s not going to get his fingers near the button.

My conclusion: there’s no need for nuking Iran. This is true of North Korea also, although the logic employed here on this thread dictates they would have to be treated the same way as Iran.

Go Uppty go. Right, Right Right.

All over it 666! if, m, you think Israel is in the business of Sabre-rattling your having a laugh! Thier strike on Syria’s nuke site was a favour to the entire world..as would be a strike on Iran’s….Iran has an odious regime.. and the vid’s in this article are testament..Its about time Western countires woke and smelled the Humous!

All kinds of ideological crazies have had nuclear weapons and yet refrained from using them.

The international system and the logic of deterrence seems to work in imposing a certain amount of rationality on even the most apparently irrational regimes.

(I guess this maybe reveals something about our inherent human need to view all our enemies as dangerously irrational when they are not necessarily so)

And even though I’m not usually an adoring fan of nuclear weapons or submarines that almost certainly carry nuclear weapons on board, I must say that that Dolphin sub seems a lovely green!

‘You’re having a laugh’ not ‘your’ and ‘their’ and ‘countries’ and, goodness me, you’re spelling is almost as sloppy as Josh Brainfart’s thought processes.

It is our legitimate right to build a nuclear reactor for non violent purpose’s…

Shorter Mullah:
“We don’t have to worry about Iran because our Sabre rattling against them works. And I totally deplore our sabre rattling against them.”

Petra, thanks for the Totten links. I think he essentially agrees with me that Iran is unlikely to use nuclear weapons and seems to avoid the mullahs-are-as-crazy-as-batshit analysis that is sometimes taken as an incontrovertible fact. He seems politely skeptical of the significance of the mushroom cloud, wondering why it would be displayed and says what field disagrees with, that there is a lot of rhetoric and threat that doesn’t always amount to much. This is not to discount the feeling of threat that many Israelis must feel, but it should also not be discounted that a sworn enemy has occupied two countries on Iran’s borders. Well, I don’t expect sympathy for Ahmadinejad and nor should he get any but plenty of regular Iranians no doubt do feel threatened and no doubt think their own nuclear deterrent is worth having.

I have found Hitchens and maybe Kirchick to be writers who never let full disclosure get in the way of a good story especially one exclusive to them, so I am not sure how much credence to give the stories.

I didn’t have time to read the full interview, maybe later, but I liked the picture of the church.

Thanks again.

Ths is surely clutching at straws, given how easy it is to block the Suez.

And who would block the Suez? Iran?

Josh, I said sabre-rattling plays into the hands of the hardliners as it gets more of the population to believe they are ready to be attacked. This is what I think is counterproductive. I don’t think that it WORKS as in makes the mullahs think twice about setting off or launching nukes, this is nonsensical as Iran doesn’t currently posess such weapons. What is the contradiction you think you have so cleverly used your scholarly mind to detect?

Many Iranian’s feel threatened! you make it sound like they’re not the aggressors which they are… see above article….what a load of tosh…threatened by whom? Israel?..they are actively fighting Israel on numerous fronts..the only reason they want nukes are to furhter thier islamist fascist stronghold on the middle east and increase their bullyboy status…as for western countries buying oil it would take more then a nuclear war to kurb that….it would probably push the price up…

Many lranians, not ‘many Iranian’s’! Look, we’ll be here all day if I have to correct your terrible spelling as well as your lack of distinction between the ruling elite, the Iranian population and a propagandistic media which pushes and amplifies beliefs that the US and Israel genuinely want to attack Iran. And you know what? You only have to read the New York Times, the Washington Post and Commentary magazine and you could be forgiven for thinking the same. Of course, they are the enemy so they must deserve it if they do get nuked, or whatever, they’re part of the Axis of Eeeeeeevil!

you clutch at straws..avoid the issue and believe in a utopian pile of horse dropping that exists in your head…give it a rest….IED’s in Iraq, Hizbulla, Hamas etc. …Israel doesen’t want to attack ,i agree but thier hand is being pushed..dont direct me to more meedya sources …especially ones promoting your claptrap…i’ve had my fill…

And before you throw a spastic wobbly I’ll clarify that the propagandistic media is the Iranian state media. Although…

I was too late on the spastic wobbly, obviously. What ‘meeedya’ sources (yeah right! pretend your spelling was deliberate) are you talking about? I haven’t linked to any, I just agree with those that were linked to.

What’s the issue I am avoiding?

What are you on about Mullah…you posts are so off topic must have lost you….its all one big propagandist medya hype…tell that too the people in the firing line…

Interesting that post 79 the Iranian military adopted the Fascist/ Communist goose step.

Azza
6 July 2009, 12:01 pm

It is our legitimate right to build a nuclear reactor for non violent purpose’s…

Yes, but the use of “farmers’ apostrophes” is always illegitimate.

My understanding is that Iran has ample non-nuclear resources from which to generate power for non-military purposes and no domestic source of fuel for nuclear power.

If both are true, the claim that the nuke project is for “peaceful purposes” is bogus.

Nick, I think there’s been plenty of goosestepping prior to that. Reza Shah was hardly averse to a bit of Aryan pride!

Azza, what is with you and that ‘we reserve the right…’ quote? Nobody believes they want peaceful nuclear power, they want to build a bomb. Helloooooo!

uppty

Of course we could stop fucking around with these deranged death cult fascists and destroy their capability.

Indeed.

mullah, I’m not sure what you read into the Totten article, but he comes down firmly saying that a nuclear-armed Iran would be unacceptable for a whole host of reasons.

As to the question how crazy or how rational the mullahs are, this is always a tricky debate, because rationality is, after all, not an absolute concept: being rational means acting according to your interests. No doubt staying in power is the mullahs first and foremost interest, and this is arguably easier for them to achieve in a destabilized Middle East. How far they would go to destabilize the Middle East is hard to guess, but since they probably have nice bunker facilities available for themselves… Moreover, the question also is what would they do if they had the bomb and thought their grip on power is threatened? That could seem to them as a good time to test the theories about the Mahdi’s coming…

Israelinurse, are you far from Wigton Lane?

Where’s Wigton Lane?

The IDF Dolphin submarines are armed with 6 x 21-inch torpedo tubes and 4 x 25.5 inch tubes; these are much larger than the standard
These are big puppies.
Outer left and right.

http://dontbombiran.info/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/dolphin_t1.jpg

These 25.5 inch tubes are supposed to carry Popeye II missiles, with big conventional warheads or nuclear ones (part of Israel’s mini-Trident (sub, land and bomber)).

As soon as Iran looks like a nuclear power, the Israelis will launch on warning. They appear to have mastered the art of making thermonuclear devices with a realistic shelf-life.
Tehran, with its lovely mountains, is a nuclear targeteers dream; stick in a rosette of five 400Kt and it is no more.

Wish it were that easy, Doc, but it ain’t.

When Israel sorted Iraq’s nuclear development in the 80’s the world condemned them. Privately it was another matter. The same will happen when Iran is given a good f*****g.
France wouldn’t let America overfly its territory when Gaddafi needed sorting. How many Americans died on the beaches liberating these cheese eating surrender monkeys.

Israel is in a lose lose situation: leave Iran alone in the hope of a more moderate government and she runs the risk of Iran’s joining the nuclear club. Attack, and even in the event of militarily successful result, a more hard line government will follow, even if Ahmadinejad is toppled.

The question is: which of these two bad options does Israel prefer?

The subs are hydrogen-oxygen electric and very quiet. But you can bet Iran is working on detecting them, possibly with Russian help. They have long range fully submersed for conventional boats, but they aren’t atomic subs. They can’t slink off into the pacific and end up on the other side of the world. They run the risk of one use only: once they launch their cruise missiles, they risk detection and destruction.

That’s why I object to that fool Netanyahu’s sabre-rattling, which is as much for the home audience as anything else.

They only have four cruise missiles each, that’s only twelve in total, each of about one megaton yield. That’s a lot, but is it enough? They’re no good for targets deep under ground, simply above ground infrastructure.

There’s a danger of fooling oneself into thinking they constitue the US navy.

And I don’t think Israel will do anything until if or when she has the F-35, which is the only plane with the stealth qualities necessary. I don’t know how far Iran has integrated the new Russian radar systems.