Israeli media has stopped debating Iran's nuclear bomb and Turkey's turn against the West. This is rather strange, when only a few weeks ago we were in imminent danger of being incinerated by a nuclear tipped Iranian long range missile. Some people were talking about the end of the Zionist enterprise. Today, the country is flooded with tourists and the stock exchange is higher than ever. What happened?
Apparently Obama is taking seriously the Iranian military effort in Natanz and enforcing a serious embargo. There are also indications that the uranium enrichment project is not advancing and few of the 30,000 Iranian built centrifuges are working. After all Iran has no industrial experience and even technologies developed seventy years ago - like gas centrifuges - are still a challenge for it. They will solve it, but not tomorrow.
Turkey has freezed its military cooperation with Israel and changed sides, allying itself with Iran and Syria. On Nov. 19 it will have to decide if accepts the installation of NATO's radar stations in its territory. The early alert system is part of the missile shield NATO is building to protect Europe. The Turkish link is obviously to protect Europe from an attack from Iran. But Erdogan has declared that Iran is a friend and not a potential enemy.
I conclude that Dan Meridor's position that Iran is not only a menace to Israel but the entire world, and therefore fighting Iran is not an Israeli problem, is slowly sinking in. The best we can say now is nothing.
21 comments:
The only country other than Israel that Iran has ranted against is the U.S., which is out of reach of Iranian missiles. Does anyone really think Iran would launch missiles against Europe or Turkey?
If Obama is taking Iran as a danger seriously, it is because he is being pushed here by the Sunnis, and not because he is a friend to Israel, IMHO.
But either way, best to say nothing.
Anon.
Who knows what a madman might do? Did Hitler ever rant against Greece or Norway? And yet he attacked them.
K
Military strategy is built aganst capabilities and not intentions. If Iran achieves the capability to drop nuclear weapons on Paris, then France (and NATO) has to take it into account.
This is not exactly true - France has nuclear capabilities and yet the US does not plan strategically against France because it knows that France has no intention of turning these weapons on the US. Iran is a different matter. Yes there are double standards in diplomacy - one for honorable countries such as Israel and one for sh(tty unstable places like Iran.
K
I am sure the USA studies and takes into account French capabilites.
I have always thought that the Iranian leadership was evil and corrupt, but basically rational. They will not give up running a huge country and enjoying the best it has to offer for hiding from JSOC in a bunker under an irradiated wasteland.
The US DOES consider France, if not as an enemy then not precisely as a close friend either, when it comes to Africa.
"The US DOES consider France..."
Also, one day a Eurabian capital of Pharis (formerly Paris) might threaten it with nuclear hardware built when the indigenous French held the reins. Just a possibility, which farthinking US planners know isn't ruled out.
R
"farthinking US planners"-there's no such thing in our govt.
La belle France just yaks - and does it very much within our postwar UN-NATO-EU context as buddies. They're light years from actually getting physical with us. They merely don't want to be 'responsible' for what we're doing, hence the nominal resistance which purifies them of our ignominy.
Nevertheless, we probably do study them. Before the Even Worse War, we were studying Britain more than any other nation save Japan. This was, of course, because those two were other important navies (especially Britain), whereas nations with navies not fit to engage ours simply had no way to get over here in the first place.
Canada has a contingency plan for invading the border region of the US, which was made in the 1930's or so. The aim was merely to hack up some infrastructure so as to slow up a putative US attack, while appealing to Mother Britain. The chief of this planning effort personally drove around Minnesota, North Dakota and so on, plotting the locations of gas stations, railways, and so on.
Anyway, I'll be glad to see someone smack Iran, I don't want it threatening Europe or, in time, the US.
Check out how polite we were planning to be in a war with the Brits, whose early weeks were expected to focus on a race to occupy and fortify as many strategic Canadian areas as possible.
Occupying Halifax, following a poison gas first strike, would deny the British a major naval base and cut links between Britain and Canada.
There's a reason why you have to go back to the '30s to find US plans for invading Canada or vice versa. In the postwar context that was unthinkable. As I said before capability is not the only test. Who is in charge is all important. Nazi Germany threatened the whole world, a Social/Christian Democratic Germany threatens no one.
K
Rob,
La Belle France just got tired of our dickdancing around in North Africa and unilaterally whacked a few AQ dudes, which caused some serious caterwauling from us-"we gonna milk this cow the best way we know how," as noted political scientist Capadonna once put it. I mean, I like America, Copenhagen Long Cut and pickup trucks too, but these other countries do have a foreign policy and means to enforce it.
As far as us invading Canada, well, Canada's been a de facto US subsidiary ever since we started this world domination gig, financed by us somehow convincing the world to buy our funny money. Since it now appears that we will devalue said funny money, odds are that all the countries who've been under our umbrella will start developing their own independent policies without asking us. Which means that they will be, again, potential threats, and opplans will be drawn up in musty, fart-smelling sections of the Pentagon.
> As I said before capability is not the only test. Who is in charge is all important.
I definitely agree. I do think capability is more important most of the time, but who's in charge definitely matters a lot. NW Euros including the USA are very high trust (to their great misfortune, at present). So, in their case, under present world economic, ideological, and political conditions, capability matters much less than the fact that they have the same regimes.
I posted the Canada and America stuff partly just because it's a laugh. I agree that things are very different now between the various Euro-people countries. The fact that Germany France England are considering 'doing away with themselves' illustrates how immense the changes have been. Most of these changes suck hard, but obviously the not destroying each other part is 'change I can believe in'. In that respect, indeed 'we are the ones we have been waiting for!'
B,
I don't know - our money wasn't really so funny 20 years ago, was it? It's funny now.
I agree with you on everything else.
Originally, our military dominance and our (not unrelated) reserve-currency-ness were built on our sheer size, our economic and political NW-Euro-ness, and our excellent strategic geography (the fact that all world powers are overseas from us).
Obama's hand may get forced, hard, on Iran. How long do you guys think they will need, to build full-range missiles? If that happened 15 years from now, or 30, the political party that let it happen would be in deep stuff, and the name of the man who let it happen would be an infamy. N'est ce pas?
Behold, I have googled it.
LONDON | Mon May 10, 2010 10:07am EDT
LONDON (Reuters) - Iran is unlikely to be able to make a missile capable of hitting the U.S. east coast for more than a decade, according to a study by a London-based thinktank released on Monday.
Ten years!? That's not very long! Of course, the implications of a few missiles would be less important for this country than for Israel - but still. And, if they had a second-strike capacity of just 20 nukes to this country, instead of just a few, they would in practice be at nuclear parity with us. That's a weird thought to have.
Rob,
20 years ago our money was funny as compared to what it was 60 years ago, and compared to what it was in 1910, downright hilarious. Who knows, tomorrow it may be at Weimar levels of uproariousness. As for Iran's schedule, these things are, as the Russians put it, written on water with a pitchfork.
The stange and ominous silence we are having here may be because our enemies are preparing the next war.
"They will not give up running a huge country and enjoying the best it has to offer for hiding from JSOC in a bunker under an irradiated wasteland. "
People said this about Saddam also (all except the irradiated part) and yet he would not back off. Perhaps it was that in Islamic culture to betray any weakness is an invitation to get your throat cut, perhaps he thought the US was bluffing, perhaps he was a batshit crazy psychopath, but for whatever reason he was willing to ride that train all the way to the end of the line even though there were 10 different ways he could have kept his golden palaces. Chamberlain thought that Chancellor Hitler was rational too.
K
Theodore Roosevelt said "speak softly and carry a big stick". Perhaps that account for the silence you are hearing - talk is cheap. I'm sure that Israel is preparing its big stick even as we speak and you won't know that the stick even exists until after the blow is struck. Dagan's grandfather had to kneel empty handed before his murderers (I am proud to tell you that my blessed uncle Gedalia did not go that way - he had a rifle and he used it when they came to take him.) Israel is not empty handed today.
K
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