Korean Job Discussion Forums

[contrarian]

Israel will attack Iran AND the US will help them with intelligence, spy satelites, equipement and AWACS assistance. It is best to take them out now rather than later.

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

[quote="RJjr"][

[bacasper]

[SirFink]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

No one really knows how Iran's government would act.

[bacasper]

[bacasper]

Israeli Ministers Mull Plans for Military Strike against Iran

Posted: 2008/06/17

'Mission Doable' - There is now a consensus within the Israeli government that an air strike against Iranian nuclear facilities - without the Americans, if necessary - has become unavoidable.

By Ralf Beste, Cordula Meyer and Christoph Schult

The Israeli government no longer believes that sanctions can prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons. A broad consensus in favor of a military strike against Tehran's nuclear facilities -- without the Americans, if necessary -- is beginning to take shape.

Dani Yatom, a member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, was invited to attend a NATO conference in Brussels last year. While reviewing the agenda, Yatom, a retired major general, was surprised to see that the meeting was titled "The Iranian Challenge" and not "The Iranian Threat."

When a speaker with a French accent mentioned that a US military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities would be the most dangerous scenario of all, Yatom said, politely but firmly: "Sir, you are wrong. The worst scenario would be if Iran acquired an atom bomb."

Yatom, 63, has spent most of his life in the military. He was a military adviser to former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and, in the mid-1990s, was named head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency. Nevertheless, Yatom, a member of the Labor Party, is not some reckless hawk. Unlike most Knesset members, he flatly rejects, for example, a major Israeli offensive against the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

But Yatom's willingness to strike a compromise ends when he is asked what he considers to be the best response to the Iranian nuclear program. "We no longer believe in the effectiveness of sanctions," says Yatom. "A military operation is needed if the world wants to stop Iran."

When Israeli Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, a former defense minister, expressed similar sentiments 10 days ago, they were viewed, especially in Europe, as the isolated opinions of a card-carrying hardliner seeking to score points with the electorate in a bid to succeed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. In truth, however, there is now a consensus within the Israeli government that an air strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities has become unavoidable. "Most members of the Israeli cabinet no longer believe that sanctions will convince President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to change course," says Minister of Immigrant Absorption Yaakov Edri.

The one question over which Israel's various political groups disagree is the timing of an attack. The doves argue that diplomatic efforts by the United Nations should be allowed to continue until Iran is on the verge of completing the bomb. That way, Israel could at least argue convincingly that all non-military options had been exhausted.

The hawks, on the other hand, believe time is running out. They stress that there is now a "favorable window of opportunity" that will close with the US presidential election in November, and that Israel can only depend on American support for as long as current US President George W. Bush is still in charge in Washington. They are convinced that the country cannot truly depend on any of the candidates to succeed Bush in office. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic candidate, has already said that he favors direct negotiations with Tehran. And even if Republican John McCain wins the race, politicians in Jerusalem do not expect him to be ordering an attack as his first official act -- despite his performance, at a campaign appearance last year, of the Beach Boys' song "Barbara Ann" with the lyrics: "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran."

more at link

[contrarian]

Israel has the ability to take Irans nukes out. It does not require that everyhting be otally destroyed but simply crippled. If some nuclear material is turned loose in the effort, it will just make the Iranians less capable of starting up again.

If necessary the Israelis should use nukes to take them out.

[bacasper]

[ReeseDog]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Gopher]

[Ya-ta Boy]

I concede that in '48, '49, '50 and a bit more that it looked like the Commies were going to sweep the world but that period of apprehension ended except the right wingers like McCarthy who saw a way to make political hay out of it. Some of them lingered on for decades.

By the mid-60s at least, the fear of the Soviets taking over the world had disappeared except for people trapped in the Cold War mind-set. The Domino Theory had its day, but it was over by '65 or so.

Paranoia has had a long and less-than-proud history in US history, dating back to the fear of the Jacobins in 1798 and followed by the anti-Masons and the rest.

[Gopher]

But what about d�tente's collapse during the Carter Admin. and the Carter Doctrine (in the Middle East), all subsequent to Soviet-sponsored Cuban activities, dating as early as the early-1960s, in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, especially in the Caribbean -- in Nicaragua, El Savador, and Grenada -- and especially the Russians themselves in Afghanistan, all around or about 1979?

I do not argue that those who feared Soviet global domination were accurate, just that they were not unreasonable or irrational, given what they saw and knew at the time, as opposed to how it might look to us today.

[Nowhere Man]

Well, if you're earnestly opposed to nuclear non-proliferation, then i think it kinda has to start at home.

We have a pile of nukes that could blow up the entire world. Do we need more?

Well, in 1999, against Clinton's wishes, Congress decided we couldn't be part of the comprehensive test-ban treaty. How seriously concerned do you have to be about nukes before you stop your own nuke program?

We really didn't need more nukes in 1999. We have enough.

But it isn't about us right? It's about those crazies that might use them.

We're the only country who has ever used them.

Why don't more people use them?

MAD. MAD is what keeps them off the table.

We have serious issues with the Iranian government. We had the same issues with the Soviets. Despite all the characterizations of them as crazy, I don't see them as crazier than Kim Jong Il, and you might have a point if israel didn't already have nukes, but they do.

All of this calling people crazy while we appear possibly even crazier is not really sane.

How many non-aligned countries clenched their rectums while we had a throwdown with the USSR?

What some are saying is that it's not fair I clench my rectum while you others have it out.

I agree. It's no fun, but my sphincter was set into place back when India and pakistan had their stand-off.

I honestly don't think Iran is more insane than Pakistan.

Rather, I see Pakistan as the Sid Vicious of the nuclear club.

There are about 4 concrete walls and 2 barbed-wire fences between militant crazies and them getting their hand on the button.

Shall we bomb them?

The whole story about iran using nukes as a for an expeditionary campaign into surrounding countries is also bunko, war-mongering tactics.

just because a country has a nuke doesn't mean you can't oppose them with conventional forces.

To finish, I don't want to appear as wanting Iran to have a nuke. It's not like I like the idea. It's just that those who are now saying the sky is falling weren't interested a good ten years ago when they weren't against nuclear proliferation.