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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 10:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Manner of Speaking wrote: |
The topic is not whether or not Iran has the "right" to have nuclear weapons...the topic is, given the current world system of nation-states and each state being responsible for its own security, is it understandable that a state in the geopolitical position Iran is in now, REGARDLESS of the nature of its political system, its society or its culture, would feel the need to develop nuclear weapons to protect its independence? |
Yes, its completely understandable, if the nation is:
a) a theocracy
b) which has a national identity bent on opposition to the USA
c) and which is experiencing weakened legitimacy amongst the youth
d) and rapidly diminishing oil returns
I guess the US qualifies for (d). That's about it. 
| MoS wrote: |
| It was deterrence, pure and simple. |
Yes. And as is lost on every Chomsky spite-pixie, both the DPRK and Iran have had more than adequate conventional weapons deterrants.
When was the last time Israel bombed Iran? Hrmmm.
When was the last time Iran bombed Israel? Summer of 2006.
Oh, damn, there I go . . . off-topic again. |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 10:28 pm Post subject: |
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A nuclear-armed Iran will lead to only one of two possible outcomes:
1. Regional nuclear war, or;
2. A negotiated regional nuclear arms-control treaty.
Before 1962, there were hawks on both sides of the Cold War who seriously thought that a nuclear war was winnable, and that an effective first-strike capacity could result in a nuclear 'win'. The Cuban Missile Crisis changed everyone's mindset. EVERYONE's. When faced with the realistic prospect of a nuclear war, both sides backed down and rethought their position; rethought how they could learn to live with each other. Because the alternative was armageddon.
So what do you think will happen to the leadership of Iran and Israel when they are faced with the realistic prospect of nuclear war? Israel will be FORCED to come to the bargaining table. Iran will be FORCED to moderate its policy towards Israel. China and Russia, longtime players of "the game", see this, and they see why the US is loathe to put Iran on the same playing field as Israel. |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 10:35 pm Post subject: |
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The problem with you warhawks is that you are congenitally unable to step outside your own worldview and look at a strategic situation from another actor's perspective. Iran's intentions to develop nuclear weapons make perfect sense strategically, because in the mirror-image situation they would also make perfect sense. And as long as the strategic aspect and Iran's security aspects are ignored, the situation is not going to go away.
You would RATHER attribute Iran's nuclear ambitions to the theocratic nature of its society, because in doing so you don't have to re-examine the US's warlike posture towards Iran to see if it makes sense.
Fortunately, we finally, after 8 years, have a US President who is not prepared to play these childish, 'see-how-big-my-dick-is' games. Thank goodness you fools have finally been consigned to the political wilderness. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 11:13 pm Post subject: |
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Chomsky has no particular qualification to state what Iran's intentions or objectives really are.
At any rate if the US invests in the right weapons Iran's nuclear program won't provide Iran with the desired strategic benefits. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 11:45 pm Post subject: |
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No. You, Manner of Speaking, are the one backing the warhawks (and Holocaust-deniers) here. The Iranian govt is not developing nuclear weapons for defensive purposes. Rather, it is developing them to reach out and touch someone.
Further, no one threatens to invade and deprive Iran of its independence. No one, N. Chomsky and S. Hersh's unsubstantiated hysteria notwithstanding.
And you are totally off on Barack Obama's position on this, not to mention his high-power security team. They will oppose Iran's nuclear program probably more vigorously than W. Bush ever did. |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 12:11 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| No. You, Manner of Speaking, are the one backing the warhawks (and Holocaust-deniers) here. |
Oh great. Now I'm a Holocaust-denier. I think the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified, but I'm a Holocaust-denier.
I haven't heard one like that since Joo called me a Saddam-lover. Brings back old memories. You can do better.
I think for myself, Gopher. I don't pay attention to CNN, Fox, the Globe and Mail or the National Post. I read the Guardian skeptically, and I don't think that agreeing with one point of view on either the right or the left obligates me to accept all the other ideological nonsense that is bundled along with it.
| Quote: |
| Further, no one threatens to invade and deprive Iran of its independence. No one, N. Chomsky and S. Hersh's unsubstantiated hysteria notwithstanding. |
Excuse me? 
| Quote: |
Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country�s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran�s suspected nuclear-weapons program.
Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of �high-value targets� in the President�s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh
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Last edited by Manner of Speaking on Mon Dec 01, 2008 12:26 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 12:32 am Post subject: |
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| *beep* it, I've made my point. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 12:54 am Post subject: |
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First, when you embrace Tehran's propaganda position, you are standing with a govt that denies the Holocaust. It has indeed held an international "conference" on this "issue." This relates directly to this discussion. You seem to believe the Iranians would use nuclear weapons to bring Israel to the negotiating table. But you fail to acknowledge that the Iranian govt has always refused to even diplomatically recognize Israel, let alone engage it in talks. I dated an Iranian woman two years ago. She once saw a world map in my department that articulated Israel as a nation-state in the world community and she immediately went apoplectic over "the lie." I had to discretely escort her out of the area before she made a scene. She had been conditioned to react like that through systematic, hateful propaganda. I learned never to ever discuss "Israel" with her. Better to accept her position that it did not really exist, or only existed as an evil, illegal, occupational state -- or as a colleague calls it, "the country that cannot be named."
The Iranian regime has no intention of ever talking with the Israeli govt, Manner. That is naive. Like N. Chamberlain-style naive. That or you are concealing your own Iranian-style hostility towards Israel.
Second, special-forces warfare (intel-gathering, sabotage, other forms of harassment), which has always crossed borders it should not cross, does not represent an invasion or threaten, in this case, Iran's independence. I know you know that. We ran one nearly thirty years ago, too. Remember the circumstances of that? In any case, do you mean to say that you think Tehran ought to develop nuclear weapons to repel American special forces' incursions?
Does that mean that we may respond to Iran's special-forces and terrorist-warfare-by-proxy in Iraq and Lebanon with nukes, too...? |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 10:25 am Post subject: |
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| Manner of Speaking wrote: |
| The problem with you warhawks |
That's funny. I thought warhawks were supposed to . . . you know . . . advocate war and stuff.
Not me, not Joo, not Gopher has advocated an attack on Iran. Not once. Not once in this entire thread.
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Anyway, let's examine MoS' assumptions.
a) Iran may be pursuing nuclear weapons technology - this is a hedged assumption and safe enough
b) Mexico's relationship to the US today is analogous to Iraq's relationship to Iran in 2003 - this is a poor starting point. The US and Mexico are trading partners through NAFTA, whereas Iraq and Iran were bitter enemies. The truth is, the US has relieved Iran of its greatest strategic threat.
c) Having Iranian forces in Mexico would be as dangerous to the US as having US forces in Iraq is to Iran - Not quite. In fact, Iran is safer now that it can project influence into southern Iraq. Secondly, Iran is provided with conventional deterrent from a US attack, as it can target US soldiers freely while in Iraq. Furthermore, the US has recently denied Israeli entry into Iraqi airspace. The US is acting as a buffer power to deny Israel the chance to strike Iran with nuclear bombs.
d) The nature of the Iranian regime as compared with the US regime are irrelevant - Perhaps, but I am not quite convinced. The Iranian regime is at odds with half its population: first of all, just 51% are properly Persian. There are a number of minority groups within the country. Secondly, even in Iran there is massive dissent from the youth, as half of the country is under the age of 30. Iran is extremely vulnerable internally. It therefore creates an enemy, the Great Satan, the USA, to increase its internal control.
e) Once Iran achieves nuclear parity with Israel, a regional framework will eliminate nuclear weapons in the region - When has this kind of thing ever happened? It hasn't happened in India or Pakistan. So far, even the Six-Party talks have not managed to put NK's nuclear genie back in the bottle. Lastly, neither France nor the UK have agreed to dismantle their nuclear weapons, and they are allies. Furthermore, the Middle East is a challenging place for diplomacy, to say the least! I, for one, am not so optimistic that a nuclear Iran will lead to a denuclearized Middle East. It seems more likely that a nuclear Iran will lead to a nuclear Egypt, a nuclear Saudi Arabia, and a nuclear Turkey.
f) If the US were to obtain nuclear weapons in self-defense following Iran's invasion of Mexico, the US would be justified in doing so - not so. If the US were wrong to obtain nuclear weapons after the invasion of Mexico, how could it be justified for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons now? There's a yawning gap between being able to comprehend something (i.e. recognize something as 'understandable') and actually approving of an action as justified.
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All in all, as I think we can see, the Chomsky analogy is a rhetorical device meant to favorably frame the debate for Iran. It does not allow us to step in Iran's shoes. To step in Iran's shoes, we must, you know, actually take the situation as it is and step into its shoes.
I can acknowledge that the US invasion of Iraq hurt the NPT regime, for a variety of reasons. Its clear to me that the Bush administration has set back the cause of nuclear non-proliferation considerably. However, this does not lead me to believe that Iran is justified in obtaining nuclear weapons.
As it is, Iran possesses effective conventional deterrents. If I were Obama, I really, really, really wouldn't want to invade Iran. Iran can launch missile attacks in the Gulf and threaten the Straight of Hormuz, thereby threatening the supply of oil from the Ghawar region. Additionally, the Ghawar region is also the Shi'a sector of Saudi Arabia. The situation would be bad. Additionally, Iran has already shown it can launch rockets into Israel via its proxy Hezbollah. Israel suffered a barrage of 4,000 rockets in the Lebanon Summer War of 2006. Moreover, that war demonstrated that air strikes were insufficient to rout Hezbollah, why would we be confident air strikes alone could defeat Iran?
Lastly, a nuclear response to a conventional attack would be disproportionate. A 1996 ICJ decision on this was split, with more judges than not unwilling to concede that a nuclear response to a conventional assault, no matter how dire the circumstances for the non-aggressor, would be justifiable. It was an advisory opinion, so some justices were skittish to deny that a nuclear response to a conventional assault would be too much in every case. But in this case Iran cannot make the presumption anyway that the US will attack them should they comply with their NPT obligations. Not given all the conventional deterrents at their disposal.
Putting myself in Iran's shoes, I would extract concessions from the US in exchange for abandoning nuclear weapons technology. Central to those concessions would be protection from an Israeli attack, conventional or nuclear. |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 10:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| First, when you embrace Tehran's propaganda position, you are standing with a govt that denies the Holocaust. It has indeed held an international "conference" on this "issue." This relates directly to this discussion. |
Bullshit it does. The discussion is about whether or not the development of nuclear weapons by Iran is a logical outcome of its strategic situation viewpoint alone, regardless of the nature of its society or government. And I've demonstrated that it is, because if the US were in the position Iran is in now -- regardless of the nature of the US government or society -- the US would do the same thing.
And if I was a Holocaust-denier, I would hardly be quoting the most famous and well-known Jewish academic to justify my arguments.
| Quote: |
| "You seem to believe the Iranians would use nuclear weapons to bring Israel to the negotiating table. But you fail to acknowledge that the Iranian govt has always refused to even diplomatically recognize Israel, let alone engage it in talks. |
And as I said, the development of nuclear weapons by Iran can have only two possible outcomes: nuclear war, or a negotiated regional arms control agreement, the latter of which will inevitably lead to each side rethinking its adversary.
I couldn't care less about Israel, either way. The only thing I think that is germane to this issue is a nuclear-armed Israel which all the warhawks self-servedly overlook. If it was Kuwait with the nukes instead, my opinions would be altered accordingly.
| Quote: |
| Second, special-forces warfare (intel-gathering, sabotage, other forms of harassment), which has always crossed borders it should not cross, does not represent an invasion or threaten, in this case, Iran's independence. |
Right. So if say, Venezuela or Cuba was conducting sabotage of oil refineries and wells in Louisiana and buzzing commercial aircraft flying out of Miami, you wouldn't consider those acts of war.
You just proved my point. You warhawks are congenitally unable to place yourselves in another actor's position, and see things from their viewpoint. Which prevents you from being able to develop an adequate assessment of the strategic situation.
| Quote: |
| In any case, do you mean to say that you think Tehran ought to develop nuclear weapons to repel American special forces' incursions? |
How much help do you think it provides warhawks in Teheran to obtain funding for nuclear weapons development when they can point to regular and repeated armed incursions into their territory? |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 10:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| Putting myself in Iran's shoes, I would extract concessions from the US in exchange for abandoning nuclear weapons technology. Central to those concessions would be protection from an Israeli attack, conventional or nuclear. |
...and in order to place itself in the position where it can extract those concessions, it makes perfect sense for Iran to develop nuclear weapons so that they can later be traded away as a bargaining chip.
Thank you. You just proved my point.  |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 10:20 pm Post subject: |
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Manner of Speaking: Cuban Intelligence constantly runs operations in southern Florida and in southern military bases. This remains Havana's primary target. China, too, runs intelligence operations in Pacific United States and Canada, attempting to influence elections, etc.
Have you ever heard me demonizing them here?
In any case, my assessment of the strategic situation coincides with almost every informed person in the free world -- starting with, today, B. Obama, J. Biden, J. McCain, H. Clinton, R. Gates, and others, including the Department of State and the Council on Foreign Relations -- not to mention the British, French, German, and Israeli govts. I offer no apologies if this clashes with Tehran and its apologists' assessment.
I do not think there remains anywhere left for us to go from here, unfortunately. |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 10:37 pm Post subject: |
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Can't you guys read a map? Good god, the Iranians would be insane not to develop nuclear weapons:
[img]http://jack.link-u.com/wp-content/usbases.jpeg[/img] |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 11:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Manner of Speaking wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| Putting myself in Iran's shoes, I would extract concessions from the US in exchange for abandoning nuclear weapons technology. Central to those concessions would be protection from an Israeli attack, conventional or nuclear. |
...and in order to place itself in the position where it can extract those concessions, it makes perfect sense for Iran to develop nuclear weapons so that they can later be traded away as a bargaining chip.
Thank you. You just proved my point. |
My, you're stubborn on the subject.
No, you wouldn't develop the nuclear weapons because you wouldn't want Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey to develop nuclear weapons in response. I believe I covered that in my long post.
| Quote: |
| You just proved my point. You warhawks are congenitally unable to place yourselves in another actor's position, and see things from their viewpoint. Which prevents you from being able to develop an adequate assessment of the strategic situation. |
You've taken your eyes off the ball, son. If you cannot meet my arguments with anything but tedious repetitions of your allegation that we are biased, its an indicator that you've lost the discussion. |
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