The Iran War

Iran has stated intentions to create a small amount of 20% enriched uranium as that is needed in the production of some isotopes needed for medical equipment/treatment. The amount of 20% uranium they were planning on making was very tiny indeed. I have seen no claims of a goal of Uranium enriched higher than 20%, let alone 80%.

Al Jazeera is probably the MOST biased news source when it comes to stories about Iran. The Sunni-Shiite enmity goes back nearly a thousand years and the Arab-Persian one further than that. I wouldn't trust them to provide balanced reporting on Iran any more than I'd trust a North Korean news outlet to provide a reasoned analysis regarding Japanese military ambitions.

Malor wrote:

In other words, despite us being signatory to a treaty that says that Iran has the inalienable right to pursue civilian nuclear power -- that is as strong as treaty language gets -- they have to completely dismantle their entire nuclear program and get rid of all their uranium. Or else the bombs start falling.

What country, anywhere, would take that deal? This is designed to fail from the very start.

Why don't just trade for it like we do and they can have their civilian nuclear power

The US is an issue in the region but that won't end till the oil is gone or we don't need it anymore, unfortunately.

It's Iran's fault this triple posted

U.S. and Gulf Arab states hold military exercise in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Iran, with the explicit purpose of training to attack Iranian targets should the Iranians close the Straight of Hormuz or otherwise respond to an attack.

Some perspective on levels of enrichment, from 2010.

Also, Aetius, in June of last year, the IAEA described experiments done in Iran on "compression of uranium deuteride", which is used as a nuclear trigger by China and Pakistan, and does not have known civilian purposes.

Robear wrote:

Also, Aetius, in June of last year, the IAEA described experiments done in Iran on "compression of uranium deuteride", which is used as a nuclear trigger by China and Pakistan, and does not have known civilian purposes.

Not exactly, Robear.

The report details seven things the IAEA is concerned about that might contribute to Iran's development of a nuclear payload for a missile, everything from explosives to electronics to re-entry vehicles. One of those is the neutron initiator. The report is exceptionally vague about the details, merely stating that "there are indications that certain of these activities may have continued beyond 2004."

It is not clear from the report that the neutron initiator experiment was one of those activities that was continued nor did it contain any actual details about said experiments.

Fair enough.

So Russia just announced that it has developed plans to mass troops in Armenia if Israel or the US attacks Iran, both to defend military bases it has in the region and to possibly aid Iran. Since that would require establishing supply lines through Georgia, something the US would pressure Georgia not to do, the plan includes the possibility of using "military means to breach the Georgian transport blockade and establish transport corridors leading into Armenia".

OG_slinger wrote:

So Russia just announced that it has developed plans to mass troops in Armenia if Israel or the US attacks Iran, both to defend military bases it has in the region and to possibly aid Iran. Since that would require establishing supply lines through Georgia, something the US would pressure Georgia not to do, the plan includes the possibility of using "military means to breach the Georgian transport blockade and establish transport corridors leading into Armenia".

That's crazy. Politicians in DC would put us on the door of WW3 for another Middle Eastern adventure?

DSGamer wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

So Russia just announced that it has developed plans to mass troops in Armenia if Israel or the US attacks Iran, both to defend military bases it has in the region and to possibly aid Iran. Since that would require establishing supply lines through Georgia, something the US would pressure Georgia not to do, the plan includes the possibility of using "military means to breach the Georgian transport blockade and establish transport corridors leading into Armenia".

That's crazy. Politicians in DC would put us on the door of WW3 for another Middle Eastern adventure?

I heard Russia was our number one geopolitical enemy.

I miss the Cold War.

Rezzy wrote:

I miss the Cold War.

Yeah. No kidding. Who knew we had it so good?

Robear wrote:

Some perspective on levels of enrichment, from 2010.

Great article, the most important point in there I can see is this:

In interviews and briefings, officials in Washington and diplomats in Europe said the pilot plant could make perhaps three kilograms, or about seven pounds, of 20 percent fuel per month.

Sweet, so all they have to do is turn that 3 kg of 20% fuel a month into two thirds of a kilogram of 90% enriched uranium a month and they can make a Little Boy every 8 years.

karmajay wrote:

Why don't just trade for it like we do and they can have their civilian nuclear power?

I'm assuming that you are not from the US, because I am pretty sure we enrich our own Uranium.

Three points on that.
1. They actually agreed to that. Obama asked Brazil to broker that deal between Iran and Turkey that Iran would give Turkey low-enriched Uranium and get the 20% enriched Uranium they need for their research and medical work in return. That deal was successfully signed on 17 May 2010. Then the US was able to get the sanctions they wanted through the UN Security Council anyways, so they said "eh, we'd rather punish and anger Iran than actually go after the solution to the scenario we pretended we were upset about, so we'll do sanctions anyways." Those Sanctions were formalized on 9 June 2010. Then Iran said "well if you are going to punish us regardless of any facts or agreements I guess we'll just do our original plan?"

2. I am guessing the reason they dragged their feet over agreeing to this (before being back-stabbed and then not being interested in a repeat of this deal after being back-stabbed) is so they don't have to come crawling back to some master country every year begging for more Uranium. The US straight up hates Iran, so we are a no go, and I suppose Iran doesn't want to give that much control over the economy to China or Russia. (Other countries that they could go to, like Turkey, would practically be like going to the US.

3. Enriching their own Uranium is exactly what Iran should be doing right now. Exactly the sort of very technical, high education investment that a country should be making. Have engineering work for your own citizens so that your best and brightest remain in the country, become a magnet for other engineering students and workers in the region. At the end of this you have a better educated and more productive work force, have prevented brain drain to "first world" countries, and actually have a useful industry that benefits your economy at the end of it.

That's kind of missing the point, Yonder.

In interviews and briefings, officials in Washington and diplomats in Europe said the pilot plant could make perhaps three kilograms, or about seven pounds, of 20 percent fuel per month. At that rate, they added, making enough to power the research reactor in Tehran would take five to seven years. But the reactor has only months to go before it could run out of fuel, they estimated.

The experts said the leisurely enrichment pace suggested that Iran’s declared goal was disingenuous and that its real motive was simply to escalate its defiant brinkmanship and up the ante in global negotiations over its nuclear program. Moreover, the enriched material must be turned into reactor fuel rods — a process that many experts doubted Tehran could master.

So they were not exactly being honest about what their intention was. After two years, do they have fuel rods?

Further, they have claimed to have begun work with 3000 centrifuges in 2007, not just the 164 that were at Natanz in 2010. That's a factor of 20 larger, which yields more than a factor of 20 increase in processing capability (it's non-linear as noted). With these centrifuges, they processed several *tons* to 4%. We're not talking a bomb in 8 years; we're talking a bomb in less than six months, at that rate.

I agree that nuclear power is in their interest as a sovereign state, but the refusal to rule out nuclear *weapons* is worrying. If they want to go ahead with such a program - or give the *impression* that they will do so - they will have to deal with the risk that entails.

Robear wrote:

I agree that nuclear power is in their interest as a sovereign state, but the refusal to rule out nuclear *weapons* is worrying. If they want to go ahead with such a program - or give the *impression* that they will do so - they will have to deal with the risk that entails.

Why does Iran have to rule out nuclear weapons? They're a sovereign nation. Besides that, we didn't exactly threaten to invade Pakistan, India, or North Korea when they developed their own weapons programs. Nor have we slapped Israel with crushing sanctions and demand they open their holiest of holies to UN inspectors because we merely suspect they have a nuclear weapons program. I mean turnabout is fair play, right?

And to flip things on their head, Iran pushing to develop nuclear weapons (or at least develop all of the technologies require to make a weapon) is the logical result of the US invading and occupying all the countries around them. That was the risk of our foreign policy and now we get to live with the results.

If things were different, if the US didn't have nuclear weapons and China had invaded and occupied Canada and Mexico for the past ten years, do you really think we'd give a rat's ass about UN sanctions? No. We'd be doing everything in our power to develop a nuke because history shows that once you get a nuke everyone stops picking on you.

OG_slinger wrote:
Robear wrote:

I agree that nuclear power is in their interest as a sovereign state, but the refusal to rule out nuclear *weapons* is worrying. If they want to go ahead with such a program - or give the *impression* that they will do so - they will have to deal with the risk that entails.

Why does Iran have to rule out nuclear weapons? They're a sovereign nation. Besides that, we didn't exactly threaten to invade Pakistan, India, or North Korea when they developed their own weapons programs. Nor have we slapped Israel with crushing sanctions and demand they open their holiest of holies to UN inspectors because we merely suspect they have a nuclear weapons program. I mean turnabout is fair play, right?

And to flip things on their head, Iran pushing to develop nuclear weapons (or at least develop all of the technologies require to make a weapon) is the logical result of the US invading and occupying all the countries around them. That was the risk of our foreign policy and now we get to live with the results.

If things were different, if the US didn't have nuclear weapons and China had invaded and occupied Canada and Mexico for the past ten years, do you really think we'd give a rat's ass about UN sanctions? No. We'd be doing everything in our power to develop a nuke because history shows that once you get a nuke everyone stops picking on you.

If Iran hadn't threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the earth(among other things), we'd probably have no more interest in it than Saudi Arabia.

But Iran didn't do that. It's my understanding that the proper translation would be something along the line of "Israel will pass from the earth", implying that time alone would do it in, not that Iran was going to help it along.

Plus, even if it did mean that, it was just Ahmadinejad (sp?) saying it, and he's kind of a figurehead/puppet. It's the clerics that have the real power in Iran, and they've made no noises about doing anything of the sort. There's been some infighting lately, in fact, and Ahmadinejad has lost a fair bit of power -- the clerics have been chopping his supporters out from under him, as I recall.

Nomad wrote:

If Iran hadn't threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the earth(among other things), we'd probably have no more interest in it than Saudi Arabia.

Following that logic every Muslim nation would be justified in attacking the US because Bush talked about waging a "crusade" once.

Malor wrote:

But Iran didn't do that. It's my understanding that the proper translation would be something along the line of "Israel will pass from the earth", implying that time alone would do it in, not that Iran was going to help it along.

"...the Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." No mention of Israel, no mention of maps, no mention of wiping out. Nor is wiping something off a map even an idiom in Persian.

That and Iran's military isn't controlled by the President. Unlike in the US...

I always thought this was amusing:

IMAGE(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JlxKuovH8Eo/T2ZE3KaWM0I/AAAAAAAADW8/Zs1TcIhDDBA/s1600/iran-cartoon-peaceful-nuke-claim.jpg)

OG_slinger wrote:
Nomad wrote:

If Iran hadn't threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the earth(among other things), we'd probably have no more interest in it than Saudi Arabia.

Following that logic every Muslim nation would be justified in attacking the US because Bush talked about waging a "crusade" once.

Malor wrote:

But Iran didn't do that. It's my understanding that the proper translation would be something along the line of "Israel will pass from the earth", implying that time alone would do it in, not that Iran was going to help it along.

"...the Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." No mention of Israel, no mention of maps, no mention of wiping out. Nor is wiping something off a map even an idiom in Persian.

That and Iran's military isn't controlled by the President. Unlike in the US...

First, I never said anything about justification of an attack, but it is clear that some Muslim nations to eye us with a bit of skepticism due to statements from past leaders, and maybe rightfully so. As such, it is no coincidence that we view a serious arms upgrade as a potential threat coming from a country with the track record of Iran. This leads to your second point. I hope you are not suggesting the leaders in Iran have no ill will toward Israel.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in December 2000 called Israel a "cancerous tumor" that should be removed from the region.
Under reformist Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, elected in 1997, some believed Iran–Israel relations would improve. Khatami called Israel an "illegal state" and a "parasite,"but also said in 1999 Jews would be "safe in Iran" and all religious minorities would be protected.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in office since August 2005, at the October 2005 "World Without Zionism" conference in Teheran[23] adopted a sharp anti-Zionist stance.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also said, "The Iranian nation never recognized Israel and will never ever recognize it. But we feel pity for those who have been deceived or smuggled into Israel to be oppressed citizens in Israel."

More specifically, your interpretation of the "wiped of the map" comment is only one side of a fairly large controversy:

link above wrote:

In a June 11, 2006 analysis of the translation controversy, New York Times editor Ethan Bronner stated:

[T]ranslators in Tehran who work for the president's office and the foreign ministry disagree with them. All official translations of Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement, including a description of it on his website, refer to wiping Israel away. Sohrab Mahdavi, one of Iran’s most prominent translators, and Siamak Namazi, managing director of a Tehran consulting firm, who is bilingual, both say “wipe off” or “wipe away” is more accurate than "vanish" because the Persian verb is active and transitive.

Bronner continued: "..it is hard to argue that, from Israel's point of view, Mr. Ahmadinejad poses no threat. Still, it is true that he has never specifically threatened war against Israel. So did Iran's president call for Israel to be 'wiped off the map'? It certainly seems so. Did that amount to a call for war? That remains an open question."[14] This elicited a further response from Jonathan Steele, who noted that Bronner agreed that "map" or any other place noun had not been used and criticized this Wikipedia entry (as it was on June 14, 2006) for "claiming falsely" that Ethan Bronner had "concluded that Ahmadinejad had in fact said that Israel was to be wiped off the map".[24]

At a gathering of foreign guests marking the 19th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 2008, Ahmadinejad said:

"You should know that the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime which has 60 years of plundering, aggression and crimes in its file has reached the end of its work and will soon disappear off the geographical scene.

Nomad wrote:

As such, it is no coincidence that we view a serious arms upgrade as a potential threat coming from a country with the track record of Iran.

Please, explain to me exactly what is this terrible threat Iran represents and give some examples of its "track record" that we should be so concerned about. Have they invaded another country like Iraq (and we) did? Are they killing their own civilians, like Syria? No. The biggest thing people say that makes Iran the baddie is the whole "wipe Israel off the map" thing.

Nomad wrote:

This leads to your second point. I hope you are not suggesting the leaders in Iran have no ill will toward Israel.

I honestly don't care what Iran says about Israel. Israel isn't a true ally nor should we be dragged into yet another open ended war because of them. They aren't our friends and they don't care about us any further than the technology their spies can steal from us and the weapons we'll sell them.

A nuclear armed Iran is good for the US. It will stop Israel from acting like a f*cking idiot in the region and it will also make it exceptionally difficult for our political leaders to pull another Iraq and Afghanistan because the risk will be too high. It's really a great idea for us to stop mucking around in areas where we have absolutely no reason being. That and we won't waste trillions of dollars and thousands of lives.

Atrocities in Iran

United Nations Condemns Iran for Atrocities Against LGBT Iranians

Persecution of Religious Minorities in Iran
Iran's Persecution of the Baha'i People

And the list from Google goes on and on...

Don't get me wrong, the US is not the pristine paragon of justice and righteousness that some people would like to think, but lets not compare a few isolated incidences from the US to a coordinated and widespread pattern of behavior in Iran.

I am not arguing that we should go to war, I am contesting your opinion(OG) that Iran doesn't deserve the scrutiny that it is currently receiving.

OG_slinger wrote:
Nomad wrote:

As such, it is no coincidence that we view a serious arms upgrade as a potential threat coming from a country with the track record of Iran.

Please, explain to me exactly what is this terrible threat Iran represents and give some examples of its "track record" that we should be so concerned about.

It's their support for for Hezbollah by way of Syria, isn't it? Which leads--rightly or wrongly--to Israel acting the way it does in the region. Iran may not be the embodiment of all evil, but it's not exactly a choir boy here, either. They're certainly part of the reason for the mess.

I sometimes wonder if this talk of developing nuclear weapons was a ploy to unite the country in opposition to the West. Iran was facing significant internal issues--the only reason they didn't wind up killing (more of--remember Neda?) their own civilians like Syria is they were better prepared to put down their unrest before it got to that point. We talk all the time about Bush using the bogeyman of terrorism to scare Americans--why would it be beyond the Iranian clerics to play the same game with their own people? Heck, now that I think about it, maybe those assassinations and bombings we were talking about were done by Iran themselves.

There's also the question of whether Iran is developing a nuclear weapon *precisely* in order to become a threat in the region. Nuclear weapons *are* a good way to get people to stop picking on you. They're also a really good way to get people to leave you alone when you pick on someone else.

Generally, that would be someone else who doesn't also have a nuclear weapon, i.e., not Israel.

That or we get a second, much stupider Cold War.

Are they killing their own civilians, like Syria? No.

Oh, they sure are. They're a nasty place. There were super-nasty crackdowns after the people protested an obviously rigged election a couple years ago, and a lot of people died.

It's easy to get into the mindset that Iran is the good guys, because we're being such obviously aggressive evil assholes in going after them. They aren't. They're a totalitarian religious state, one of the nastier countries in the world.

But they still have the right to have civilian nuclear power, by treaty, no matter what we think of them. And the US and Israel are being unjustifiably aggressive, are making demands that they know won't be met, and aren't keeping their own previously-made agreements... and then are blaming Iran when it then stops fulfilling its end of a broken bargain.

The only visible, obvious threat in this scenario is on our side. And given the big noises that were made about Iraq, I'm not inclined to believe they have it right this time.

Oh, edit to add:

They're also a really good way to get people to leave you alone when you pick on someone else.

No, they really aren't. Nuclear weapons are a terrible offensive weapon, even as a threat to support being offensive. If they're ever used, the country using them has an excellent chance of being obliterated. So they'll only be used if the country's existence is threatened, when they have nothing left to lose, and everyone knows that.

A nuclear-armed Iran simply wouldn't have to kowtow to the US, and sitting on our oil the way they are, we find that situation intolerable.

Malor wrote:

The only visible, obvious threat in this scenario is on our side. And given the big noises that were made about Iraq, I'm not inclined to believe they have it right this time.

The thing is, we are not the same country we were when that went down with Iraq. If we were, we'd have troops in Syria and Libya and maybe even Egypt by now. We certainly wouldn't have had the restraint to hold our intervention back to an air war, and even that in just one of them.

They're also a really good way to get people to leave you alone when you pick on someone else.

No, they really aren't. Nuclear weapons are a terrible offensive weapon, even as a threat to support being offensive.

Not talking as a support to being offensive, talking about keeping other people from interfering with your offensive plans by, say, invading you/bombing you back to the stone age. Like you said they'll only be used when there's nothing left to lose, but that also means you can no longer have your existence threatened. That opens up the door to take a more active role in the region.

A nuclear-armed Iran simply wouldn't have to kowtow to the US, and sitting on our oil the way they are, we find that situation intolerable.

I think this has more to do with Iraqi oil and what acquiring a nuclear weapon would do for the Iranian sphere of influence.

The thing is, we are not the same country we were when that went down with Iraq. If we were, we'd have troops in Syria and Libya and maybe even Egypt by now. We certainly wouldn't have had the restraint to hold our intervention back to an air war, and even that in just one of them.

I disagree with every sentence in that paragraph. To all visible evidence, Obama is being run by the exact same security apparatus; his foreign policy appears managed by his subordinates, rather than vice versa. I'm almost sure that he simply believes what the people around him tell him, and hasn't figured out that their entire worldview was shaped by Bush and is toxic to democracy and freedom.

Even under Bush, we wouldn't have troops in those places. The military is simply stretched too thin, and there's little benefit to us in interfering.

Not talking as a support to being offensive, talking about keeping other people from interfering with your offensive plans by, say, invading you/bombing you back to the stone age.

Absolutely not. Iran having nukes does not stop us from bombing them. Iran can choose to strike back with nuclear weapons, but if it does so, it will cease to exist. And it's very unlikely that any air war we'd conduct would ever push them to the point that they felt there was nothing left to lose.

Nuclear weapons are useless on offense. They just don't do anything for you. In a world bristling with many thousands of nuclear warheads, they are as purely a defensive weapon as has ever existed.

The only reason they've ever been used offensively is because we were first, and didn't need to fear retaliation.

I think this has more to do with Iraqi oil and what acquiring a nuclear weapon would do for the Iranian sphere of influence.

It would mean that, once and for all, they own our oil. That's just not acceptable.

Yonder wrote:

I'm assuming that you are not from the US, because I am pretty sure we enrich our own Uranium.

Process: Turning Russian Missiles Into U.S. Nuke Fuel