Iran threatens preemptive war, sends warships to the coast of Syria

Two days ago, Iran halted its oil exports to the UK and France, and sent warships to Syria. They have already arrived at the Port of Tartous.

Israel is enraged, to have Iranian warships so close by. Obama had already sent the US National Security Adviser to Israel.

This comes as US officials confirmed that Israel has been assassinating Iranian scientists.

Iran has also recently launched counter-attacks against Israelis in India (perhaps to send a signal to Pakistan?), Georgia (which fought Russia in 2008), and Thailand (where US bases are, to contain China). (They probably launched those attacks to get Pakistan, Russia, and China to side with them, but I really doubt that will work.) There was also the foiled Iranian attack on the Saudi embassy in DC a few months ago, which they were going to blame on Mexican drug cartels. Iran is also a close ally with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza.

Iranian warships docked at Syria is also meant to deter international action against their ally Bashar al-Assad, the dictator of Syria, with his country basically in civil war and dozens being massacred each day. The Russians also have a military base in Syria.

Link on the Iranian warships arriving in Syria




Now, today, Iran is borrowing a concept from Bush and threatening preemptive action, saying they will not wait for the enemy to strike first if they feel threatened.

Link on Iran's threats of preemptive action

Iran threatens preemptive action

Iran warned Tuesday it would strike against an "enemy" threatening it if needed to protect its national interests -- even if the enemy didn't attack first.

Gen. Mohammad Hejazi, a deputy head of Iran's armed forces, said his country "will no more wait to see enemy action against us," according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.

"Given this strategy, we will make use of all our means to protect our national interests and hit a retaliatory blow at them whenever we feel that enemies want to endanger our national interests," Hejazi said.

Fars added that in November, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had "warned enemies about Iran's tough response to any aggression or even threat."

"Iran is not a nation to sit still and just observe threats from fragile materialist powers which are being eaten by worms from inside," Khamenei told students at a military college in Tehran, according to Fars.

"Anyone who harbors any thought of invading the Islamic Republic of Iran -- or even if the thought crosses their mind -- should be prepared to receive strong blows and the steel fists of the military, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and the Basij (volunteer) force, backed by the entire Iranian nation," Khamenei said, according to the report.

I think Iran wants a war. I said it back when the Saudi embassy plot was exposed and foiled, because I don't see any other logical explanation for all this.

I think Iran's government is in more turmoil than is being reported, about to collapse from the inside, and Iran is desperate for a war against America and Israel so they can rally their people behind them out of patriotic nationalism.



Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, has recently accused the United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of "serving the interests of Iran" for saying it would be unwise and destabilizing for Israel to launch an attack on Iran at this time. Link General Dempsey is an American war hero who served in the Gulf War and deployed twice to Iraq since 2003 before becoming the new US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It looks like Israel and the United States aren't seeing eye-to-eye on this, but if war starts, I'm sure the United States will be

 

I think your analysis is far too complicated. Iran seems to me to have decided on a course of mirroring Israeli action to highlight hypocrisy. After attacks on Iranian scientists, they responded with attempted assassinations that used exactly the same plan--hardly a subtle parallel.* After pretty open international speculation** about Israeli intentions to make a pre-emptive strike against Iran, Iran announces the potential to make a pre-emptive strike against its enemies. Et cetera. It's just a game of tit-for-tat.

I am almost certain that Iran does not want a war. It would be of no benefit to them.

*Attack location is probably more reflective of what sort of resources they could deploy on such short notice, instead of some sort of attempt to send signals to regional governments. The rushed nature is also suggested by the fact that all of the attacks failed.

**While the potential Israeli strike has been rumored for years, Panetta's comments about it via the Washington Post are the new factor that represent an escalation in rhetoric that would merit the Iranians new response.

 

Neither side wants a war, especially not a nuclear war. This is just Cold War posturing like the USA & USSR did for decades, it never lead to anything because neither side was prepared to go down the route of nuclear attack.

Nukes are an anti-weapon, something so devestating that anyone who has them will never use them for fear of the damage retaliation will cause. Remember a war between Israel & Iran wouldn't just affect those two countries if nukes were involved, it would damage the entire Middle East Region for decades afterwards (not to mention the Indian Sub-continent). It's not right to make future generations suffer for the stupidity of some fools in their past, just look at the legacy of Hiroshima & Nagasaki.


And even without nukes, Iran can't win against a US-backed Israel. Russia & China are too concerned with pretedning they want to be friends with the West to get involved so Iran would just get slapped down anyway.

 

I say we dust off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

 

They are just wanting to resurrect the Persian Empire.

 

EVERYBODY ****ING PANIC

 

I hope it's just tit-for-tat... but still, it's a dangerous escalation, and if someone doesn't blink there could be conflict.

Are we sure it would be of no benefit to them? Israel and the US aren't going to invade, they'd just bomb the nuke sites and a few other military sites. Then the Iranian goverment can rally and reunify their country, under the banner of nationalism.

Nobody is saying Iran already has nukes. The Pentagon is reporting that Iran still hasn't made that decision, that they're still focusing only on nuclear power.

And Iran could win against a US-backed Israel. Like I said above, no one is suggesting invasion. There isn't a violent civil war going on, like it was in Libya and still is in Syria, there's no rebels to aid in overthrowing the current regime. Any military would be limited to bombing nuclear energy research sites and military sites. They would survive, and emerge even stronger by regaining unity.

 

Nothing will come of this. Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz for about a day. Then our forces would just open it up again with a few well placed shots. What would they do?

Iran will not get nuclear weapons, Israel will see to that with or without our blessing. Oil companies LOVE this! It drives up the prices even though we do not import oil from Iran!

Go ahead Iran, "Make our day!"

 

I'd agree that it's dangerous, and risks spinning out of control. That's an ever-present risk in this sort of maneuvering, especially given the poor lines of communication between the relevant governments.

But I don't think they're trying for your proposal for several reasons. In the first place, they do actually want nuclear capability, and this would set them back several years at least. In the second, the nuclear program itself has already had a rally round the flag effect, so I'm not sure how much more of a bounce they could expect there. In the third, most of the divisions now evident in Iran are among the conservative leadership, divided into camps led by Khameini and Ahmadinejad. In that this doesn't really filter down to the general public, I'm not sure there's even anything to be resolved. In the fourth place, they would be obligated to make some sort of response to the attack, which would then seem to dictate that their targets (Israel and/or the US) would offer some counter-retaliation. It seems as improbable that this will confine itself to a single strike as it does that any side would be able to predict the outcome of cascading retaliatory episodes, especially layered atop extensive regional instability. In the fifth place, it would likely scare off investment and make economic difficulties even more accuse when they are already having considerable difficulty dealing with the sanctions regime.

 

The West has a difficult situation. On the one hand they go on about how the world should be attempting to combat climate change by turning away from fossil fuels yet when a country such as Iran actually tries that by attempting to switch to nuclear power it gets hassled in case it might decide to mis-use it to do harm. We should be encouraging countries to make this transition, we are more than capable of spying on them and seeing any potential misuse anyway.

 

I think you grossly overestimate our ability to open up the strait should bit be closed. If Iran decided to shut down the SOH, it would be closed on the order of weeks, not days. And it could easily be closed for months. To open it up quickly is feasible, but not without significant resource expenditure and risk to commercial shipping.

Is it fair to say that you haven't actually read the reports or am I wrong here? Nothing about Iran's research indicates designs on development of commercial nuclear power. Almost everyone accepts the idea that Iran is on a path to development of a nuclear weapon. The only discussion items seem to be how far along that path are they and are they actually committed to building one or are they just bluffing. Also, Iran's behavior absolutely has nothing to do with AGW.

No we're not. Don't believe all that garbage you see on TV and in the movies. There is over 630,000 sq mile (over 1.6 million sq KM) of land to "spy" on. Plenty of room to miss something.

 

The SR-71 Blackbird managed well enough, maybe it should be re-commissioned if the vast supply of western spy drones can't do it.

 

You really have no idea what you're talking about if you think we can fly a plane over that much real estate covertly and gather adequate INTEL to be able to tell what they're doing. especially since there's a very good chance everything is underground.

 

For just about any other country, yeah I'd say that applies. But Iran? They've basically said that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to "wipe Israel off the map". And they're developing a technology that *cough* coincidentally *cough* leads to the most destructive weapons that man has devised. We can be certain that Japan or Brazil won't develop nukes and use them to menace their neighbors....not so with Iran. Iran's record simply disqualifies it from having any of the precursors to a potential nuclear weapons program.

This isn't to say that I support any of the Republican/Likud warmongers, far from it. But to say that Iran is "just another country with a peaceful nuclear program" just isn't accurate.

 

Iran want insurance mainly from attacks by Israel and the West, but also by Iraq (they fought a devastating war less than 25 years ago), Saudi Arabia (main Arab/Sunni rival), and other nearby countries-- Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan to the East, NATO member Turkey to the northwest along with the Caucuses states, and Turkic states (potential allies of Turkey if the Turkic nationalism gets going again) to the north. Since Israel and the United States-- not to mention the other nuclear states if they're so inclined-- have the ability to retaliate, the Islamic Republic wouldn't dare use nuclear weapons offensively.

 

I doubt anyone will, however insane they are. It's simply too risky to start that kind of conflict. Iran fire one nuke at the US they get 200 back in reply, it's just not going to work out in their favour.

 

Iran certainly wouldn't have ICBM's capable of reaching the United States in the foreseeable future. IIRC, they'll struggle to have missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to Israel. The only way Iran could explode a nuke in the U.S. is by giving it to terrorists, which they wouldn't do because nukes are fairly easily traceable.

 

So they'll do what they've always done, make a lot of noise and go on about how they hate the West & Israel but actually not do anything significant.

 

What was said was actually closer to the sort of "into the dustbin of history" type commentary. It was mean-spirited, and betrayed a fair amount of malice, but there wasn't any policy statement.

 

I generally get annoyed with people who say that Iran is not a rational actor as if their motives are so ideological as to be impossible to figure out. That said, your last sentence there just doesn't fit with the facts. If Iran develops a nuclear weapons and gave it to a terrorist group who went on to use it against the west, why would Iran care one iota if it can be traced back to them? They'd deny it and accuse someone else and then nothing would happen. We caught them engaged in an assassination plot on US soil and had evidence to support it. What happened as a result? Absolutely nothing. No, I'm quite convinced Iran is building a weapon that is designed, first and foremost, to give them more leverage in the region. But I am also convinced that they fully intend to export that technology for use in terrorism.

Edit: By "quite convinced", I really just mean that's my best guess. I don't have any insight than anyone else in regards to what the Iranian government is thinking. We're all pretty much talking out of our collective asses.

 

Obviously the United States government wouldn't reveal official policy on it, but it's pretty clear that we'd respond with at least a "limited" retaliatory strike unless there was solid evidence that it was a rogue actor (which could happen in Russia or Pakistan). Assuming such purely hypothetical terrorists managed to explode a relatively small bomb in a major city center, that would result in hundreds of thousands of casualties. Somehow I don't think we'd ignore it.

The silly regional power plays and spy games that every country plays (assuming the Iranian government was actually involved as last I heard numerous experts expressed skepticism because of the uncharacteristically "amateurish" nature) is a bit different than a nuclear strike. What exactly was the U.S. supposed to do in response to the assassination plot other than arresting any perpetrator they could?

 

I would tend to agree with Even's assessment. There's a huge difference between a lame assassination plot that several analysts question the seriousness/logistical plausibility of and a nuclear attack. In much the same way, Israel has been pretty clear that the comparatively muted response to the attempted diplomatic assassinations are mediated by the level of damage that was actually done.

On a broader note, though, I don't think anyone is likely to give nuclear weapons to a terrorist organization. The affair would be entirely too much of a wild card. The only way to do it cogently would be to maintain an incredible amount of authority over the proxy group in question. But it's been well over a decade or so since Hezbollah filled its ranks with genuinely native Lebanese upper and mid-level figures. Despite some close cooperation, there can and has been real daylight between the two before. While Hamas enjoys Iranian patronage, I'm not sure there was ever a close enough alliance to attempt something of this sort. So either in the specific or the general, I don't see where this is worth worrying about.

 

This says it all.