Right Wing Nut House

The Iranians appear to be keen on forcing a showdown with both Israel and the United States over its nuclear program:

In Tehran and here on the world stage, an emphatic Iran said Tuesday it will press on with its uranium-enrichment technology, a program that has drawn Washington’s fire and ratcheted up global nuclear tensions.

On the second day of a nonproliferation conference, Iran’s Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said his country is “determined to pursue all legal areas of nuclear technology, including enrichment, exclusively for peaceful purposes.”

In Iran’s capital, a government spokesman said nuclear activities suspended during talks with European negotiators would be resumed, but not enrichment itself - the processing of uranium gas through centrifuges to produce either fuel for nuclear power or the stuff of atom bombs.

Since both Israel and the United States will do whatever it takes to keep the radioactive mullahs from acquiring their own nuclear weapon, it seems clear that Tehran is ready to play out whatever strategy they’ve concocted to deal with the eventuality of an attack by either or both countries.

Is the Iranian leadership so insulated, so out of touch that they fail to realize the danger of an attack, especially by Israel? Not likely. One possibility is that they’re banking on any military action being unable to take out the guts of their nuclear infrastructure - a pretty good bet since they’ve been burying their facilities underground for the last five or more years. This means for any attack to be successful, there must be a follow-up ground assault to destroy any facilities that remain.

Israel has excellent special forces units that theoretically could be used in a series of commando raids to finish the job started by IDF bombers. The problem is that the Iranians have turned these facilities into almost impregnable fortresses so that any operations carried out against them would not only incur huge casualties but would probably fail.

The only military options then that would have a chance of being 100% successful would seem to be a bombing operation coupled with some kind of invasion. Given that the US is the only country that could carry out a large scale assault of this nature and that any military action of this kind would inflame passions in the middle east against us, the radioactive mullahs may think they’ve checkmated both the United States and Israel and forestalled any meaningful action against them.

They may be right. While carrying out a bombing raid using their brand new American made GBU-28 “Bunker Busting” bombs, the IDF would be unable to destroy Iran’s entire nuclear infrastructure as they did when they attacked Saddam’s Osirak Nuclear complex in 1981. This would put the onus on the United States to follow up with ground assault that could lead to an oil embargo, condemnation by NATO, and even the prospect of UN sanctions. While we could veto any sanctions in the Security Council, there’s a very real possibility that many countries would abide by them anyway. In short, we’d find ourselves more isolated internationally than we’ve ever been in our history.

And yet, both the US and Israel have decided that it would be unacceptable for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. What can be done?

Whatever is going to be done must be done soon. Perhaps some kind of blockade by US warships would bring Iran to its senses. While militarily a dead end, a blockade would serve as a wake up call to Europe that we’re absolutely dead serious about Iranian nukes. And it would be preferable to a bombing attack and/or invasion. But it wouldn’t do a thing about ridding the world of the Iranian nuclear threat. And the effect on politics in the middle east would probably be the same as an invasion.

The radioactive mullahs have thought this through carefully. The end game is in sight. It’s now up to the US and Israel to play their hands in this extremely dangerous and volatile situation.