Stop Me Before I Vote Again

The only reason they would have to be *really* concerned about it is that nuclear weapons are only useful if you have a monopoly. At the moment the Israelis *do* have a monopoly in the region (if you don't count Pakistan, and I don't really think you should). So they can nuclear-blackmail everybody else. If Iran should get nukes that would become a lot more tricky.

But even if they aren't really worried about Iran's nukes, I think they really would like to take out Iran or cut it down to size, since they have this notion of themselves as the regional superpower. The putative nukes make as good a pretext as any.

To all the questions, again I answer, "I 'on' know."

And this one:
why a pre emptive strike against iranian nuke installations
might be
in the "interests"
of certain
powerful elements inside fort zion

Since they've already made at least one such strike, I'd have to say, again, I dunno why, but somebody must find it in their interest.

Here are my answers to the questions:

1. Sure, Israel can damage Iran's nuclear sites significantly. The Israelis don't want to attack without U.S. cover because of the Iranian response that would in all likelihood ensue.

2. Israel appears not to have tacit U.S. support. The primary U.S. opponents of an attack are not politicians (who depend on AIPAC campain contributions) but people from within the bureaucracy - particularly those from intelligence and the military.

3. I don't agree with your characterization of the situation as being "Iran's nuclear threat." They haven't enriched uranium close to weapons grade at this point.

If what can be gleaned from the press is any indication, the U.S. intelligence people do not judge the present as an opportune moment to attack Iran. See this article from CNN.com about former CIA Director John McLaughlin's views about the matter: http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/17/us/iran-military-option/index.html

McLaughlin wouldn't be making comments like that unless his counterparts actively employed in the bureaucracy had first cleared them for public dissemination.

The problem with trying to prognosticate what these guys might do while basing it on grand geopolitical theories is that these guys don't make decisions based on those rationales, they're merely the lipstick they put on the pig. Their decisions, as are everyone else's, are based on immediate, personal reasons. Office politics. That's why I love the Woodward books, you get see exactly how impulsive and short sighted they are. If these guys were at all interested in all the things everyone talks about, ie, oil, regional superiority, etc., they wouldn't have done half the things they've done, like invading Iraq and getting stuck in Afghanistan. If they do decide to do something, it will be a rash, stupid response. They always have the ability to generate a supposed casus belli, they don't have to wait for the Iranians. And it's all possible because you have to remember that even if they do decide to bomb Iran it will have ZERO real world consequences for them aside from a possibly bruised ego and a dip in their political stature. They are so divorced from the consequences of their decisions. A war in Iran, should Obama choose, won't make a damn bit of difference in the day to day operations of the White House.

nuclear black mail
i've never quite seen how
that black mail
survived the red chinese
calling of nikita's bluff in the early 60's

i suggest similarly
any trail of thought leads mini me pundits
to the same concusion arrived at by the soviets in the 60's
no knock out of chinese nuke capacity
without full US support

the analogy for fort zion cuts far deeper still
imagine the useless ness of rattling nukes
at the iranians over hamas or the hezi's

beyond that
the deterrence of conventional attack
by threats of nuke counter attack
has never shown itself clearly effective

we read about threats of use
vis a vis the korean peninsula impass of 51-53
ie threats to coastal china manchuria etc

but no evidence the chinese or soviets for that matter
took it seriously

nixon tried some loon moves vis a vis the nam quag
so furtive and odd ball
the soviets never comprehended what he was up to
let alone impacting politbureau policy

the only signifigant discussion
immediately post war in europe
when uncle's in place conventional deterrence
was practically no existent

today that is hardly the zionic state of affairs

certainly the israeli elite has by now found the limits of covert nuke threats

regardless
zionian actions sinc 67
suggest an impunity based on
convential superiority

-------------------------

as to really wanting to take out the ayatotalers

why ?

one hardly expects
the israeli outfit to act in the better interests
of the gulf stat sunni sheiks and kings and the like eh ??

knock down the oil towel heads
strategic menace ?

----------------------
btw
davidski
if all we're suggesting is another israeli
covert " air strike"

you need to answer the following question first

part one of Q-one above

"Does Israel have the ability to cause severe damage to Iran’s nuclear sites and bring about a major delay in the Iranian nuclear project?"

i say

nope to that
and i'd like some one to show me
i'm wrong on that

note
any failure to achieve a knock out
would certainly diminish
ft zions rep
as bully on the block

--------------------

the mad man take
that bibi has a saddam side for example
also requires some evidence

b4 Saddam invaded iraq's
lost province of Q
he'd already invaded iran

where's bibi's invasion of iran equivalent ??

no the beat down on hamas is not adequate proof
he'd strike at iran in any open and big way
like his fellow zionics
have hit syria on occasion

excellent outline cowish one

------------
ya there is no threat as yet
nor even one drop of evidence uncle
has green lighted the zionians to strike

or that the zionians can strike effectively
without uncle's active logistical support

pA :

"they wouldn't have done half the things they've done, like invading Iraq"

yes iraq was a loon jump
but the system won't let that happen again any time soon

a moment of hubris quickly shriven
takes time to colectively forget stuff like that

"... getting stuck in Afghanistan"

that my friend was a rather onerous example
of the faux fres of policing beyond
the frontiers' of empire

-----------------

in general
the lip stick is ideological

not pragmatic

here we are looking at pragmatic motives

i found none adequate here
to justify zionic action
on a scale anything like WAR

Pied pundit
Really taps the right keys with his
Within the bureaucracy

The big B s can stop anything that signifigantly divides the pols and their retinue of experts and press hounds

Attacking Iran significantly divides the pols and their experts
The press hounds etc etc

The Iraq caper nicely shows the profile of exceptions
To the rule of finite rationality

Start with a bureaucracy non united by a prior fiasco

Ie start with a bureaucracy unlike the one now
Post Iraq

dead locked bureaucracy is the norm
And such a bureaucracy
Can of course be busted thru
by a determined inner coalition clique

In this case
Of energy and war profiteers
and zealots
Yes such have been with us since old George stopped at the border

But context kicked in this time

Given a non united bureaucracy
Willing to contain squeeze etc but divided on a topple
Got pierced because The invasion and occupy rabble
needed only a white house of krieg fools
and a congress
afraid of a deluded and raging nation

They got that after a stolen election
And 9/11

And the apparent ease of success in the Taliban topple
Of course that came round on us in time

--------
Clio gave uncle a nice lesson in the limits of the yankee hegemony
Thru her blessed agents
the resurgent Taliban
And the fractionized fact ionized Iraqi peoples
In particular and determinatively
the Shia majority
One only hopes the Shia of the Arab east can continue their
Undermining of Sunni power north of the sinai
And the Saudi Heart land

Another dimension

The delivery of a device is important

One can't rule out a nuke hidden some where in tel aviv

A nuke from no one and no where so to speak

In fact i'm some what surprised such a nuke are hasn't hit
Fort Zion already

Imagine the mayhem
Especially if it doesn't really exist

Plan
Steal a nuke from say the Russian stock pile
And set it off in wildest Siberia

Use that to demonstrate

"we have the devices "

Then suggest there's one in tel aviv
Set to go off on some particularly ironic Jewish holy day

Nobody gives a flying fuck about Iranian nukes, because - short of being handed a few by India, China, Pakistan or Russia - the Iranians aren't near to producing them.

Iran drew back from capital reforms. That economy is harder to penetrate, and the rial is more difficult to capture. Especially for Western investors. Iran sits on proven reserves, especially natgas (not unlike Libya), unexploited mineral finds, and most important of all, and infrastructure which can eventually be contracted for post-bombing reconstructing (again, see Libya).

Of course, Iran serves an equally useful purpose as bete noir, but you can never count on that sort of usefulness lasting forever. If it did, there'd still be a greater Serbia and a Baathist Iraq.

jc

making sense of libya and Serbia v iran

quick and partial analysis leads to
one point
of deep contrast

operative internal convulsions

yugoslavia quite on its own
decomposed into several intermediate chunks
in the midst of this process
and in good part moving it forward
Serbia and croatia
grabed or held on to
as much as possible
of their alleged
"historic national homeland " territory

libya of course split along a convenient sdet of
ethnic seems
and one set of chunks set about swallowing
the other set of chunks
ultimately with Nato assistence

both perfect contexts for interventions

as jc pointed out earlier
iran has had internal conflict

but .... not deep enough so far

would nato openly and massively intervene there too ?

that is indeed a possibility
as it is in Syria today

but i think
the arab spring has demonstrated
the mechanics of topple can spread rapidly
too rapidly
for a hegemonic power's "sense"
of all deliberate speed

at any rate Syria's assad seems to receive qualitatively different "treatment "
then brother arab state libya
in that difference ..for now
one might locate some of the differences between iran today and say tito's
kold war relic yugoslavia in the 90's

one might note

iran has its ethnic patch work too on its fringes

but the core "nation" is overwhelmingly compact and supreme
far more so of course then say
Nigeria

a useful parallel and contrast

a well now we are i hope seeing the awesome complexity each nation embodies
a complexity that thru time morphs
from its own internal motions and conflicts

most times the hegemonic power prefers
status quo

like doing partial deriatives

uncle would hold the rest of the world constant and vary just on state system at a time

but in reality its a total derviative
all may be in motion at once !

yikes
large numbers of inter-related states
in large earth quake like motion
all at once ?

not the global corporate
social engineers wish at all
and so not
uncle hegemonics wish either

and here the contrast between bush generations is useful

the old man acted like an experienced hegemonic agent

his dough faced stress reflex smirking son

not so much

"...economy is harder to penetrate"
containment uses the opposite strategy

isolate squeeze ..force internal contradictions
to intensify
make an example of "independent " state systems ready to defy uncle

".. the rial is more difficult to capture"

not sure what you suggest by capture

as in the global money market capture of say
the forex value of the liberian dollar ?

open iran to free range trans border corporate
transactional activity
ie financial flows in and out of the rial and rial denominated obligations

much serious and instructive matter here

what gets complex..and the soviet camp provides massive data for this
how much is jump how much push
containment is a very irnticate dance

notice
cuba v iran or venezuela or zimbabwe or congo or eritrea or ....

its not a small world after all

its a fucking complex and contradictory world after all

and in that lies the opportunity
for partitions and profit

arbitrage paradise
arbitrage hell

what a game board the big limited liability boys play on eh ??

consider their demands

how full of oppositions one to another
they may be

imagine the long nites
of our poor sheriff and his deputies
if they attempt to play this all " just right"

time may prove little bush the inadvertant superior to his dad at chief gamesman

maybe he blundred into a process that can renew uncle's hegemonic position
despite uncle's narrow present moment sense of the boy emperor's folly

that's obviously
just how uncertain the longer range signifigance
of all this can be

however
as one able voice suggested here somewhere

the bureaucarcy is against a big intervention these days

and that is enough to stop ...
for the fore seeable future
any gang of
amateur gremlins of war
like started the iraqathon
dollar gush and yankee blood trickle

yugoslavia quite on its own decomposed into several intermediate chunks

mjs
you are of course correct
outside accelerants were brought to bare

but the croat serb fissure opened of its own accord
and
then the rest of the ethnic communities
held in place by titoism
found good reason to split as well

i wonder in this regard about iraq

surely washington does as well

ties us back into
a why of the present escalation of threats towards iran

surely we have made it crystal clear
a shia rough housing
of the sunni "community"
will be blamed by uncle
on teheran