19 February 2010 Iran – Just building it because they can.

19 February 2010 Iran – Just building it because they can.


For the better part of the last decade there has been a great deal of concern about the possibility of Iran becoming a nuclear-armed nation. The various Western nations have voiced suspicion that uranium enrichment was taking place. The Bush administration, never hesitant about going off half-cocked on cooked intelligence feed, actually got this one right. Of course, former VP Cheney and his merry band of chicken hawks were hoping to use the rumors to start a war between the U.S. and Iran. Even better, they would have liked for Israel to attack Iran in a pre-emptive strike similar to the Osiris reactor strike that destroyed Hussein’s plans to convert Israel into a radioactive wasteland.

Israel has, by far, the most reason to fear a nuclear-armed Iran. The current madman in charge can’t wait to further the spread of Islam by impressing the world’s infidels what can happen to those who oppose the national aims of Iran. He, and the toady who would have been dismissed from office had the votes been counted properly, would also like to be able to show the neighboring Arab states a brilliant display of what might happen to them if they failed to acknowledge the religious purity of Iran, its military superiority compared to non-nuclear Islamic states, or Iran’s desire to re-establish what was once the Persian Empire.

That bit about the Persian Empire is important. In back-channel communications Iran suggested that normalization of relations between Iran and the U.S. might be more likely if Hollywood apologized for the way the Persian army and its rulers were presented in the movie, “The 300.” There seems to be a basic disconnect from reality there. Hollywood does not exist as an entity and sends no apologies or regrets. There is no single person who speaks for “Hollywood” as an elected ruler or non-elected dictator speaks of Iran. There is no reason for anyone to apologize for the portrayal of the Persian Empire as a polytheistic, hedonistic, empire ruled by edict and whim rather than codified law. Wishing such history away does not make it vanish except in the historically and educationally challenged Moslem nations which are in drastic need of a religious reformation and cultural and social enlightenment. Iran can impress such states and buy the loyalty of the religious fundamentalists who run them. Iran can pay many poor nations to send out terrorists into the West and to send the same type of thugs against those who would bring about reform and enlightenment in those quasi states that have not changed since the fall of the Caliphate.

Iran’s current religious and military rulers fancy their selves as the continuation of the Caliphate. For that matter, so did the Shah before he was forced to abdicate by the Islamic revolution. Iran is one of those nations that traded potential and position for religion. There is very grave concern that the Revolutionary Guard will gain control of any nuclear weaponry that Iran develops or purchases. The Revolutionary Guard is on path, according to Secretary of State Clinton , to becoming a military dictatorship that controls the civilian government – such little as exists – and will work in league with the most fanatical of the religious hierarchy.

The latest acknowledged nuclear research and factory sites are situated within a Revolutionary Guards base at Qom. The Iranians have learned from Iraq’s mistakes and buried their nuclear facilities well within civilian population centers and religious shrines. To attack them by aerial assault would require meticulous accuracy, deep bunker penetrating capability, and massive amounts of explosives plus thermo-baric weapons to destroy any life within the bunkers and storage/manufacturing facilities. There would most certainly be loss of civilian life and probable radioactive contamination in the surrounding locales.

The nation most likely to plan and successfully carry out such an attack is the U.S. We are going to be the secondary target for Iran’s militant fanatics for many reasons. They resent our former support of the Shah, our current support of Israel, and our failure to convert to Islam and force the mythical “Hollywood” to apologize for the way Iran is viewed by many U.S. citizens. Iran can’t reach us with missiles but can most certainly put a bomb onto our soil by many means. The failure of the Bush Administration to work toward effective border and port security leaves us at grave risk today. Iran would not be opposed to buying weapons from N/ Korea, China, or Pakistan in order to detonate one inside our borders. We cannot write them off as ineffectual or incapable of harming us. They are an enemy and do intend to attack us whenever possible.

That Iran is an enemy nation does not mean that we should follow the Cheney system of winning friends and invade Iran. We don’t have the manpower, the hardware, or the money to wage a war against Iran on their soil. Nor do we have the national will to support such a war. The people yelling most loudly that we should invade Iran are either too old to fight or unwilling to join our armed forces and put their lives at risk. This pattern of chicken-hawkery has been a problem for this nation since the VietNam war. We need to realize that going to war must involve all of our citizens at some level or that we should not engage in that war.

Israel is next in line with just cause to fear Iran’s intentions once possessing nuclear warheads. Every one of her neighbors save Jordan and Egypt are still so opposed to the existence of the Jewish state that they would gladly ignore fallout hazards to their own populations in order to see Israel wiped out. I don’t see any hope that there will be a resolution of the Israeli-Arab wars in the next two decades. The Arab states will continue to support attacks against Israel and the would-be-Palestinians will continue to breed uncontrollably while sinking ever deeper into poverty because their leaders will not tell them the truth about anything regarding Israel, because their leaders will use hatred and lack of education to hold the so-called refugees in the cities that have existed there since 1948 or earlier.

The only solution to Iran is to find a way to halt and remove their nuclear weapons program. There is no way to do this without leaving trails; no way without angering everyone in the Middle East except possibly Israel. The Iranian reactor sites and uranium concentration plants need to be removed by any means possible and closed off forever. If that requires that their entrances and exits be converted to glow-in-the-dark markers visible from low earth orbit, the Iranian leaders have had every opportunity to save both their soil and their population. Hatred of Israel and the U.S., combined with that longing to be the Persian Empire yet again seems to be of greater importance to the men who rule Iran.

This is, of course, all conjecture. The Islamic Republic of Iran has stated that it would never build a nuclear weapon. And, of course, we know how honest and trust worthy they are.

Shabbat Shalom