Nukes!

Remove all ads!

Chandos,
I am talking about foreign policy.

There is no dispute that Iran is an illiberal state. What do you suggest we do about it. 'Liberate them', too?

That didn't work all that well in Iraq, which contrary to original US intent now has a regime dominated by an Iran linked religious Shiite party. In fact, the current president Al-Maliki was first put into office as a result of a deal brokered by Iran. That the Iranians succeeded in pulling that off despite the US presence, influence and armed US opposition tells you something about smart and sophisticated.

The course in Iraq ought to tell you that Iran doesn't achieved its goal there by bullying. They have friends they had carefully cultivated and who were approachable to them and with whom they share religious ties and mutual interests.

The Iranian interest is sovereignty and survival. They are constantly being threatened by Israel with an attack. The US have routinely threatened them with attacks and regime change. And there are US troops (i.e. means) in at least nine countries around Iran. The US posture that vis a vis Iran 'all options are on the table' (including nukes) hasn't gone away either, not even under Obama. So I think Iran can be forgiven to feel a little threatened.

A policy goal of regime change is a direct challenge to national sovereignty. In comparable circumstances any country cherishing its sovereignty - no matter if it is governed democratic, autocratic, theocratic or as a democratic republic - would find appeal in a policy based on a posture of 'Peace through strength'. Iirc in the US 'Peace through strength' involved having a lot of nukes, and big missiles. How to assess that from the outside is of course in the eye of the beholder; iirc, the Ruskies called it 'Imperialist Agression'.

NOG,
you are aware that Al Qaeda probably hates Iran even more than Israel and the US, since to them the former are apostates and the later merely infidels? You have forgotten how Al Qaeda in Iraq conducted a staggering number of mass casualty bombings on Shiite mosques in Iraq? But never mind that, in order to hit Israel, they would set aside their grudges and collaborate, and to continue cutting their throats afterwards?

In suggesting that you just leapt Peter-Pan-esque over the numerous and vast cultural, ethnic, religious and political gulfs around the Gulf and boldly claim that all them folks down there, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Iran etc pp are in fact just one crowd, united in their hate against Israel. It obviously is more complicated than that, but accepting that means we have to leave the land of easy answers.

As long as you insist in naively painting the competing ethnic factions in the Middle East simply as Jews-vs.-Arabs you will continue to misunderstand the very diverse, cross-cutting goals and ideologies of the many competing regional players.

And as for rhetoric, you need to learn to discriminate between propagandistic proclamations and actual strategic priorities, and to take into account actual means. Beyond the, for the sake of argument, asserted nuclear program Iran has no means to deliver on their threats. So calm down. No one is going to nuke Israel any time soon.

 

I took a taxi last night and the Iranian driver spent the entire drive talking crap about Arabs.

 

Yeah. The animosities between the ethnicities there are remarkable. According to a Turkish colleague of mine the Middle Eastern pecking order about looks like this, in descending order: Turks - Iranians - Arabs - Palestinians - Kurds - Bedouins - Israelis. I won't get into further detail, but you get the idea.

He calls the fundamentalists in the Mosques he frequents 'Arabs' (i.e. ~ Wahhabis), with a derogatory connotation. He told me the fundamentalists say he is not a Muslim because he smokes, since to them smoking is un-islamic (he also drinks Scotch (I had a hand in that), if they knew ...).

He is in this underlining the basic point that beyond ethnicities, even their presumably shared religion Islam is far from homogenic. As a religion Islam is about as diverse as Protestantism with its respective sects, and indeed, painting with a broad brush, Sunni Islam shares with Protestantism the general character as a layman's religion not built based on clergy but on flock consensus (which, or rather the lack thereof, is IMO the key factor driving the diversity). In contrast, and again painting with a broad brush, Shiites are Islam's equivalent to Catholics, with a clergy.

 

Well, that of course is the problem. GWB decided that Iraq was the "low hanging fruit," to use a corporate term. Saddam was so weakened that the Bush/Cheney people were figuring the easy route, but because of their own incompetence (really, Rummy), they found it was not that simple. So now it would be absurd to consider the same for the bullies in Iran. However, it has probably given Iran a few second thoughts over getting too provocative in its policies.

The point you really glossed over is that Obama took the chance and announced that he was open to talking with Iran, which did not work out for him, and probably cost him politically at home for even suggesting that Iran might be reasonable. Of course the Iranians proved him wrong as well. The Iranians are not as smart as you give them credit, despite that Bush also gave them the head of Saddam on the silver platter.

Between Iran and the US there is always a lot of public posturing that goes on, and at this point it is meanginless, since you and I both know that there have been -- and still are a lot of shadowy and dark dealing between us and them going back to the "hard line" Reagan bunch and that all the talk about "bobm, bomb Iran" is just noise makers for the hard line know-nothings that populate the media outlets. Sorry, I have to break off here....

 

Chandos,
I think that the window of opportunity in which a historic reconciliation with Iran had been possible is now closed, a unique opportunity cavalierly squandered by the ideologues in the Bush administration who wanted 'to do Iran next', as expressed with a lot of inane macho swagger in "Anyone can go to Baghdad. Real men go to Tehran".

Attacking Iran, however, or aiming for regime change through subversion are harebrained ideas IMO that are both not gonna work. Taking the nuclear issue as a pretext to impose sanctions to induce regime change isn't going to cut it either. So I gather there's no choice but to hold our noses learn to live with them. That can be done. The sainted Reagan did that with the Ruskies when they had thousands of nukes aimed at America on a hair trigger. He didn't mind the stench. Bless him for that, and thank God for it.

Look at the options: Isolation under sanctions will only produce another bellicose abomination like North Korea, that, since no one talks with them, communicates through use of force. Such an approach will accelerate Iran acquiring the technology that would enable them to have nukes, if they feel they need to. In fact, isolation and threats will make sure they will feel they need to. Look at how North Korea communicates with their neighbours: Plastering that island is their special way to add some weight to their request for direct talks. The Southerners might just get that totally wrong. You want that with Iran, too?

Crises most of the time arise from misconceptions and false estimations of situations that then escalate. Better talk and get these things clear. If it can't be helped you can still shoot, but it is irresponsible to not do so out of vanity i.e. the narcissistic notion that the blessing of the US talking with some party beatifies them, too, into the circle of saints, granting them undue legitimacy.

Engagement, if ever so slowly, was what eventually collapsed the Warsaw Pact from with in. It was the 1975 Helsinki Accords, signed by Ford, that did more to collapse the Warsaw Pact than all of Reagan's nukes, since the accords legitimized human rights in the most repressive parts of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. More than an arms race, the cold war was a war of ideas, with the Helsinki Accords being a resounding victory for the West. To give Reagan the credit he deserves, he was the right man at the right time who made the right decisions, including especially rejecting the silly ideas coming from the neo-conservative camp (like Richard Perle's paranoid delusion that the Russians were actually just feinting collapse and disarmament in preparation of a surprise attack! There is a reason why Bush Sr. referred to these folks as 'the crazies in the basement'.).

I think that the Israeli hysteria about Iran, for years now, being ever just about to achieve the dreaded breakout capability is just that - hysteria (which doesn't mean that Netanyahu does not fervently believe it (the Israelis suck at strategic intelligence) and that based on that fear he may make idiotic decisions, like to attack Iran). Accept that for some things there is no quick fix. So use slow engagement. That would be my approach to Iran. Look at China, authoritarian as they are, they are America's largest trading partner. They sure went a long way from Mao's workers paradise since Nixon went to China.

That said, I doubt it would work with the NORKs. However, provoking them by holding exercises in disputed waters doesn't appear to me to be a wise idea. That war there better not get hot, or it will produce, even with conventional weapons, something worse than WW-II with more casualties in a far shorter time frame. I read an estimate of 10 million dead in the first 72 hours.

 

Your colleague seems misguided (to put things lightly) as Palestinians are Arabs so making that distinction is rather pointless (or maybe he ranks them lower than other Arabs). The whole list is preposterous and reeks of prejudice but it is an example of the prejudice that can be expected from people like your colleague so it's probably worth mentioning in this light.

The simple fact is that Iranians and Arabs hate each other (Joacqin's example is only one instance of that) and both don't care much for Turks. Add the Israelis to the mix and you've got a recipe for disaster.

Religious divide is a source of tension but there are many economic, cultural and historical reasons as well. Some of these reasons can be overlooked to face a common enemy but I really doubt that religious fanatics can overlook dogmatic differences. Try to imagine Protestant and Catholic fanatics teaming up together in Northern Ireland...

@CtR: I was referring to the balance of power while taking for granted that Israel/the US were the major power there. If you discard Israel and the US then you have to recognize the fact that Iran dwarfs any other country in terms of military power. Iraq was the only Arab country that could match Iran in that respect.

 

Cara,
it definitely is prejudice. That was my point.

 

OK.

 

Having had the privilege of living through the cold war I can only think with horror of what would happen to our world if we started using Nukes. If even one country attacks another with a Nuclear weapon it would escalate. The Fallout game doesn't even begin to show what would actually happen.

If we didn't totally destroy ourselves monstrosities would abound. Disfigurement would be world wide. Plants and animals would die or their offspring, if any, would be unlike what we know now.

At best we would be cast back into a state that would make the Middle ages look progressive.

As far as I am concerned all Nuclear weapons should be abolished. Unfortunately that won't happen and if it did countries would start working on other horrors such as chemical weapons if they aren't already.

I wish I could be more optimistic but the human race seems to have a death wish rather than a desire to evolve into something greater. Teilhard de Chardin
wrote wonderfully of the glorious potential of the human race but he is now forgotten by people set on self-destruction.

Sometimes I want to live for at least a hundred years and other times I hope I die before I see the evil we can do to one another.

 

Actually, I had forgotten that. I mixed up Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, apparently. Thanks for the correction.

Iran has means of providing materials to both Hesbollah and Hamas. Both Hesbollah and Hamas have missiles capable of reaching Israel. Iran has even more capable missiles, though that would require Iran to act directly, which I don't think they'd do even if they had the nukes.

Beyond that, while I agree that any invasion of Iran, or a forced regime change, would likely be disasterous, there has been a lot of civil unrest in Iran these past years. There's a significant culture clash between the educated "westernized" elite and the ruling, traditionalist powers. I don't know where the common man stands, but I imagine they're caught in the middle of it no matter where they stand. In light of that, economic sanctions may serve to bolster the one while weakening the other. Or, of course, they could drive the common man into the traditionalists' hands. Which would be bad.

 

I understand that it was your point but I thought it would be best to make it perfectly clear.

Quite right.

I'd like to take this opportunity to recommend a Cold War movie with an all star cast Gregory Peck, Anthony Perkins, Fred Astaire and (last but not least) Ava Gardner in a 1959 movie entitled On the Beach. I can't remember the name of the director. Anyway the story takes place in Australia after a wide scale atomic war (and no it's not Mad Max ). It's actually very unnerving and I recommend watching it if you don't mind black and white movies with an emphasis on atmosphere and tension. It was listed as a source of inspiration for the Fallout series by the way.

 

Thinking of it, Hamas probably also has stones capable of reaching Israel. It doesn't take much range for Hamas projectiles to hit Israel.

Same for Hezbollah. The thing that is new that their long range missiles for the first time allow them to hit back into the Israeli hinterland, as they have done successful during the last war. They hit military installations, apparently rather accurately, and also with remarkably resilient command and control (after a couple weeks of Israeli bombing they ordered to cease firing and they stopped i.e their C&C was still fully functional). That's a complete change from the situation of previous wars, where the Israelis were able to fight with basically impunity from secure hinterland in Lebanon as they did previously.

Israel's entire defence posture rests on the capability to impose their will on any enemy with superior force and with impunity (i.e. preferably from the air). That doesn't work any more. Air power failed miserably during the war against Hezbollah. It worked far better against the less dispersed and effectively defenceless Hamas in Gaza. Gaza was the war to 'restore deterrence' (akin to the 'Ledeen Doctrine'*) after the debacle against Hezbollah.

For Hezbollah the (actually tactical) rockets (i.e. normal battlefield rocket artillery like the BM-21) are thus a strategic weapon, and a considerable deterrent to Israel. The use of simpler weapons of that sort by Hamas presumably follows a similar logic, and it is their only way to retaliate against Israel for the odd air strike since the wall has been built. That's to acknowledge that reality, not to say that that's a good thing.

Compare all that with Israel's arsenal. An entire top of the line air force. A very modern and well equipped army. Nukes. Recall the very much lopsided kill ratio of the Gaza war. All the rockets of Hamas and Hezbollah, vastly inferior as they are, do not pose an existential threat. They cannot destroy Israel not can they destroy Israel's armed forces. But they call into question Israel's (probably unrealistic?) defence posture that requires total dominance, which to Israeli hawks is tantamount to an existential threat.

PS: Cara, that's really a good movie.

Spoiler

* as reiterated by Jonah Goldberg: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business"

 

Yeah, but it's really hard to find a stone that can carry a nuke. Unless it's a really big stone, in which case the range is more limited.

Anyway, to add to your point, suicide bombers may be the best choice, depending on the size of the hypothetical nuke. The point is, Iran has proxies capable of delivering nukes to Israel for it (or to other places, if they choose).

 

Proxies to deliver the nukes that they don't have? That's one big if.

And you have the wrong idea about Iran's proxies. These proxies have interests of their own, and pursue them, and they may not align with Iran's - all that despite their alliance. They don't take Iranian orders. They aren't vassals.

In giving nukes, for the sake of argument, away, the Iranians would relinquish control over them. That's an utterly foolish to do, and an even more foolish thing to assume. No country, and Iran is no exception, would hand over their crown jewels to some party that they do not even control, knowing that in case of use by that other party retaliation in kind will be directed against them.

As I said, that assertion was implausible already when levelled against Iraq. Re-use doesn't make it any more plausible. In fact, re-use marks it as the canard that it always was.

 

The French shouldn't have gifted the nuclear bomb to Israelis in the first place. Guy Mollet is responsible for this. Given that Israel has the bomb it's hard to tell Iranians that they shouldn't have it. If you think that Israel should have the bomb how can you argue that Iran shouldn't? Saying that Israel is a US client state is not a real reason on pure ethical grounds. The funny thing is that the US wanted to make Iran a puppet state but these ambitions were crushed by the 1979 revolution. If Iran was a secular monarchy ruled by a Shah (in other words an authoritarian despot) it wouldn't be an issue. That being said going from monarchy to theocracy is certainly not an improvement.

 

I agree, Cara. It's really trading one authoritarian despot for another.

Especially when the country in question didn't have any nukes to sell/give away in the first place.

 

Nakia - Lethal chemical weapons have been massed produced going back to WWI. You may be glad to know (and I know this because I've spent the last 10 years of my career working on this program), that the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Treaty produced as a result, as ratified in 1997, got together 200 or so nations that agreed to destroy all their stockpiles of chemical weapons, as well as all of their facilities to manufacture more. Iraq was one of the few nations on the planet that didn't ratify the treaty, but we know they don't have chemical weapons.

Anyway, the point is that this was all supposed to be done by the spring of 2012 - 15 years after the ratification of the treaty. Both Russia and the US have announced that they will not meet the deadline, but both have already destroyed about 75% of their stockpile at this point. The US (I have no information regarding Russia's future plans, obviously) plans to have over 90% of their stockpile destroyed by 2012.

 

I was, as a secondary function, in the NBC protection/detection troop of my company when I did my military service.

I still recall the day when the US removed their stocks of VX and mustard gas from Germany. For that German NBC protection troops, the THW (our FEMA), fire departments etc. had been mobilised along the route. Railway stations through which the trains passed were closed. Iirc the damned stuff was loaded onto ships in Bremerhaven and then iirc shipped to Johnston Island for destruction. When the Russians moved their stuff out of East Germany that was quieter, in particular it wasn't publicised until after the fact. No incidents in either case. Good riddance.

PS: My memory about served me right.
PPS: I read that in the US there are still sites where they have old chemical warheads in considerable quantity awaiting destruction, but which are probably too dangerous to handle. It will be worse in Russia. And then, there is sloppy bookkeeping and the odd clerical error, also worse in Russia. Considering the insane quantities produced, it is no wonder that they didn't yet managed to destroy all the stuff.

 

You have a good memory, and you're dating yourself. The Johnston Island facility was built in 1979, long before the CWC went into effect. That was where the first processing was conducted because A) we sent a lot of our nastiest stuff out there and B) when you're testing a CW destruction technology for the first time, better to do it on an island in the middle of the Pacific where there's literally near nothing within 600 miles you, than on the mainland. The last munition was processed through that facility in the fall of 2000. So you're military service, at the very least, predates that. IIRC, the last shipment arrived in Johnston Island from Okinawa in 1997, but I don't remember when the shipments from Germany stopped.

This is all public record info, so you won't have FBI or CIA agents showing up at your door by reading this. There are 8 chemical weapon storage sites in the US, 7 of which are on the mainland. In addition to the one in Johnson Island, the facilities in Maryland, Alabama, and Indiana have completed the destruction of their stockpiles. The sites in Utah, Arkansas, and Oregon will complete the destruction of their stockpiles prior to the treaty date. The facilities in Colorado and Kentucky will not. All of the sites have (or at least had) thousands of tons of agent to process.

You are correct that there are "problem munitions" (about 5% of the stockpile) that require special handling and are too dangerous to process through the facilities the same way most munitions are dealt with. Those are separated out, and detonated in a sealed blast chamber, where an automated process first destroys the munition, and then adds chemical neutralent to to any remaining agent left inside as part of the decontamination process.

In most cases, it's not sloppy bookkeeping, but the complete lack of bookkeeping. Approximately 98% of all agent was kept in stockpiles, was readily identified, and with the exception of a few leakers and a faulty blast cap here and there, the munitions were readily found and easily processed once the technology was available. It's the last 2% that were tricky. That last 2% was the agent used in testing and training exercises, dating back to WWI in some cases. The standing operating procedure was that any unused agent from the training/testing was buried. The records - if any were kept at all - simply state that there was an exercise done at the base, and that the remaining agent was buried. Since there was no mention of specifically where on the military base the training took place, and since the training and testing areas on bases are generally open fields covering hundreds of acres, finding such buried munitions are like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Obviously, since not all of the testing and training was documented, and in instances where there is documentation it is usually not specific enough to determine where that remaining agent is, there's no way to know if or when you find all of it. Fortunately, there is a provision in the treaty for this. It only requires that you destroy all agent that you know exists. Any agent found after you destroy what you know you have does not cause you to breach treaty, so long as you then proceed to destroy the found agent within a reasonable period of time.

I don't know about the Russian stockpile, but the US stockpile was around 33,000 tons, and that's just the weight of the agent involved. The weight of the munitions which contained the agent was many times greater.

 

Iirc it was a single shipment. There was only one such transfer of chemical weapons from Germany - 102.000 grenades with 400 tons of chemical agent - and it was called Operation Lindwurm on the German end ... hah, and I even found it on Wikipedia (in German) under that name.