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An Inside Look At Iran's Nuclear Program
NotBornYesterday writes "On April 8, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited his country's secretive nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz for a photo op. What came out of this visit is a series of photos which have caused a fair amount of interest among western scientists. Shown in the photos are not only some of the inner workings of the plant and current generation of enrichment centrifuges, but also key components to newer generations of more effective centrifuges. Analysts are 'intrigued' not only by the technical revelations in the pictures, but also because Iran's Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar accompanied Ahmadinejad through the facility."
Funny you should mention Chamberlain. People tend to assume that he avoided going to war with Hitler because he was a wimp. Thing is, when Hitler first emerged as a threat, the UK was in no position to challenge him. On top of that, there was a lot of anti-war sentiment that didn't go away until Hitler showed his true colors — several times. By playing the wimp, Chamberlain bought the Allies time to rearm. Of course, they squandered that advantage when the war actually started, but that's another issue.
There's also the little detail that many leading politicos in Chamberlain's Conservative Party considered Hitler a hero. These were the guys in the House of Commons who booed Churchill the first time he entered the House as Prime Minister. Eventually, they became politically irrelevent, but until they did, any Conservative PM who had gone against Hitler would have been out of office faster than you can say "jackboot".
Now, we don't have a lot of Islamists in U.S. politics, but aside from that, we're pretty much in the same spot now the Brits were then. It's true our armed forces are way better than theirs were, but between our global committments and the Iraq tarbaby, we've nothing to spare. Even if we did have the troops to spare, we've gone and used up all our credibility with our recent fuckups. Starting another war would turn us into absolute pariahs.
And here's one thing that really bugs me: how can we tell Iran that they can't have nukes when we have thousands. Which we are not only making no move to draw down, we are actually planning to increase
One other thing: are you willing to pay all the extra taxes it would take to cover a third war? It's true that we've been running the first two on credit, but that's playing bloody hell with the value of the dollar. So I think we should assume we're at our credit limit.
So don't bash poor Neville. At least he knew his limitations.
I don't think your other claims can be tested against data.
If Saddam had had nukes, he still would have got booted out of Kuwait, but he would have been safe from invasion.
... and lost massively. (Iran lost massively too, because they kept sending in untrained children against buried-in posities. Iran lost about 500.000 of it's children that way, that is the main reason islam is so terribly unpopular in Iran nowadays)
... all are wars that the attacker could in no way hope to win ...
No, Kuwait would have gotten nuked, after which there would be nobody left (Kuwait is really small, barely larger than Israel, with only a single city).
And there would have been no alternative to giving it to Iraq. After all, there would be maybe 10000 Kuwaiti's left world-wide.
What would have stopped Saddam from nuking them ? The common decency and conscience that mass-murdering thieves tend to exhibit in times of stress ?
Use them as deterrence? Push their will on the rest of the region, which is cowering in terror under the nuclear shadow?
Actually the region has seen a LOT of wars where the agressors KNOWINGLY attacked, even when they knew the attack would destroy them.
Take the Iraq-Iran war for example. Iraq saw Iran fall back over a mountain range, and tried to pursue. Less than a month after that the Iraqi army was in shambles, supply lines cut, barely capable of policing normal streets in territory on their own side of the border.
Are you saying Saddam didn't know that would happen ? He pushed the attack when he could have easily stopped in a quasi invulnerable position, which would have provided an ideal starting point for the next attack in 10 years.
Yet he attacked
But attacking, knowing full well that retaliation might come is not a rare event in the middle east.
Egypt's attacks against Israel. Hezbollah-Israel, Israel's independance war, Jordan versus Britain, Pakistan versus India (and even worse : Pakistan versus East-Pakistan/Bangladesh)
And this is a tradition that goes back tens of centuries. When the muslims decided to attack the crusader states, they knew it would mean they'd fall to the mongols, that over 35 million people would starve (because there are letters, preserved by the libraries of Byzantium, that literally say this would happen). The muslims attacked, "won", got massacred by the mongols, and of the remaining muslims, at least 30 million starved, but not after killing the entire city that the sultan inhabited, including the sultan himself.
So let's be careful with "they won't attack if they can't reasonably win" ideas.
You make the stupid mistake to think that the Iranian government is there to defend it's people. It's not. It's there only to conquer, and to enforce islam (just read their constitution). Same with Saddam's government. It wasn't there for Iraqi's to prosper, it was there for Saddam to prosper. It attacked because of Saddam's pride.