Iran Deleted From the World's Banking Computers

dtjohnson writes "Iran is being deleted from the world banking system Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) computers as of Saturday at 1600 UTC. Once the SWIFT codes for Iranian banks are deleted, Iranian banks will no longer be able to transfer funds to and from other worldwide banks, turning Iranian international commerce into a barter operation. SWIFT is taking the action at the request of EU members to comply with international sanctions against Iran due to its program to develop nuclear weapons. The effect will be to drastically hinder Iran's ability to execute international business transactions."

Comments

The people will be the ones who suffer

[elrous0]

The whole reason that Iran and North Korea even began pursuing nuclear weapons is because of that incredibly stupid "Axis of Evil" speech that George Bush made in 2003. When the largest military power in the world labels you as one of three "Axis of Evil" members, then proceeds to invade one of the other two, it tends to make you a bit twitchy. And, both Iran and NK know that the only way to really protect yourself from U.S. invasion is with nuclear weapons.

Due mainly to Israeli and U.S. propaganda, a lot of people seem to think that Iran is building nukes to attack Israel. But the fact is that Iran has never shown itself to be a particularly hostile or irrational nation in any military sense. And even despite the anti-U.S. rhetoric that followed the revolution that overthrew the U.S. puppet shah and the U.S. helping Saddam Hussein during the Iraq/Iran war, Iranians have been surprisingly open to U.S. diplomacy in the past. They were even one of the first countries to offer the U.S. condolences after the 9-11 attacks, and in the pre-Bush years maintained a stable, if sometimes tense, relationship with the U.S. They're a country that seems to want to be liked on the world stage. But they're also a country that wants to send a message to the U.S. that they're not going to stand by and be invaded on some U.S. oil grab.

So we cut off their banks and hit them with sanctions. Fine. A lot of Iranian people will suffer. And maybe this will lead them to negotiate, maybe not.

But you know what I bet would ABSOLUTELY lead them to negotiate and drop their nuke program?

1) Offer a few public goodwill gestures to make it clear that the U.S. is *not* going to invade them or attack them
2) Tell Mossad to stop assassinating their scientists, or face sanctions of their own.
3) Reign in Israel and make it clear to them that attacking Iran will NOT be tolerated, and will cost them the friendship of the U.S.
4) Normalizing relations with Iran.

You do those four things, and you won't need to cut off their banks to get them to the table. They'll be *running* to get to the table.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[iceperson]

Neville Chamberlain couldn't have said it better.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

If the people allow their government to do evil things, they deserve to suffer.

You do realise that's exactly the same rationale that the Islamic extremist groups use to justify their attacks on civilian targets, right?

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[gmuslera]

You are saying that Americans deserve to suffer? Because your government is doing definately evil things after all, in all fronts, and in a scale several orders above Iran.

At least now the slavery they are pushing aren't based specifically on skin color.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[Theophany]

The whole reason that Iran and North Korea even began pursuing nuclear weapons is because of that incredibly stupid "Axis of Evil" speech that George Bush made in 2003.

It's "incredibly stupid" to think that a Bush speech in 2003 caused all this. The USA's relationship with Iran has been shitty since 1979 and Ayatollah Khomeini's return from exile. To claim otherwise is in flagrant denial of reality and you only oust yourself as some anti-Zionist nutcase.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[durrr]

The people of Iran once had a democratically elected leader. The CIA didn't like that and installed a puppet regime, everything went to hell after that.

Although, still Iran do have a quite high standard of living. They only lack several human rights(and the west is trying to catch up in reaching the same limitations) and no democratic elections, despite these flaws, it's a quite stable nation. People may be discontent, but starting a civil war to remove the powers that be requires a fair bit more than discontent. Thus, the people of iran don't really have much of a choice. And with the recent polarization of iran vs the west that is going on, this situation is damn sure to not improve in any progressive and positive manner.

And this is not just about iran and the US and israel. Russia and china are on the sidelines too.

A good recepie for shitstorm reads like this: Increasing geopolitical tensions in the middle of a economic fucking crisis. The more i see this shit play out, the more the picture looks like the US being a powertripping neoimperialistic Rome 2.0 in the decline stage.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just that the people will suffer, it's also that:

1. Sanctions have never worked to accomplish anything, ever.
2. Trade is good for everyone, and it's good for peace.

I could understand sanctions narrowly tailored to weapons and nuclear equipment/material. Of course, those would be impossible to enforce. Not that the current sanctions are any easier to enforce...

What have trade sanctions on Cuba accomplished? What have trade sanctions on North Korea accomplished? I hate how those countries treat their people, but I don't see how trade sanctions do anything but make the situations worse.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[atriusofbricia]

I guess you don't remember Jimmy Carter negotiating a treaty with North Korea back in 1994 almost exactly along the lines you state. Or them cheating on it by continuing to develop nuclear weapons and being called on it even before Bush was elected and well before the Axis of Evil speech.

Remembering that information would conflict with the "Everything that is wrong or has gone wrong in the last 10 - 15 years is George W Bush's fault" pillar. Thus, down the memory hole with that.

The OP also failed to mention Ahmadinejad's "wipe Israel off the map" speech along with all the various speeches from him and others in their government saying Israel has no right to exist. I've never really supported the seeming "Israel First" politics of the US government over the last few decades, but to say that Iran only wants to get along with its neighbors and be good little world citizens is a bit off. Again, we can't mention any of that though as it conflicts with the central pillars of "GWB blame" and "USA blame".

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you made a typo in your first post. The first sentence starts with "The whole reason that Iran and North Korea even began pursuing nuclear weapons is because". I guess that "North Korea" should have read "Iran".

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

It's incredibly stupid to not realize that the US meddled with Iran before that and overthrew their democratically elected government because Iran nationalized their oil industry. Feel free to wake up to cause and effect!

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[drinkypoo]

The whole reason that Iran and North Korea even began pursuing nuclear weapons is because of that incredibly stupid "Axis of Evil" speech that George Bush made in 2003.

Wasn't so stupid, then, was it, if the goal was eventually to have an excuse to invade those countries. Bush Jr. may well be nothing but an alcohol-soaked nitwit, I wouldn't know, but he certainly has intelligent friends, like his evil killer father.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[ByOhTek]

The problem with the generalization game is like the problem with chemical/nuclear warfare - you hit a lot more than your designated targets.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[IamTheRealMike]

What evil things?

Look. The US and EU claim to believe in and promote democracy. There's a very democratic way to handle the decision of whether to apply sanctions on Iran or not - allow individual citizens and companies to decide whether they'll trade with Iran or not. If there is genuine moral outrage at the "evil" things Iran is doing, individuals will refuse to trade and will boycott or publically pressure firms who do.

This clearly has not happened, perhaps because 90% of the people don't give a shit about Iran. Faced with overwhelming democratically proven apathy the "powers that be" have decided to force their citizens hand with decisions that cannot be voted on, or overridden. This is the opposite of democracy, and the kind of blatant hypocrisy that makes people jaded and cynical.

You know what? When the war comes I'll be rooting for Iran. I don't sign on to this perpetual war bullshit but was never asked, won't BE asked, and thanks to our wonderfully centralized financial system won't be able to do anything about it independently either.

And please STFU about Iran being a religious theocracy. Last time I checked every remaining candidate for the Republican nomination is competing on how much they love Jesus and how much they'd oppress people who don't follow their own stone age religious views. American is going to end up in the same place soon enough.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[Frangible]

... and, to top it all off, sanctions don't work. This has been clearly demonstrated before with India and Pakistan. Both had clandestine nuclear programs that produced full Teller-Ulam designs and we didn't know about either until it was too late. A few years after sanctions were started, we dropped them.

Fundamentally, nuclear weapons come down to digging rocks out of the ground. Theoretically you don't even need to enrich the uranium; you can use heavy water as a moderator if you have access to an ocean. Which Iran does. So they could produce plutonium entirely from natural uranium. And there is a great deal of natural uranium.

I also don't agree with the notion Iran is going to make weapons from uranium. India and Pakistan didn't. It's a complete waste of uranium. They are better off transmuting uranium into plutonium.

Then again, I never really agreed with the idea of dictating a sovereign nation-state's technological development in the first place. It always has failed, and always will, and just serves to piss a country off and unite its people against you. You reinforce every reason and argument to develop nuclear weapons in the first place, and remove any internal opposition to it.

Nuclear technology cannot be stopped -- it is just too abundant in nature. You might as well try to stop nature itself. We are delusional to think otherwise when we have always failed in the past.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[Rakshasa-sensei]

Remembering that information would conflict with the "Everything that is wrong or has gone wrong in the last 10 - 15 years is George W Bush's fault" pillar. Thus, down the memory hole with that.

The OP also failed to mention Ahmadinejad's "wipe Israel off the map" speech along with all the various speeches from him and others in their government saying Israel has no right to exist. I've never really supported the seeming "Israel First" politics of the US government over the last few decades, but to say that Iran only wants to get along with its neighbors and be good little world citizens is a bit off. Again, we can't mention any of that though as it conflicts with the central pillars of "GWB blame" and "USA blame".

Iran has elections, just like the US. (And both seem to be about selecting one of two equally bad choices)

Do you really want to base foreign policy on shit that politicians say to win elections? In that case the US looks like the 3rd Reich reborn.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[ledow]

Terrible economic crisis. Yeah, must be hard for you, in your country with free benefit payments, etc. when you lose the 4-bedroom house and have to cash in the SUV. How awful for you.

I'm English, and we had the same - if not worse - impact as you did. You know what? I'd be embarrassed to refer to it as a crisis. Petrol (gas) went up a few pence, a few tens of thousands lost their jobs (while job vacancies are now at an all-time high, and you get guaranteed minimum wage, guaranteed human rights, and the actual *PERCENTAGE* unemployed stayed the same all that time "Unemployment has not been higher since 1995" - so, like, 20 years ago, before all the "economic crisis") and we just had to throw 1/3rd off long-term disability benefits because they were actually able to work all along.

The US started their wars, we'd like to point out, and prolonged them about 10 years longer than necessary and STILL can't recognise basic human rights for non-Americans. Who did that? The guy you chose because he said he wouldn't do that. What are you more concerned with? Could he be non-American and how dare he try to get people into medical treatment if they have no money?

When you elect someone that actually stops your country obliterating citizens in other countries and denying them their basic human rights that almost every other country in the world has signed up to, then you can take the moral high ground. In the meantime, you've elected a warlord who you keep in power because he tries to keep petrol cheap.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[durrr]

Yes it's a lack of several human rights.
Sortof how iraq was under Saddam.

Now they have several human rights, but no one around to enforce them. So the place is a different flavour of hellhole.

The US is also lacking several human rights, but i'm not seeing you picking up any guns to change things. As for voting? They can do that in Iran too. Doesn't help much though, same as in the US, where the media could paint a rainbow picture of hitler and get him elected. Provided he have the money and friends in high places.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[JoshuaZ]

Er, there's a bit wrong with your statement here. Most obviously, the axis of evil speech occurred in January of 2002, not 2003. That helps your case a bit, because a lot of the more serious failures of cooperation by Iran and North Korea occurred towards the end of 2002.. However, in both cases, there were serious failures to cooperate with international inspections before the speech. The entire James Kelly visit to North Korea was over evidence of non-cooperation that had been building up since the late Clinton years. Similarly, in the case of Iran, Iran had likely begun building new nuclear sites since before the speech http://guests.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/517/exiles-and-iran-intel. You can make an argument that Iran and North Korea may have accelerated their programs due to the Axis of Evil speech, and that's a more nuanced and viable argument, but that's a much weaker statement.

Moving on from there, there are other factual problems with your remarks. You claimed that

Iran has never shown itself to be a particularly hostile or irrational nation in any military sense

Right, so funding Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad isn't at all evidence of a "particularly hostile" or "irrational" attitude. http://www.cfr.org/iran/state-sponsors-iran/p9362. Iran doesn't even share a direct border with Israel but they are one of the largest supporters of attacks on Israel. That doesn't exactly scream peaceful to me.

There are enough factual problems as pointed out above, that your four point proposal simply doesn't make sense.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[Opportunist]

Of all the people living in countries with "free" elections, as a US citizen you should know best what it's like to have only the choice between a giant douche and a turd sammich, and how electing either is as good as electing neither.

They have the same effin' choice there. Well, even worse, actually, because the only choice they have BY LAW is to vote for an Islamist government. With the only alternative to start a rebellion. Which is, again, something you should know best about. From BOTH, your own country AND the Iran, the rebellion of 1979 was quite intimately tied to the US. You might remember, or at least notice, that it takes a DAMN LOT to get enough people pissed enough to get anything like that off the ground.

Besides, you know what the real reason was for them to be kicked out of the international banking system? I mean, let's be honest, if it was for their actions, how about sanctions? Or how about trade embargos? Or maybe just parking an aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz? Allow me to let you in on a secret: Come 20th of March, Iran will sell its oil for any currency. Yep. No longer they will require you to pay in Dollars. Euros, Rubels, Rupies, it's all good. Does this very specific move make, i.e. to make trading with them more difficult, a lot more sense now? Hmm? Maybe?

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[DigiShaman]

Well no shit! When nations sneak around covert programs that are by and large frowned upon by the international community, it only startles them to hasten the speed by which they develop them. Let me make it crystal clear. The "Axis of Evil" speech did *not* cause them to develop weapons. That's been going on longer than when Clinton was in office. No, it simply pointed out the level of BS going on by these two counties and others (NKorea and Iran). Publicly speaking out about it is equivalent to shining a spotlight on a thief at night. It causes them to either work faster or run away in fear.

GWB speech changed the dynamics. He thought maintaining the current status status quo was unacceptable. Their are arguments to be made that taking a divisive was either the right or wrong course of action.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[Moryath]

The whole reason that Iran and North Korea even began pursuing nuclear weapons is because of that incredibly stupid "Axis of Evil" speech that George Bush made in 2003.

North Korea's been pursuing nuclear weapon technology and missile technology since the 1990s, remember the 1994 treaty where they "promised to stop"?

When the largest military power in the world labels you as one of three "Axis of Evil" members, then proceeds to invade one of the other two, it tends to make you a bit twitchy. And, both Iran and NK know that the only way to really protect yourself from U.S. invasion is with nuclear weapons.

Oh, I agree there. It certainly made Kim Jong Nutbag run screaming into even more isolationism, and I'd argue it was a larger factor in Iran's becoming more hostile to the world in general; it certainly scuppered an ongoing wave of westernization as the mullahs saw another chance to crack down by declaring a new round of "eliminate the influence of the great satan."

Due mainly to Israeli and U.S. propaganda,

Seig something...

But the fact is that Iran has never shown itself to be a particularly hostile or irrational nation in any military sense.

Oh? They invaded Iraq. They've been weapons peddlers to rogue states for over 30 years. They do tend to operate by proxy, but their military actions from Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza are well, well documented. And both their crazy idiot president and the Mullahs are on record on what they would do to Israel if they "had the means," often including the words "wipe Israel off the face of the map."

So we cut off their banks and hit them with sanctions. Fine. A lot of Iranian people will suffer. And maybe this will lead them to negotiate, maybe not.

Well, the hope is that it will. It's what the UN decides on, and it's better than going to war.

But you know what I bet would ABSOLUTELY lead them to negotiate and drop their nuke program?

I bet you're going to tell us. And I bet you're going to miss out on the cultural issues of being seen as "weak" by coming into some form of negotiation unilaterally, especially the muslim/arab/persian tribalist dynamics involved. So let's move on.

1) Offer a few public goodwill gestures to make it clear that the U.S. is *not* going to invade them or attack them
Like what - sending a ton of earthquake aid? Whoops, we did that. Not attacking them for all this time? We did that too. Offering unilateral negotiotions? Obama did that, and then the crazy-ass Republicans shot it all down. You want to know who's causing the problems right now, making Iran think they're going to be attacked, you want to look at Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and my personal favorite, Rick "end times" Santorum.

2) Tell Mossad to stop assassinating their scientists, or face sanctions of their own.
Ah yes, Mossad, the eternal bogeyman of the muslim/arab/persian region. Anything happens? Blame "Mossad." Assassinated your brother in law to ascend to the throne? Don't worry, blame Mossad. Killed yourself from a life of excess while stealing the aid money intended for the poor (Arafat)? Don't worry, your followers will say "Mossad poisoned him." And on and on. The moment you get into stupid shit like this, you just reveal your own bias.

3) Reign [sic] in Israel and make it clear to them that attacking Iran will NOT be tolerated, and will cost them the friendship of the U.S.
Really? We should take over the Israeli government by force and set up a puppet state? Last time there was one there it was called the Mandate of Palestine and the British ran it... then they parceled off Transjordan and refused to allow Jews to move anywhere but "Palestine" because the Arabs were bitching about too many Jews spreading out... then it was split in half and the Arabs launched a genocidal war to wipe out the Jews anyways.

4) Normalizing relations with Iran.
Normalizing relations is a product of negotiations. W

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[root_42]

What evil things?

Look. The US and EU claim to believe in and promote democracy. There's a very democratic way to handle the decision of whether to apply sanctions on Iran or not - allow individual citizens and companies to decide whether they'll trade with Iran or not. If there is genuine moral outrage at the "evil" things Iran is doing, individuals will refuse to trade and will boycott or publically pressure firms who do.

Democratic does not always equal morally or ethically correct. The society is made up of egoistic individuals. Most of us would buy products from Iran. Heck, I am buying stuff from Apple, produced at "the evil Foxconn". Because it's affordable and cool! But I am glad that there are institutions (many of them democratically elected) that serve as a moral / ethical watchdog. I am glad that they are applying sanctions. Our individual egotism is useful in day to day life, but hinders the greater society's values. So I think the system as we have it is already on a good track. It just needs some tweaking.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[Sarten-X]

Hey, you're right! We (unwittingly) elected a Muslim to President!

...So?

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[medcalf]

Actually, yes we do. We have been electing people from the stupid party and the evil party for decades without throwing them out or demanding real systemic fixes. We have the ability to turn them out or force the changes, but have not done so. Therefore we deserve the consequences of our leadership's policies. If those consequences include suffering, then we deserve the suffering.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[bkaul01]

Yes, and while D) is perfectly reasonable, C) seems like quite a valid cause for concern for other nations: we're talking about a theocratic government whose religion requires that its adherents (eventually) conquer the world, which government appears to take a particularly fundamentalist, literal view of the "conquer" aspect of that, and which is pursuing nuclear weapons.

Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech was an observation of this, not the cause of it. Iran and N Korea were off the reservation for decades before he made that speech, and have continued to be "rogue nations" regardless of diplomacy. Saying we should normalize relations is all well and good, except that it neglects the fact that these nations are not approaching issues from a common worldview. It's not that they're irrational: it's that their philosophy, beliefs, and goals are so radically different from our own that we don't have a common premise from which to work.

That's not to say that I think invading them is the right course of action here (I don't), but in many ways, diplomacy is destined to fail, if it is based on the assumption that they just want to get along. "Diplomatic bribery" of a sort could still work: that is, don't assume they want what we want, but figure out something they actually do want, and use that carrot to convince them to give up the nuclear ambitions. The stick of economic isolation has the potential to be pretty effective if we pair it with the right carrot.

Re:The people will be the ones who suffer

[forkfail]

Amusing, maybe, but incredibly disingenuous.

Because to a lot of liberals, it wouldn't matter. But lying about it might well matter. Thus, what is being protested is the fact that Faux is accusing Obama of lying (as well as being a Muslim). They conflate the defense against the accusation of lying and the denial that he is a Muslim, when they are in fact two seperate issues.

So, I'd say that your amusement is probably the sort of mocking attitude that Faux loves to generate. Even if they can't sell you on all their BS, they've managed to change the discussion and argument from what matters to meta arguments about their tactics.

Oh, and for the record: I'm a liberal who doesn't think particularly highly of the Muslim religion. So, please, go easy on the sweeping generalizations.

Re:I wonder what happens when..

[Forty Two Tenfold]

You did it with the Jewish invaders of Palestine, why not with Persians?

It's not about nukes.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about dollar-backed oil.

Sad world...

[Anonymous Coward]

Israel on the other hand, with all the nukes they have, gets a free SWIFT pass.
Even if Iran owned a nuclear weapon, they wouldn't want to nuke Israel. The mosque in Jerusalem is the second holiest in the Muslim world, after Mecca. Nuking Israel would mean the destruction of a holy Muslim city.

Iran doesnt project military force

[voss]

It backs terrorist groups in Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey,etc,etc. Then again we made nice with Qaddafi before we starting shooting his own people and he blew up a US airliner and bombed a cafe full of US soldiers.

If you really want to get an idea of bizarre US policy look at Cuba. Cuba hasnt sponsored Terrorism in 40 years and is still embargoed while we did business with Qaddafi and Iran. Americans can visit North Korea a country we are still technically at war with but they cant visit Cuba a country we were never at war with and we are one of their largest trading partners.

Re:I wonder what happens when..

[Oswald McWeany]

A large number of them are European/American that moved back there in the last two or three generations. Both sides probably hate this- but the current Palestinians are probably more genetically related to the people that the Romans once ruled there. Nonetheless- you can't tell the people descended from those that moved there from Europe and America to "go-back" that is impractical.

What would make much more sense is if they all just got-along and learned to live nicely with each other. Yeah, I know- not going to happen.

WTF? Obama already tried "goodwill"

[unassimilatible]

Obama already reached out to Iran. He began his presidency apologetically acknowledging U.S. involvement in a coup that happened more than 50 years ago. He then offered bilateral negotiations that, predictably, failed miserably (that was the whole plan of two-party talks, to blame the mean Americans and walk out). And, of course, Obama didn't support the 2009 uprising (when protesters were yelling, "where are you Obama?"), and has continued the blacklisting of Mujahedin-e Khalq (or MEK), the Iranian dissident movement as a terror organization, so as not to upset the Mullahs.

And what did Obama get for his "goodwill" as you put it?

Continued lethal Iranian assistance to guerrillas killing Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan; a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador by blowing up a Washington restaurant; the announcement by a member of parliament of Iranian naval exercises to shut down the Strait of Hormuz; undoubted Chinese and Russian access to a captured U.S. drone for the copying and countering of its high-tech secrets.

It's worked great! Let's try appeasement again. Because this time will be different.

Re:Who is threatning who?

[Anonymous Coward]

A US aircraft carrier can keep more planes in the air than most countries entire air force. If that doesn't count as a military base then I don't know what does.

Re:War Propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a piece about what can happen when you rely on someone to manage a computer system for all of your international banking transactions. I get that there's an enormous political undercurrent to it, but at heart it's a "[group] is being deleted from the [computer system] at the request of [political entity] which will massively hinder their [online activity]. Insert Pirate Bay, political blogger, science blogger, etc.

Besides, the wording is pretty neutral. It's not like it said "The extremely dangerous and paranoid Iranian government is being cut off by the financial world in an attempt to prevent them from continuing to build high-yield nuclear weapons to destroy The World with."

The US and UK are to blame for this mess

[jonwil]

If the US and UK hadn't intervened and overthrown the democratically elected government of Iran just because said government decided it was going to kick out the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (one of the ancestors of the modern BP oil company) and take full control over Iranian oil, its likely that Iran would have continued as a democratic constitutional monarchy instead of becoming the strict Muslim state it is today.

Re:Who is threatning who?

[Savage-Rabbit]

A US aircraft carrier can keep more planes in the air than most countries entire air force. If that doesn't count as a military base then I don't know what does.

That's not all, a US aircraft carrier group is bigger than most countries entire navies as well and if you thrown in a couple of marine divisions and some landing craft they'd probably give most standing armies on earth as a run for their money as well.

Re:Who is threatning who?

[MightyMartian]

Most of the estimates I've read suggest that any attempt by Iran to close the Strait would pretty much lead to the obliteration of their navy, airforce and anti-aircraft capabilities in about a week. Libya's airforce and anti-aircraft capabilities was quickly dispatched, and most of the campaign was spent offering air support to the rebels.

Yes, Iran has lots of theoretical soldiers, mainly poorly equipped Basij, but what good does a fanatic with a rifle do against a bomber or an aircraft carrier a hundred miles off the coast. If the objective is to limit or eliminate Iran's capability of projecting its force into the Strait or the Gulf in general, and not having to actually invade or support any kind of hostilities on the ground, it would be very easy.