Will Israel back us if we attack Iran?

[Nothing000]

Completely agree. So?

So, what? That was my point.

Got to go to school. Talk to you later.

 

[Nothing000]

Why do you guys hate america? I just don't get it. If you answer this question I will have to read it later, and respond then. Because I am going to be late for school.

 

[EL]

So, what? That was my point.

Got to go to school. Talk to you later.

See my edited version.

 

[Anttech]

Actually I think Nothing000 posts are a perfect example of someone with little to no knowledge about what there are talking about, ranting hatred in a misinformed extreemly young and naive way! It can happen in any place in the world, hatred has no place, and what we need is some UNDERSTANDING (and EDUCATION!)! Of course the US media doesn't help.. But this is supposed to be an accedemic type forum!

 

[EL]

Why do you guys hate america? I just don't get it. If you answer this question I will have to read it later, and respond then. Because I am going to be late for school.

When did I say I hate america?
I hate some people in america yes, but I hate some in Sweden too...
You're putting words in my mouth I have never said.

 

[Anttech]

When did I say I hate america?
I hate some people in america yes, but I hate some in Sweden too...
You're putting words in my mouth I have never said.

You didnt, don't worry I think its self-evident...

 

[EL]

I think Nothing000 is mainly driven by fear.
Fear has always been a substantial ingredience in US society.

 

[EL]

You didnt, don't worry I think its self-evident...

What is self-evident?

 

[Anttech]

What is self-evident?

That you didnt say that you hate America...

 

[EL]

That you didnt say that you hate America...

Good. For a while I thought you ment it was self-evident I hated america although I didn't say it!
To make it clear: I do not hate americans in general!

 

[Burnsys]

I do hate america... 's Goverment...

That is another trick the media uses, acording to them people around the world hate america for no reason. When actualy everybody hate america's government for they foreing policy.

 

[selfAdjoint]

I do hate america... 's Goverment...

That is another trick the media uses, acording to them people around the world hate america for no reason. When actualy everybody hate america's government for they foreing policy.

Hopefully ol' Bush will be somewhat hobbled after November this year.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

SD, it has been all over the news. It's the very reason we are having this conversation - why the governments are having the rhetoric-war.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=1488020

Sorry but I know they are enriching uranium I meant to say for nukes. I have read reports by the IAEA about the enrichment facilities in Iraq, it is fairly common knowledge and has been for a while that they are enriching Uranium or at the very least that they had facilities to do so which is pretty much the same thing, this is why the whole thing kicked off in the first place, sorry about that

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

Extremist muslims do hate you. "Progressive" muslims do not. All I am saying is that these non-extremists need to stand up and let there voice be heard more, instead of allowing the extremists represent their religion.

Oddly enough due to the internet in Iran, many Iranians are big fans of western and in particular US culture, there is more hatred on your side than on the other I would imagine, just because some minority voice starts indiscretely shouting doesn't mean he represents a whole country. Iran is a democracy of sorts, but a religous one, OK it's not the same as a two party system but at least you get to chose which religous leaders you want representing your country. This sort of one sided uninformed sounding off is not really productive. Do some research into the subject before you judge a religion a race or a whole people. I really hope that this sort of opinion based on one sided media is not common in the US.

Oh and for your information, the only media I tend to watch regularly ATM is yours on forums like this, I rarely get to see the BBC ATM. Which would make me a wolf amongst sheep, as I do not subscribe to it wholly without digging deeper.

 

[Moonbear]

Note to all: Before posting further replies in this thread, please remind yourselves of the P&WA forum guidelines, especially with regard to keeping discussion CIVIL. This thread has been pruned, and further need to moderate will result in it being locked, and those whose posts necessitate that moderation will take a 3-day vacation from PF.

 

[Cyrus]

[deleted - You can choose to be part of the problem or part of the solution, cyrus. -Russ]

 

[russ_watters]

Sorry but I know they are enriching uranium I meant to say for nukes. I have read reports by the IAEA about the enrichment facilities in Iraq, it is fairly common knowledge and has been for a while that they are enriching Uranium or at the very least that they had facilities to do so which is pretty much the same thing, this is why the whole thing kicked off in the first place, sorry about that

No prob - the question of whether or not they intend to acquire actual nuclear weapons is obviously much more complicated. It requires sifting through the rhetoric to decipher their real intentions, which can't ever be an exact science.

So the relevant questions then become:

1. What do you (or Bush, or the UNSC, or Israel's new leader) think the odds are that Iran will acquire or will attempt to acquire nuclear weapons?
2. If they acquire nuclear weapons, would they be willing/likely to use them?
3. Based on the above, would it be prudent to stop them?
4. If yes, how far should we go to stop them?

 

[Anttech]

1. What do you (or Bush, or the UNSC, or Israel's new leader) think the odds are that Iran will acquire or will attempt to acquire nuclear weapons?
2. If they acquire nuclear weapons, would they be willing/likely to use them?
3. Based on the above, would it be prudent to stop them?
4. If yes, how far should we go to stop them?

I'll take a pop at that :)

1. Iran will eventually make nuclear weapons.. But not in the foreseeable future IMHO
2. No they wouldn't use them, if they had no need to use them. Ie I don't think they would be the aggressors. They have no need to. The only war I could see happening there would be an inward war of factions, ie cival war.. And I don't think Nukes would be used in this situation.
3. No its not prudent to stop them, nothing but pain and blood will come from fighting Iran, the world needs peace not more Wars between the so called "west" and ME
4. see above

 

[BobG]

No prob - the question of whether or not they intend to acquire actual nuclear weapons is obviously much more complicated. It requires sifting through the rhetoric to decipher their real intentions, which can't ever be an exact science.

So the relevant questions then become:

1. What do you (or Bush, or the UNSC, or Israel's new leader) think the odds are that Iran will acquire or will attempt to acquire nuclear weapons?
2. If they acquire nuclear weapons, would they be willing/likely to use them?
3. Based on the above, would it be prudent to stop them?
4. If yes, how far should we go to stop them?

1. Considering Israel, Pakistan, and India have nuclear weapons, I'd say the odds were good that Iran would attempt to develop nuclear weapons. It'll take a few years, but once they're able to create fuel for nuclear power plants, the leap to nuclear weapons is almost more a matter of quantity than a leap in technology - if they also develop a means to deliver nuclear weapons.

2. If they developed nuclear weapons and a reliable method of delivering them, they would use the threat of them. They'd be unlikely to actually fire them, but having nuclear weapons would give them greater freedom to act in the Middle East region - the possession of nuclear weapons would prevent other countries from punishing them with military force.

3. You don't stop knowledge or technology. You slow it down. Any action to slow progress needs to be accompanied by some other long term solution. This is another benefit of acquiring nuclear power. A country becomes a 'partner' in international relations that has to be bargained with instead of a third world country that can be pushed around. The major powers use trade agreements that benefit the new nuclear power enough that the new power can't afford to wage war against the major powers, anymore. It's almost like striking it rich and getting to sit next to the owner of your old company at the elite country club.

4a. A few 'pinprick' strikes, even at particularly key locations, just slows the pace of progress. The hardware has to be replaced, but the knowledge and experience have already been obtained.

4b. Instead of buying off the new power, you install a new, friendlier government. Installing a new shah has gone out of fashion. Installing a democracy is the new rave, in spite of the fact that the new Middle East democracies seem to put a spotlight on the cultural differences between the Middle East and the West.

4c. Buying them off with increased trade would do a better job of reducing differences between the cultures. Al Jazeera has commercials, the same as American TV, and McDonalds, Coca Cola, et al, can slowly rot Middle Eastern culture from within* (sounds cynical, but, from Islamic fundamentalists point of view, this is the big problem with the West, regardless of the rhetoric about Israel, etc).

Aside from the problems inherent in option 4, the 'who decides' part is the most unsettling of all. I don't relish having the Bush administration decide or implement anything of this magnitude. It would be better if either the UN took the lead or the problem were pushed along to the next President.

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

* - How often has a foreign country stepped in, taken a local product (such as a favorite drink), and turned that country's own local product into a national, profitable product, or even a product for export?

I know Coca Cola tried this in Russia with one of their traditional drinks, but Coca Cola had to come up with one version of the drink for the whole country. Traditionally, there had been a lot of variation in the drink from one locality to the other, so Coca Cola's version didn't get very high reviews from locals - most thought it was a poor imitation of their locality's particular version.

Most used to have problems even getting that far, since it usually seems more efficient to make an already existing product more appealing to the new market since the foreign company may have little insight into the new market's culture. It's hard to believe multinational corporations still haven't made much progress in this area, but you don't hear much about it.

 

[EL]

So the relevant questions then become:

1. What do you (or Bush, or the UNSC, or Israel's new leader) think the odds are that Iran will acquire or will attempt to acquire nuclear weapons?
2. If they acquire nuclear weapons, would they be willing/likely to use them?
3. Based on the above, would it be prudent to stop them?
4. If yes, how far should we go to stop them?

Good questions russ. I'll give them a try:

1. That's a tough one. According to the Iranian government's behaviour one is easily lead to the conclution that they will attempt to acquire nukes. On the other hand, if they really wanted to, would they behave as they currently are doing? I don't have a good answer.
But what I think is important is to realize there are cultural differences which may be hard to understand for us westerns. I think "pride" is a keyword. Like it was for Saddam Hussein who more or less acted like he had something to hide, when there in reality were no WMD's.

2. If they really are out for getting nukes, and actually also succeeds with that, I'm afraid that, with the current government, my guess will be yes.

3. We should definitely stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. (Which we should for any other country aslo.)

4. Important is to not do anything rash. Only as an absolutely last way out, and with waterproof evidences, there should be an open attack.
I don't think another war based on "false intelligence reports" (to be kind) is a good idea...
UN support for any military action is very important.
What should be done immediately is to support the rebellious groups in Iran and get rid of the current government. I think that with a strong support it could be achieved quite soon.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

1,2&3 are summed up mostly by the previous posters opinions

4) anything but land invasion, this I think would be a disasterous idea.

Someone told me that one of Irans enrichment facilities was supplied by the US, obviously for peaceful reasons but that is interesting

 

[Anttech]

I just watched a broadcast on Iran after yesterdays news annocument that they have enriched Uranium to >3% Basically the gist was they will need to make 3000 cascading centrafuges to enrich weapons grade uranium, so they are not far away... What an interesting dilema:

The US and Iran won't talk, so that leave Russia and China to negotiate with them on what they should do. Will Iran either accept Russia's proposal and let them enrich Uranium for them, or will they go it alone... How the world order is changing! A ME country that can and will stand up for itself interests!

A War with Iran won't happen, its insain to think that a military option is valid, it just isnt.. The only country that would be "Brave" (or stupid) enough to attempt an attack on Iran would be the US, with there history of pre-empting over the past decades, but they simpley cant. The people of the US don't have the stomach for another war, and the Military don't have the resources for a full scale attack... If the US attacked Iran, Iran would simpley attack Iraq, and I think we all can see the consequences of what that would entail, total cival war, and perhaps genocide in Iraq... The US's legacy in the ME would be one of death not democracy.

So that leave good old negotiation...

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

If it were anyone but Bush and the Republican war machine I'd agree, but if past history is any indication, who knows? The US hasn't exactly gained a reputation for avoiding dead end conflicts in the past

 

[tarbag]

The Americans did much enemy because of Israil. They unconsciously make war against their own interests. The Iranians are not only the enemis of Israil, there are all the Arab people. One should not count on the emirs, they are only temporary. If Iran will have nuclear weapon soon it will never have war there, that will be peace. The Americans are not afraid of the use of the Iranian nuclear weapon but they are afraid which they will not be free to make what they want. When somebody has the nuclear weapon it will become wiser.

 

[pcorbett]

ISRAEL should wipe them out , huh? A bit of arrogance here. On the contrary, my Arab friends tell me that were it not for the U. S. support, Israel would be pushed into the sea by now.

Like they did in '48?

It is the only country that backs Israel so they are lucky in this respect and depend on the U.S. for their existence.

The United States guarantees Israel's security. Israel, on the other hand, has shown itself quite capable of fending for its own existence.

What do you think of that?

I think if Arab men were masculine enough to fight, they'd come out into the field rather than hide behind or attack innocent women and children.

 

[pcorbett]

Someone told me that one of Irans enrichment facilities was supplied by the US, obviously for peaceful reasons but that is interesting

Someone was wrong. Gerald Ford lost the race before US-Iran Nuclear Cooperation went ahead and Carter killed it. Pre-revolutionary Iran, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and participant in the IAEA inspectorate, would have acquired a complete nuclear fuel cycle solution that would have undergone the same NPT safeguards as other signatories. Clearly it's a good thing the agreement fell through; post-revolutionary Iran's commitment to non-proliferation--at the risk of understatement--is dubious.

 

[mathwonk]

with all the crazy stuff going on, it was sobering to me to realize that one of the most important original books on algebra we written by a muslim, the great Iranian mathematician, Muhammed al Khawarezmi, in 830, while he was court astrologer to the Caliph in Baghdad.

so we have a great debt to this culture we are currently destroying, that we often forget.

 

[Bystander]

That's only through quadratic equations; it was a partial education of Islam by the Hindus who had done the general cubic solution and were playing with quartics at the time --- asserting that there would have been no exchange of information between Europe and India, "great debt," is a bit over the top.

 

[Office_Shredder]

with all the crazy stuff going on, it was sobering to me to realize that one of the most important original books on algebra we written by a muslim, the great Iranian mathematician, Muhammed al Khawarezmi, in 830, while he was court astrologer to the Caliph in Baghdad.

so we have a great debt to this culture we are currently destroying, that we often forget.

Yes, their culture used to be enlightened. But so was the Romans'... do we tithe Italy each year to thank them for their engineering brilliance 2000 years ago?

 

[Arian]

Well...I am not going to read 7 pages of posts...me lazy :)
But Iran...we do know that basically all the young people who like our laid back and watch the ladies dance culture are being held back by the theocratic government...
So, give the college people guns, make um love us and a 2nd Iranian revolution!

 

[mathwonk]

as for italy i was vissiting a friend there one year with my children and my son asked who invented the car so i said henry ford. but we looed in the french larousse encylcopedia and saw that a frenchman built the first car in the 18th century.

then for fun we looked in the itlian encyclopedia and saw that i think it was galileo or somebody actually designed the first car much earlier before th3e french guy built it.

anyway it was very enlightening to a person steeped in our chauvinistic and very young wet behind the ears culture in the US.

I give thanks every so often to italy for many wonderful thigns, but maybe that is because I have been there many times and loved it from the beginning.

 

[Astronuc]

Some in G.O.P. Say Iran Threat Is Played Down
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/washington/24intel.html

By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: August 24, 2006

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 — Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more ominous warnings about the threats that they say Iran presents to the United States.

Some policy makers have accused intelligence agencies of playing down Iran’s role in Hezbollah’s recent attacks against Israel and overestimating the time it would take for Iran to build a nuclear weapon.

The complaints, expressed privately in recent weeks, surfaced in a Congressional report about Iran released Wednesday. They echo the tensions that divided the administration and the Central Intelligence Agency during the prelude to the war in Iraq.

The criticisms reflect the views of some officials inside the White House and the Pentagon who advocated going to war with Iraq and now are pressing for confronting Iran directly over its nuclear program and ties to terrorism, say officials with knowledge of the debate.

The dissonance is surfacing just as the intelligence agencies are overhauling their procedures to prevent a repeat of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate — the faulty assessment that in part set the United States on the path to war with Iraq.

It would seem that some in Congress are itching for a fight or perhaps an issue. It is worrisome when politicians' personal agendas depart from reality, and the bases for critical decisions are erroneous beliefs and not facts. For the most part, the intelligence agencies seem to be doing their work.

 

[kyleb]

It would seem that some in Congress are itching for a fight or perhaps an issue.

Congress certainly isn't showing any interest in working towards peace resolution, and our Administration clearly has other ideas.

For the most part, the intelligence agencies seem to doing their work.

But the intelligence agencies work has a nasty habit of getting in the way of the work many other people want to do.

 

[devil-fire]

Do you guys think that Israel would assist us if America and our allies attack Iran? Because as I look at it, Iran, not Palestine, is Israels greatest threat.

definatly in an intelligence capacity. if CIA dosn't know where all iran's uranium enrichment facilitys are, you can bet the mossad (the israeli intelligence agency) sure does. as for planes and troops i would definatly say no. the arab countrys in the ME really don't like anyone who assosiates with zionists and they would be a lot more difficult to work with if israel was directly helping an effort by the usa to attack an arab state. even though the usa doesn't seem to care a whole lot about their relations with ME states, there isn't enough military support israel would be willing to give for the usa to trash can any plans to cooperate with ME countrys in the near future.

Some in G.O.P. Say Iran Threat Is Played Down
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/washington/24intel.html

By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: August 24, 2006

It would seem that some in Congress are itching for a fight or perhaps an issue. It is worrisome when politicians' personal agendas depart from reality, and the bases for critical decisions are erroneous beliefs and not facts. For the most part, the intelligence agencies seem to be doing their work.

i think its surprising...no, not surprising but disapointing that policy makers are complaining about what an intelligence agency isn't finding, thus proving their policys are baseless. the problem is that if the people funding the CIA think the CIA is a useless organization and that it doesn't deserve funding, then you can bet the CIA people are going to find a way to "find" whatever the hell they need to to stay in the good graces of their sponsers. a country isn't any kind of useful democracy like this since people are making choices under misleading information.

 

[TuviaDaCat]

Did u miss the news? Iraq was firing skud missels at Israel and they didnt retaliate! Isreal wouldn't join any war, they have enough of there own problems, plus they arent stupid enough to do that IMHO.

there are rumurs about attacking syria. syria is bound to iran, and they sound a lot of threats lately on israel.
my guess is that is the US will attack iran, israel will start attacking syria on the same time.

about israel helping to attack iran, i donno, we can't just pass such long terrain away from home, though we could aid with planes.
but it would probably be like in the first war golf, arab countries wouldn't like us in the fight...