Iran: A War Is Coming

[Crozza]

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Edited May 10, 2012 by Crozza

[Albert Tatlock]

Ooooer! Where's me tin hat?

[John Wright]

I don't beleieve USA would be so daft. Their failure in Iraq has shown them up as no longer being the invincible super power.

 

This topic really falls to be considered with the one about why we are between the Sunnis and Shias.

 

Since the fall of the USSR there has only ben one world super power, possibly with China on the ascendant, but not there yet.

 

Us influenece generally has been on the side of the Sunnis, propping up all sorts of extreme regimes against Shia Iran, it has alos been on the side of the Israelis.

 

The failure of US policy leaves a void. the unthinkable might now happen, Sunnis, afraid of the Shias in Iran and to counter its nuclear capabilities may find themselves, without the guarantee of US might, having to do deal with Isreal as the only regional power with nuclear capability. That would change the middle east dynamic for ever, and is a real medium term option.

 

Of course the only resaon we are there, or the US, is not the Sunni Shia divide but economic self interest...oil. We played the Iraqis off against the Iranis, and vice versa when Iran was a US client state, before the Ayatollahs.

 

Now US is not so invincible, and I agree North Korea and lack of action seem to be another indicator, it will be interesting to see who forms coalitions with whom to survive

[Albert Tatlock]

Despite the will of the Senate, Bush is still pumping troops into Iraq.

 

He is still the 'Commander in Chief' and anything is possible with this ****wit in charge. This guy has put the world clock back by decades.

 

I don't think Bush is going to go quietly somehow, and anything could happen over the next year. Always remember that attacking Iran doesn't require ground troops.

[Roger Smelly]

Well bush is looking for 100 billion for the "war on terror".

 

The yanks have made a rod for there own back here.

 

Sooner the brits pull out the better, let the yanks carry on playing cowboys and indians.

[copycat]

from what was just on CH4 surgical strike with bunker buster tomahawks will take them out and the sooner the better.

[RC-Drift.com]

I don't beleieve USA would be so daft. Their failure in Iraq has shown them up as no longer being the invincible super power.

 

No longer?...they never have been invincible vietnam anyone

[John Wright]

I don't beleieve USA would be so daft. Their failure in Iraq has shown them up as no longer being the invincible super power.

 

No longer?...they never have been invincible vietnam anyone

 

That was two world super powers fighting by proxy, I specifically qualified post USSR

 

This piece by a BBC World foreign correspondent makes interesting reading

 

Amidst the barrage of bad news from Iraq, the growing chaos in Gaza, instability in Lebanon and uncertainty in Israel, one thing emerges clearly. The US invasion of Iraq and its quest to spread democracy throughout the region has had a series of profound but unintended consequences. Of these, the most important is the rise of Iran.

Washington's destruction of the Taleban regime in Afghanistan and its toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq served to destroy Tehran's main strategic competitors. For a brief moment Iran too feared US intervention. It was at this moment that Tehran appeared most willing to explore talks.

But the Americans' increasing problems in Iraq showed that for the Iranians the cloud of US ascendancy did indeed have a silver-lining.

Sunni re-alignment

Iran now was free to step-up its influence throughout the region - in Iraq, in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories. Sunni governments - like the Egyptians, the Saudis and the Jordanians - watched with horror as their fears of a new Shia ascendancy appeared to be coming true. Such fears have prompted the beginnings of a re-alignment.

"Something is happening that could have a strategic potential," says Dennis Ross, the US peace envoy to the Middle East during the Clinton years. Ambassador Ross dates the genesis of this to Saudi Arabia's criticism of Hezbollah during last summer's Lebanon war. "Iran," he said, was perceived by many Arab states "as trying to seize control of the Israel-Palestine issue and was using Hezbollah and Hamas as tools". This the Saudis and the other Sunni states saw as a threat because, as Ambassador Ross put it, "if the Iranians were in a position in which they could control the most evocative symbols in the region they could use it against these regimes".

Add in the widespread unease at Iran's nuclear activities and you have a potential new alignment where the moderate Arab states and Israel all share common interests.

Breakthrough 'hard'

The Saudis have dusted-off their Middle East peace plan, and Riyadh, Cairo and Amman are all clamouring for a greater US push on the Palestinian front. And if this is the price for a new alliance to contain Iran, then the Bush administration seems willing to at least go through the motions. But given the bitter internecine rivalry between the Palestinian factions, can there really be any great hope of progress?

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is seriously weakened too - battered by his poor showing in last summer's Lebanon war and a series of scandals that have afflicted the Israeli political system.

So for all the talk of a new US diplomatic push, Dennis Ross says that it is going to be very hard to make a strategic breakthrough now. He put it to me this way: "Can weak leaders take on existential questions?"

So here, too, the Americans are going to have their work cut out.

'Sea-change'

But there is also a much more fundamental problem for the Americans. The invasion of Iraq has paradoxically also served to bring an end to the era of US diplomatic primacy in the Middle East, says Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former State Department official.

"For much of the last two decades the US enjoyed an ahistoric advantage in the region, with the end of the Cold War and the domination that it showed in the region after Iraq invaded Kuwait," Mr Haass says.

"Now though, we are seeing something fundamentally different." It was, he says, the end of American primacy.

However, Mr Haass is quick to stress that this was not an end to American influence. The era of US domination is over, but it is not being replaced by any single country.

"Essentially, we are looking at a messier, a much more complicated, a much more troubled Middle East, where the capacity of the US to shape affairs is much-reduced," Mr Haass says.

[thebees]

The war in Iran has been coming since before the Iraq war. I'd like to see that Lady Boss in the White House then perhaps they will stop with all these testosterone fulled (oil hungry) wars.

[slinkydevil]

I'd like to see that Lady Boss in the White House then perhaps they will stop with all these testosterone fulled (oil hungry) wars.

 

Instead every month they will just lash out and snap for no particular reason - stating "If only you knew what I had to put up with! Now where is my hot water bottle?"

Edited February 5, 2007 by slinkydevil

[thebees]

Yeah, one bomb then a most humble apology monthly

[Crozza]

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Edited May 10, 2012 by Crozza

[John Wright]

well, if Bush does, he won't be the first US prsident to be humiliated by an Iranain campaign in the dog days of his presidency

[La_Dolce_Vita]

I certainly do not think there is going to be any invasion of Iran. Iraq has already turned out to be a lesson in stupidity. It would not make sense to go charging into Iraq whilst the problems in Iraq are still ongoing and there is no easy escape. The military effort for an invasion would have to be far greater than that used in Iraq. Iran is far larger and does not have a similar littoral as Iraq. Any expeditionary operation would be one of great difficulty.

 

I think if anything is going to happen in the short- of medium-term it will be airstrikes. Though they are not that effective. In any case, thought the British might be and probably will be stupid enough to support the Americans if anything goes on in Iran the British Army and Navy won't be able to lend much of a hand. Poor old Britain is a stretched to its limits.

[Crozza]

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Edited May 10, 2012 by Crozza