I’ve Been Waiting For This
Because of ongoing corruption charges, Ehud Olmert said he would step down in September after his Kadima party has chosen a new leader. The main candidates are Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, a pragmatic centrist, and Shaul Mofaz, transport minister but a hawk on national security issues, including Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the ongoing, though faltering, negotiations with the Palestinians.
Golly gee, the excitement just never ends, does it? This is more fun than jumping off a bridge before noticing that the river’s gone dry.
The biggest issue facing Olmert’s successor will be the crisis over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Mofaz, a former chief of staff and defence minister, said recently that an Israeli attack on Iran was “unavoidable” because sanctions were not working. My money is on Mofaz to become the next Prime Minister and the attack on Iran to follow thereafter.
When thereafter? Olmert steps down in September, so if Mofaz gets the job, he then has about a month to form a coalition government and start governing. He could do it within a few days or not at all. Let’s take a leap of faith and assume he does it by the end of September. This leaves 2 months before the U.S. elections, plus 1 month after, to attack Iran,
If McCain wins, an attack is not necessarily imminent. If Obama wins, Mofaz would then have until Jan. 20th, 2009, our Inauguration Day, actually at least a few weeks before, to attack Iran and be assured of U.S. backing under George Bush. This is another leap of faith, that Bush would back Israel. Certainly, Obama wouldn’t. He’d be rooting for the Arabs.
As long as Olmert held the Israeli reins, it was a given that Iran would be left alone. Olmert has paid close heed to what Washington told him to do, and is clearly more dovish than some of his possible replacements, particularly Shaul Mofaz. Now the equation is changing once again and the timing is suspect because of our entering into those negotiations with Iran that we said we’d never do. We need a big club to threaten Iran with and force them to give in, and having a hawk like Mofaz ready to blow them to Hell is a pretty decent club.
If Iran backs off, the Mid-East war will be defused, but only if outside control of their weapons-grade materials is allowed and the control and oversight meet Israeli approval. Since this is a fantasy, what I see coming is a few rounds of those interminable talks that go nowhere, followed by air attacks at night.
It’s all blue sky at this point. Anything can happen. It does give the rest of us a reason to be glad we don’t live anywhere near there, though. As if we weren’t, before.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Practicalities.
Does anyone actually know for sure where to attack to eliminate the nuclear threat and, given probable use of deep bunkers, would an attack be effective?
If not, inflicting general damage on Iran with the hope that they will give up the program simply will not work. This is a very large country of 60m+ people. Israel is one of the world’s foremost military powers and that could be decisive in a very short war but it does not have the manpower or resources to engage in a war of any length. The US would have to give them virtually open-ended military and financial backing which I can’t see happening. If the war continued if would be as a US led war with Israel as the junior partner.
Or the Israelis could use nukes on day one.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:43 am
“If the war continued if would be as a US led war with Israel as the junior partner.
Or the Israelis could use nukes on day one.”
It’s a given that the U.S. would be right in there bombing Hell out of Iran. However, being the first to use nukes is out of the question. If there’s a clear nuclear threat, sure, but otherwise, not a chance.
The U.S. has sold Israel a bunch of its biggest deep-throat bunker blasters and that’s what Israel is expected to use.
Remember that Israel has very likely the best intelligence service in the world. They won’t drop those bombs just anywhere. They don’t need to anyway as the location of the underground facilities has been known since they were dug.
60 million people is a SMALL country. Especially when it’s Iran, whose economy is in tatters and whose people are mostly impoverished. Iran has promised to stop the tankers from going past its shores by mining the Straits and attacking the ships. Those minelayers will be destroyed in a simutaneous operation and Iran will get no aid and assistance from any other Mid-East nation except Syria, and considering what two-faced bastards the Syrians are, probably not even that.
This means that food into Iran will stop. Refined petroleum products, gasoline, will stop. Yes, they import it. Iran will then stop.
Iran is all bluster and bullshit and should have been stomped flat years ago. Eventually it will be.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:33 am
Not the size of the States/Russia/China maybe but 60m is hardly Libya either. The European nations involved in WW2 had many of their major cities flattened and getting food and fuel was a problem but they stuck it out. Israel also has the enemy in its midst and on its doorstep, even if Syria et al play no official part, Israel will be hampered by major terrorist actions.
I have great scepticism about these bunker busters. It seems they can go through twenty feet of concrete or a hundred feet of earth. Sounds a great weapon before the world knew of bunker busters but surely the Iranians can read the net too? Use secret chambers a mile away from the entrance. Make them 200 feet down or add a second 20 feet of concrete. How does the bomb know it has arrived in the bunker space and should explode? By the reduced resistance? Add false chambers above the real ones. Put their own explosives on the surface above the chambers to blow up the bomb. Interesting though, we will have to see.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:28 pm
I have the same scepticism but you still have to get in and out. If they can collapse all the entrances/exits, that’s the end of Iran’s nuke program. The people inside will die of starvation with several hundred feet of mangled steel, concrete and earth above them if the bombs don’t get them. I’m sure that the Iranians have dug deep and far, but even if they have escape ratholes coming out the side of some mountain somewhere that are yet undetected, they won’t stay undetected once the rats start pouring out.
It will look real funny on the satellite night-time infra-red when moving dots start coming out of nowhere.
The biggest military power in the region outside of Israel is Saudi Arabia, which we arm and support. They won’t attack Israel and they intend to stay Number Two, and not allow Iran to bully them.
Yes, Israel would suffer greatly from internal terror attacks as well as renewed rocket attacks and possibly an invasion from Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Syria, and there’d be one hell of a war.
The population size of a country matters less than it’s military capabilities. The Gulf War demonstrated that pretty well. Iran’s military capabilities are pretty limited, which is why they want nukes and the rockets to deliver them. They’ve concentrated on local defense, not offensive armies. Swarming across the desert to attack Israel is a proven folly. Therefor, a war with Iran will stay on its own soil outside of any rockets they launch or guerilla terrorists who invade elsewhere.