Is Iran intentionally goading the Neocons into invading them?

[JanMichael]

Perhaps? Sounds nuts I know but what are they attempting to do?

1. It'd probably require us to re-up the Draft and stretch the US military to precariously thin levels.

2. Might draw in Israel.

3. Might draw in Syria.

4. Might draw in Egypt.

5. Might destabilise Pakistan.

6. Might smash the oil market to bits.


or

Are they simply exercising their power as a sovereign nation to seek out nuclear power for energy and defence purposes?

Beats me but either way the Bushbots will probably fall for whatever ploy Iran uses. Ie. Bin Laden wanted US bases out of Saudi Arabia and Voila! The NeoCONS submitted.

[TheDebbieDee]

1. Goading the neocons, my ass..........

Maybe the real reason for this run-up to invading Iran is to keep our military off-balance by the frequent rotations of units into and out of the hot spot that is the ME.

Maybe * Admin is keeping enough troops stateside to defend us from an invasion from an invasion by a foreign power, but with the constant rotation of units back and forth to the hot zone, the commanders of these units are never anyplace long enough to make plans for anything like a rebellion or coup.

The Iranian invasion is part of the neocons plans to its keep power here in the US!

[wildcat78]

2. Trying to force God's hand

The necons truly believe that we are in the last days or, even worse, some believe feel belittled that nothing happend when in the year 2000.

Now, they feel they have to force God's hand.

This is very scary stuff. I consider these neocons to be just as dangerous as AQ.

[okieinpain]

3. what's aq

[ret5hd]

4. i think they are playing a delicate balancing game...

such as saddam did for years, such as n. korea is currently...

to "get by with" as much as possible, hanging their toes over the cliff, etc.

the goal, i believe, is to keep the resources (intel, etc) of the * admin stretched as thin as possible, second guessing each other, arguing, etc. in other words, keeping them as ineffective as possible, while staying just this side of an invisible and moving line.

[shraby]

5. Let's put it this way. The neocons are trying

to goad Iran into a war.

[mikehiggins]

6. In the real world a nation such as Iran does not challenge a

nation like the US unless they know there is little if any chance of being called on it. They have a real good idea of what the situation is in Iraq and how vulnerable the US would be trying to mount any sort of assault on Iran from Iraqi soil. Nobody else is likely to be willing to help, either. And sure they can launch fighter strikes from aircraft carriers but how effective are the carrier's defensive systems? Its a big ocean out there, and those babies are tempting targets for all sorts of people.

Nah, the Iranians know the emperor has no clothes, and they're proceeding to rub his nose in it.

[stray cat]

7. Iran is calling our bluff - they know Iraq has stretched us to thin

Bush is talking big but he has nothing left to back up an invasion. They know we don't have the capacity to invade and the nuclear sites are spread out and underground making them resistant to bombing even if we had any intelligence about their locations which we don't.

[tjwash]

9. Not only that...

...China and Russia have huge oil contracts with the Iranians.

Even with an army that wasn't stretched thin, starting a three front war with Iran being backed by 2 huge nations (one of them with a nuclear stockpile much larger than the United States), would be an impossible task.

One thing is certain however. GWB's legacy will be the restarting of the cold war.

[Clark2008]

11. And it might just not stay so cold.

When oil production starts to tank, it's every country for itself.

[TwilightZone]

8. Maybe they want new schools.

Hell, we can't build/fix schools here in the US, but we're building them by the dozens in Iraq.

Not to mention the billions we're spending rebuilding infrastructure we knocked down.

Get invaded; get billions.

(No, it's not worth it.)

[pretzel4gore]

10. the nation's interest don't seem to be a factor(?)

it's hard to fathom the thinking of moral perverts (they seem genius just because no one, not even monsters, have ever thought of PRETENDING as legitimate government policy) such as bushinc....one assumes that iran's leadership considers mass death of its citizens and cost of destroyed infastructure (resulting from shootout with haliburton, i mean the usa) in its dealings with the world community, but remember they sent WAVES OF TEENAGERS to clear minefields during iran iraq conflict, so their sense of reality might be more kiddie sandlot then actuality- even then, persia has been playing the game since alexander the great, and one must presume they learned a few lessons

[Just Me]

12. Maybe, they are one of a coalition of nations,...

,...which has seriously reflected on the affect of cooperating with exploitative multi-national corporations,...and based upon that reflection, they have decided, "enough".

[Strelnikov_]

13. This Is Directly Attributable To The Chimps Military Failure

Once military force is used, the threat of force no longer has the same effect. Therefore, the use of military force is always a failure. Remember, wars are started due to hubris, not doubt.

The fact that Iran is now thumbing its nose at the US is an indicator of the deteriorating condition of our position in Iraq. Iran now knows exactly how to 'beat' the neo-cons. The 'shock and awe' of the 1991 Gulf War is a distant memory.

They will absorb any bombing, just like Iraq did in 1991, in the knowledge that we no longer have the ability to mount ground operations against them. Bombing of Iran, by the US or, worse, Israel, will simply gain them more allies from around the Islamic, and probably wider, world resulting in a short term tactical loss but a long term strategic victory for them.

The neo-cons now know we do not have the forces, equipment or manufacturing infrastructure to take on such an undertaking. Even if the manpower were raised through a draft, where would the equipment to outfit them come from? The 'technological' advantage the US forces have requires a lot of high-cost equipment. That is why I think they are planning the 'air-strike' scenario. Bomb as much as they can, and hope that knocks their nuclear program back for a decade or more. Thing is, Iran will probably take the hit, and emerge at the end in a stronger geopolitical position.

The big question is, does Iran have the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz to shipping, through which 19% of the worlds petroleum passes daily.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/choke.html#HORMUZ

What happen if a closure of the Strait takes place in conjunction with terrorist attacks on the overland pipeline routes to ports outside the Persian Gulf? Just one way this scenario can escalate from 'limited' air-strikes to economic, and possibly nuclear, Armageddon.

It is beginning to appear that the Iraq invasion will go down in history as a parallel to Stalin's invasion of Finland. When Hitler observed the apparent weakness of the previously unassailable Soviet military, he was emboldened to attempt Operation Barbarossa. Like Hitler, the Iranian leadership is now emboldened by what they have observed.

And all this is due to the complete incompetence of the Chimp in his pursuit of this war. If they had decided Iraq must be taken, why did they not use adequate troop levels as advised by the Joint Chiefs or follow the advise of State Department experts for post-war reconstruction? Why did they rush to set up a wild west of crony capitalism, thus alienating most of the population?

So, it now appears that the Chimp’s war has probably, at best, cost us access to the Persian Gulf oil reserves, the entire purpose of the undertaking in the first place. And look how much they are doing to wean the country off a petroleum based transportation infrastructure in the face of the now inevitable reduction in supply of this energy source.

And you think the price of gas is high now?

[DELUSIONAL]

16. The US media whores can lie to America -- but not to Iran

Iran has a front row seat and they know that the US has lost the war in Iraq.

Your assessment of the situation is correct -- Iran has the land mass and the population and they also are ruled by religious fundamentalists.

To be a fundie one has to be crazy in the first place -- so the crazy little guy is going to take on the world's bully who has a glass knee. All Iran has to do is aim for the bully's knee.

I don't believe that the world can cure itself until ALL brands of religious fundamentalism are given a death blow. We are at a point where the people of the world are going to throw off the evil forces of rigid religious fundamentalism or go into a terminal death spiral lead by fundies marching backward in time.

[Strelnikov_]

17. And I Am Afraid That Knee Is Persian Gulf Oil

And the Iranian's ability to shut it down.

I have voiced this concern before, but I am afraid that with the advances in modern missiles, surface ships are going to prove even greater deathtraps than they were in WW II when the ascendance of the airplane dealt mortal blows to ships previously thought unassailable. My concern with the modern missile is that they are relatively simple compared to the countermeasure systems needed to protect against them.

History is riddled with weapons systems that looked good until the bullets fly, then the limitations become apparent. Some militaries adjust, as we did in WW II with our tanks. Others are destroyed when the system they relied on is so massively flawed, such as the French in 1940.

Iran has invested heavily in ASM systems. There has never been the concentrated use of ASM's that could occur in the event of a conflict with Iran.

What happens if we find that our highly touted anti-ASM systems, that have never been tested in combat, are less than effective? What happens is the Strait of Hormuz is closed, along with 1/8 +/- of the worlds daily petroleum supply.

Armageddon.

[leftchick]

14. Check out this asia Times article about "The Iran Nightmarre"....

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GH11Ak01.html

It will knock your socks off...

<snip>

The Iranian nightmare
By Michael Schwartz


<snip>

The road to Tehran is mined
At first, events looked to be moving in quite a different direction. Lost in the obscure pages of the early coverage of the Iraq war was a moment when, it seemed, the clerical regime in Iran flinched. Soon after Saddam fled and Baghdad became an American town, Iran suddenly entered into negotiations with Great Britain, France and Germany on ending its nuclear program, the most public point of friction with the US. After all, it was Saddam's supposed nuclear program that had been the casus belli for the American invasion, and Bush administration neo-conservatives had been hammering away at the Iranian program in a similar fashion.

Two developments ended this brief moment of seeming triumph for Washington. As a start, American officials, feeling their oats, balked at the tentative terms negotiated by the Europeans because they did not involve regime change in Iran. This hardline American stance gave the Iranian leadership no room to maneuver and stiffened their negotiating posture.

At the time, in the wake of its successful three-week war in Iraq, the Bush administration seemed ready, even eager, to apply extreme military pressure to Iran. According to Washington Post columnist William Arkin, the official US strategic plan (formally known as CONPLAN 8022-02) completed in November 2003, authorized "a preemptive and offensive strike capability against Iran and North Korea". An administration pre-invasion quip (reported by Newsweek on August 19, 2002) caught perfectly the post-invasion mood ascendant in Washington: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran."

A second key development neutralized the American ability to turn its military might in an Iranian direction: the rise of the Iraqi resistance. During the several months after the fall of Baghdad, the Saddamist loyalists who had initially resisted the US occupation were augmented by a broader and more resilient insurgency. As the character of the occupation made itself known, small groups of guerrillas began defending their neighborhoods from US military patrols.

... much mure.

[Yupster]

15. The Iranian government is immensely

unpopular with its people.

It is very much in its interest to keep a fight going between itself and the US. It is something it can unite its people behind.

The sad part is if we could back off Iran, the Iranian people may soon take care of their government of Mullahs themselves.