Why the West will attack Iran

[tocqueville]

By Spengler

Why did French President Jacques Chirac last week threaten to use non-conventional - that is, nuclear - weapons against terrorist states? And why did Iran announce that it would shift foreign-exchange reserves out of European banks (although it has since retracted this warning)? The answer lies in the nature of Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Iran needs nuclear weapons, I believe, not to attack Israel, but to support imperial expansion by conventional military means.

Iran's oil exports will shrink to zero in 20 years, just at the demographic inflection point when the costs of maintaining an aged population will crush its state finances, as I reported in Demographics and Iran's imperial design (September 13, 2005). Just outside Iran's present frontiers lie the oil resources of Iraq, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, and not far away are the oil concentrations of eastern Saudi Arabia. Its neighbors are quite as alarmed as Washington about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, and privately quite happy for Washington to wipe out this capability.

It is remarkable how quickly an international consensus has emerged for the eventual use of force against Iran. Chirac's indirect reference to the French nuclear capability was a warning to Tehran. Mohamed ElBaradei, whose Nobel Peace Prize last year was awarded to rap the knuckles of the United States, told Newsweek that in the extreme case, force might be required to stop Iran's acquiring a nuclear capability. German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag that the military option could not be abandoned, although diplomatic efforts should be tried first. Bild, Germany's largest-circulation daily, ran Iranian President Mahmud Ahmedinejad's picture next to Adolf Hitler's, with the headline, "Will Iran plunge the world into the abyss?"

The same Europeans who excoriated the United States for invading Iraq with insufficient proof of the presence of weapons of mass destruction already have signed on to a military campaign against Iran, in advance of Iran's gaining WMD. There are a number of reasons for this sudden lack of squeamishness, and all of them lead back to oil.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA24Ak01.html

[tocqueville]

1. More reading : Turkey feels Iran chill

By Iason Athanasiadis

TEHRAN - Iran's supply of natural gas to Turkey was inexplicably slashed by 70% last Friday, in one of the coldest months of the year. On the same day, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul raised the tension between the two countries by calling for greater Iranian "transparency" over Tehran's nuclear program.

"There should not be an armament race in the region," he said. "We follow a policy to clean the entire Middle East WMD ."

While ordinary Turks braced for shortages and chilly weeks ahead, analysts speculated that the cut was a calculated move by Tehran aimed at warning Ankara not to become involved in its escalating row with the West.

Until recently, Ankara had remained largely silent on the view it takes of Iranian efforts to develop a nuclear energy program. But despite publicly supporting Iran's quest for nuclear energy, Turkish officials have privately spoken of their fears at the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA24Ak02.html

[orwell]

2. Smells like...

...BS.

The West will attack Iran because they want their foot on Asia's neck.

It's all about global domination. Same as it ever was.

[tocqueville]

3. well it's about the same

but in the short-term perspective the West (including the Europeans) "cannot" allow to lose Iraq to the Iranians. Not only for the oil, but for the total regional instability it would cause.

Imagine the US thrown out of Iraq by the Shiites, the Saudis don't want to have Iran next door, because they know they are next. Specially a nuclear Iran. Even Pakistan is worried, not to talk about "secular" Turkey.

Oil prices would go ballistic.

Israel and China (even India) are primarily concerned to.

Anyway we go towards a major confrontation and it is going to be ugly. Bush kicked the anthill and now you have ants everywhere, ready to bite....

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. Bush kicked the anthill

[applegrove]

5. I think Bush "upped" the need for places like Iran to have the bomb

as a deterrent. Thing is - when Iran gets it - what is going to stop them from passing on the expertise to other less stable (let's ignore human rights here) Islamic countries. That is what gets me. Where does it stop. So far it has only been seriously huge countries with seriously vast levels of expertise who have the bomb. So what happens when it begins to be transfered for ideological reasons.

I don't think Iran would bomb Israel any more than Israel would bomb Iran. In both cases just a huge deterrent to bad behaviour in their midst. But Iran would relay the technology while Israel will & has not.

Worrisome.

[tocqueville]

6. Iranian irrational behaviour can be discussed...

I don't know how mad the current Iranian prime is (some worrisome articles have depicted him as kind of an Islamic version of the "rapture" fundie), but I think that the prime reason for the Iranians to get nukes (which would take 5-10 years) is to assure themselves NOT to be invaded...

But the West isn't going to take the risk. As the article says, when the US retires (in the event of a postponed attack from the West) from Iraq, a civil war is likely and the Iranians are not going to stand still.
It means destabilization of the entire region... and the consequences are devastating...

This situation reminds in a way of the collapse of Yugoslavia. In that later case it wasn't caused by the West. But the West had to intervene twice to prevent a major conflict in the Mediterranean... which could endanger the oil routes...