Iran Vows Large-Scale Retaliation if U.S. Attacks

[babylonsister]

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2799730&C=mideast

Iran Vows Large-Scale Retaliation if U.S. Attacks
By RIAD KAHWAJI, TEHRAN, Iran


If U.S. forces strike Iranian nuclear facilities, Iranian officials say Tehran will respond by triggering all-out regional war.

“Ballistic missiles would be fired in masses against targets in Arab gulf states and Israel,” one Foreign Ministry official said. “The objective would be to overwhelm U.S. missile defense systems with dozens and maybe hundreds of missiles fired simultaneously at specific targets.”

Tehran’s primary targets would be U.S. military installations and strategic targets in U.S.-allied Arabian Gulf states, including oil depots, refineries, power plants and desalination facilities. U.S. warships would also face waves of surface-to-surface cruise missiles sent to overwhelm their countermeasures, said several senior Iranian officials whose comments reflect the official line but who could not obtain permission to speak on the record at short notice.

“The name of the game is simply to saturate strategic targets with missile firepower in order to render the Patriots and other defenses useless,” said Hassan Fahs, a journalist and political analyst based here.

One Iranian official with knowledge of the leadership’s national-security discussions said his country’s leaders anticipate that U.S. forces will strike with no warning against the military’s command-and-control network, and have ordered ballistic- and cruise-missile battery crews to launch the retaliation plan within an hour after a U.S. attack begins.

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[Pavulon]

1. Kinda scary

what arab states. I guess they mean Iraq? Maybe saudi?

Carriers are strategic nuclear assets. The response to an attack on a carrier could be a nuclear strike.

But this topic cycles every few weeks. Iran does nothing, keeps funding the insurgency. We do nothing..

Neither side has an interest in conventional war.

The EU does have an interest in a non nuclear iran, that is where this will become interesting.

[Strelnikov_]

4. "Iran does nothing, keeps funding the insurgency"

The Sunni insurgency?

Yea, right.

[jwirr]

6. EU also buys much of their oil from Iran.

[Double T]

2. bushco may do a lot of saber rattling, BUT wouldn't dare start............

WW-III.

[don954]

3. how sure of that are you?

im not as sure as i once was...

[kineneb]

5. or "Iran plays chess, while US is playing marbles"

2,500 years of being a nation has taught them how to BS their way through many things...they are calling our bluff. I imagine things might get interesting, considering they are threatening the Arabian oil states as well. Even if only half of the bluster is true, they still could make a jolly hash out of Bandar Bush's home turf. Without ever have any nukes.

Checkmate.

[A HERETIC I AM]

7. What good is checkmate if your opponent then smashes the board....

and then your house and your family?

My biggest fear is also my biggest conviction: The American public is one massive, dramatic attack away from demanding the utter destruction of a perceived enemy. If Cheney and his ilk are successful in provoking Iran and a massive military strike is made by them that takes out say, 2 aircraft carriers and several thousand sailors as well as leveling Dubai, for instance.....I honestly think we are a hairs breadth away from setting fire to several million people.

Thing is, they know it too. Th Iranians aren't stupid. And they aren't the USSR in 1969 meaning capable of "Mutually Assured Destruction".

They would seriously lose in a big bullet shoot and they know it. What scares me most is the likes of the Cheney's of the world seem to think it is a viable option.