Potential US attack on Iran

Overview

There is persistent discussion of a possible United States invasion of Iran, despite there being at least a few obvious and powerful reasons against and no compelling reasons in favor.

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Links

Events

• 2007-03-23 2007 Iranian seizure of Royal Navy personnel

News/Editorials

• 2007-04-02 US jet fighters violate Iran's airspace: are we seeing the beginning of a series of provocative "incidents" designed to provide an excuse for war?
• 2007-03-14 Triggering the Next Iranian Revolution, Part I and Part 2, by Poland's former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Professor Grzegorz W. Kolodko: very cogent statement of the situation
• 2007-03-05 Kidnapped or Defected? Top Iranian General Disappears by Hoda Osman and Christopher Isham
• 2007-02-25 US generals ‘will quit’ if Bush orders Iran attack
• 2007-02-21 Iranian official offers glimpse from within: A desire for U.S. (as an) ally by Christiane Amanpour, CNN chief international correspondent
• 2006-11-22 Bomb Iran by Joshua Muravchik
• 2006-11-20 The Next Act by Seymour M. Hersh: inside notes on the administration's Iran strategy, both pre- and post- election
• 2006-09-26 Why Bush Will Nuke Iran by Paul Craig Roberts
• 2006-05-04 The Intelligence War Over Iran by Robert Parry, TomPaine.com: "Intelligence Czar John Negroponte splashes cold water on the neocons who are hot to attack Iran"
• 2006-01-17 coming soon: the neo-cons next war... by Krassimir Petrov

Projects

• stopIranWar.com: petition site created by Wes Clark's WesPAC organization

Discussion

From Contrary Brin [1]:

Russ Daggatt said:

These people really, truly are insane. The same Joshua Muravchik (a “resident scholar” at the American Enterprise Institute) quoted above has an op-ed piece in the LA Times titled simply and honestly "Bomb Iran". Among the insights of this 'scholar": "WE MUST bomb Iran . ... wouldn't such a U.S. air attack on Iran inflame global anti-Americanism? Wouldn't Iran retaliate in Iraq or by terrorism? Yes, probably. That is the price we would pay. But the alternative is worse. ... Ahmadinejad wants to be the new Lenin. Force is the only thing that can stop him." This crazy man, who is getting ink in Foreign Policy and the op-ed page of the LA Times, doesn’t even seem to be aware that the president of Iran, far from being a dictator, isn’t even particularly powerful in that government. As Scott Ritter notes in the New Republic ("The Case for Engagement"): "For all the attention the Western media give to Ahmadinejad's foreign policy pronouncements, the reality is that his effective influence is limited to domestic issues. The citizens of Tehran I spoke with, from every walk of life, understood this and were genuinely perplexed as to why we in the West treat Ahmadinejad as if he were a genuine head of state. "The man has no real power," a former Revolutionary Guard member told me. "The true power in Iran resides with the Supreme Leader." The real authority is indeed the Ayatollah Sayeed Ali Khamenei, successor to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini." More than two-thirds of the population of Iran is under 30. Unlike North Korea or Iraq under Saddam, the people of Iran are not isolated from the rest of the world. Iranian youth, in particular, are quite Westernized. Before Bush deemed Iran part of the "Axis of Evil" (a watershed event in the relations between the US and Iran) reformers were on the ascendancy in Iran. After teetering for years and almost toppling before liberalizing pressure, the hardliners have benefited from Bush’s blunders and belligerence (even in our country, people tilt toward the hardliners when they feel threatened by external forces). Unless we do more really stupid things, like bombing Iran, it is probably just a matter of time before the clerics lose power. As the Washington Post reported last June: "Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by U.S. forces three years ago, an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the Near East bureau of the State Department. It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table – including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups. "But top Bush administration officials, convinced the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse, belittled the initiative. Instead, they formally complained to the Swiss ambassador who had sent the fax with a cover letter certifying it as a genuine proposal supported by key power centers in Iran, former administration officials said. ..." Think of it this way. Bush will have squandered thousands of American lives and a trillion dollars, destroying US military readiness in the process, in order to take out Iran's two main rivals, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam in Iraq. AND HE GOT NOTHING FROM IRAN IN RETURN! In addition to making Iran the dominant power in the region, he managed to undermine the reformers in that country. AND actually made our relationship with Iran WORSE. Now THAT is diplomatic skill! Potential US attack on Iran/excerpt