Reseachers postulate Israeli tactical nuclear strike on Iran....

[Christians4LessGvt]

US researchers postulate
Israeli tactical nuclear strike on Iran

DEBKAfile Special Report

March 28, 2010, 11:30 PM (GMT+02:00)


Tactical Nuclear Weapon

Scenarios of a potential Israeli attack on Iran - usually without Washington's assent -
abound in leading US media in the last 24 hours. They contrast sharply with the impression
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been trying to convey to the public that he
and President Barack Obama were of one mind on the Iranian question when they talked
at the White House last Tuesday, March 23, but  the president wanted more Israeli concessions
to get talks restarted with the Palestinians.

debkafile's military sources point in particular to the work of two eminent experts on Iran's
nuclear program, Anthony Cordesman and American-Jordanian Abdullah Toqan for the Washington
Institute for Strategic Affairs, who report the belief in some American military circles that
"nuclear weapons are the only weapons that can destroy targets deep underground or in tunnels"
The quote was embodied in a 208-page report published Friday, March 26 under the heading:
Options in Dealing with Iran's Nuclear Program.

They explain that because of the limited scale of its air and missile forces, Israel would resort to
"using these [nuclear] warheads as a substitute for conventional weapons, given the difficulty
its jets would face in reaching Iran for anything more than a one-off sortie."

Our sources note that in July 2009, the two researchers (in a 114-page report) maintained that
the Israeli Air Force possessed the aircraft and resources for striking Iran's nuclear facilities.
This view disputed the estimates generally current Washington at the time. Then, too, Cordesman
and Toqan were of the opinion that it was not necessary to hit scores of targets to cripple Iran's
nuclear bomb program: Seven to nine sites would suffice.

Our Iranian sources report that Tehran ran off thousands of copies of that report for distribution
among its intelligence and Revolutionary Guards commanders, who were told to study every word,
photo and map. Iran's rulers took the work as seriously as though they had scooped a top-secret
Israeli plan of operation.

In their latest work, the two researchers find that "Ballistic missiles or submarine-launched cruise
missiles [such as those with which Israeli Dolphin submarines are armed] could serve for Israeli tactical
nuclear strikes without interference from Iranian air defenses."

Saturday, March 27, the day after the Cordesman-Toqan paper was published, The New York Times revealed:
" international inspectors and Western intelligence agencies say they suspect that Tehran is preparing
to build [two] more sites," six months after its secret enrichment plant was discovered in Qom.

The report goes on to say:  "The most compelling circumstantial evidence? is that while Iran appears to
be making new equipment to enrich uranium, that equipment is not showing up in the main plant that
inspectors visit regularly [at Natanz or at Qom.]" Small manufacturing factories spread around Iran to
avoid detection and sabotage "are a particular target of American, Israeli and European intelligence
agencies," some of which have been penetrated," the report says.  Iran "has encountered difficulties
in manufacturing centrifuges, the machines that spin at very high speeds to enrich uranium."

Then, Sunday, March 28, The New York Times followed up with proposed scenario, captioned:
"Imagining an Israeli Strike on Iran," based on a simulation exercise conducted last December
by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Its main point is that if Israel goes ahead with this attack, using a refueling base set up in
the Saudi desert without Saudi knowledge, Washington will essentially tell its leaders they
have "made a mess," and instruct them "to sit in a corner while the United States tries to
clean things up." The exercise does not indicate how the US will clean things up, whether
diplomatically or militarily - or both - or just concentrate on keeping the Gulf oil nations
safe from Iranian retaliation. Iran next defies warnings and fires missiles at Israel, including
its nuclear center at Dimona, with minimal damage and casualties - the strategy being "to
mount low-level attacks on Israel while portraying the United States as a paper tiger?"

debkafile's sources infer from this simulated war game that the Americans believe that,
aside from the confrontation over Iran's nuclear facilities, Israel and Iran will try and use
their conflict to manipulate US policy.

The next stage would be for Hizballah to fire up to 100 rockets a day into northern Israel,
following which Israel would launch a 48-hour campaign by air and special forces against
Lebanon to destroy Hizbalah's military strength. The games simulators then predict an
Iranian attack on the Saudi oil industry center at Dahran with conventional missiles,
mining the Strait of Hormuz and damaging US oil shipping. At that point, Washington
will embark on a massive reinforcement of the Gulf region. It is clear that the US will
then aim at destroying all Iranian, air, ground and sea targets in and around the Strait
of Hormuz to inflict a "significant defeat" on Iran's forces. The game is projected to end
eight days after the initial Israeli strike.

[Plane]

The only reason to use A-bombs on Iran is to decapitate and thereby prevent A-bombs from Iran.

How could you possibly be certain to accomplish this ?

Certainty is very key.

[Michael Tee]

I think at this point that DEBKAFILE has used up all its credibility and can be read only as a source of inspiration for futuristic sci-fi novels of hi-tech warfare.

[Christians4LessGvt]

We'll see.....

Under dailly threat of annihilation from Iran,
Israel is abandoned by it's one friend
The United States of America.
Fear not.
We've got another friend who is even more powerful....


Victory for what's right !

[Michael Tee]

<<Victory for what's right !>>

Right on! 

Now tell me what's right about kicking Arabs out of their homes in East Jerusalem and out onto the street to make way for new Jewish settlements?  What's right about armed settlers stoning and beating Palestinian kids on their way to school while Israeli soldiers sent to protect them look the other way?

[Christians4LessGvt]

"Now tell me what's right about kicking Arabs out of their homes in East Jerusalem
and out onto the street to make way for new Jewish settlements?"  

Now tell me what was right about kicking Canadian Indians out of their
homes and out onto the street to make way for European settlements?

By the way just so everyone will know and not be confused by your
ridiculous description....the land involved in this Israeli housing project
that is at the heart of this latest controversy was purchased
in 1985 as was the land for many other Israeli housing projects.

And by the way East Jerusalem was captured from Jordan in the 1967 war..
Israel didn't attack Jordan....Jordan attacked Israel. Human history is
full of conquests from the spoils of war....Israel is not alone.

Jerusalem Mayor:
The demand to halt construction by religion is not legal in the United States
or in any other free place in the world. I do not presume that any government
would demand to freeze construction in the United States based on race,
religion or gender and the attempt to demand it from Jerusalem is a double
standard and inconceivable.

[Xavier_Onassis]

What would be inconceivable in the US would be to take taxpayer money and use it exclusively to build housing for members of a specific religious group: Orthodox Jews, Amish, Branch Davidians, Polygamous Mormons, Wiccans, Muslims, Satanists.

East Jerusalem was taken by conquest AFTER Israel signed the UN Charter. It cannot be used for colonization unless an agreement with the dispossessed is reached.
 

[Michael Tee]

<<Now tell me what was right about kicking Canadian Indians out of their
homes and out onto the street to make way for European settlements?>>

The English settled the Indians' claims, the Indians got their reserves and the English got the rest.  Outstanding law claims are still working their way through the court system.   But the Indians, unlike the Palestinian Arabs, received full rights of citizenship in the new nation being built.  They can move anywhere, settle anywhere, unconditionally and without restriction.  They are not confined to refugee camps on the reserves, forced to go through long, humiliating check-points on their own land to enter land reserved for the newcomers where they can work but cannot live.

As far as war and conquest are concerned, XO already pointed it out quite clearly for you: a conquest does NOT confer the right of settlement in international law.  Israel is clearly a lawbreaker in open defiance of international law and UN rulings on the subject.

And I'd still like to see your answer to my question, "What's right about armed settlers stoning and beating Palestinian children on their way to school while Jewish soldiers, sent to protect them, loo, the other way?"

[Christians4LessGvt]

"The English settled the Indians' claims"

Yeah FINALLY...and what does "settled" mean?

I wonder if the Indians agree everythong is "settled"?

How great a deal do you get from a conqueror?

Maybe a 100 years of child abuse to Canadian Indian children
that Canada only recently admitted to?

"the Indians got their reserves and the English got the rest"

Wow...sounds like a great deal....LOL

Only 5% of Canadian land is farmed in Canada.  
It is noteworthy the the English believed for the past 400 years that
"The natives were wasting the land by not farming it, so did not deserve
to live there."  Following this rationalization the British people in Canada
should be driven from Canada for wasting the land.

"But the Indians, unlike the Palestinian Arabs, received full rights of
citizenship in the new nation being built. They can move anywhere, settle
anywhere, unconditionally and without restriction"

They can now....but get real they couldn't vote in Quebec until 1968.
Some tribes were not allowed by the Canadian Gvt to control their own schools until 1990.

The World Health Organization reports that Canada's 750,000 native people suffer poor
health conditions and are at greater risk of tuberculosis, diabetes, suicide, violent death
and alcohol-related illness and injury than other Canadians.

They are not confined to refugee camps on the reserves, forced to go through long,
humiliating check-points on their own land to enter land reserved for the newcomers
where they can work but cannot live.

Because they were destroyed.
You behave when you are destroyed
Thats the problem.
The Israelis should destroy their enemy like the Americans and Canadians did.

Look at the words of Duncan Campbell Scott, who was Canada's deputy superintendent
of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932, wrote in a government document:
"I want to get rid of the Indian problem. . . . Our objective is to continue until there is
not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic."
The "kill the Indian in the child" wording is attributed to Scott.

Investigations have established that thousands of Indian, Inuit and Metis children suffered
mental, physical and sexual abuse in 132 boarding schools, most of them run by churches.
The first opened in the late 1800s; the last -in Saskatchewan -continued operating until 1996.

Yeah sure....throw rocks at Israel while your own track record STINKS!

"As far as war and conquest are concerned, XO already pointed it out quite clearly for you:
a conquest does NOT confer the right of settlement in international law"  

Yeah go tell that to people basically everywhere...that now sit on land that was at one time
someone elses'. XO can point out all he wants as he sits pretty on land stolen from others
while he hammers Israel for doing the same thing he benefits from today.

"And I'd still like to see your answer to my question, "What's right about armed settlers stoning
and beating Palestinian children on their way to school while Jewish soldiers, sent to protect them,
look, the other way?"

It's abouit as right as Palestinian gunmen gunning down/killing multiple students in a
Jewish seminary in March 2008.

[Michael Tee]

The problem with CU4's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian problem is that while it sounds logical on the surface, it's actually totally illogical because it ignores or wishes away one vital fact, the fact of human progress.  CU4 likes to posit a false equivalency between the events of 150 years ago and the events of today . . . well, if it was OK for the whites to dispossess the Indians then, it must be OK for the Jews to dispossess the Arabs today.

How many objections can we raise to that?
1.  If it was OK for the Romans to throw the Christians to the lions for popular entertainment back then, surely it's OK to kill despised minority people today for popular entertainment too, otherwise we are all hypocrites.
2.  Two wrongs don't make a right.
3.  It was wrong to treat the Indians as they were treated and there were voices even then calling it wrong.

The fact of the matter is, that a fair settlement WAS made of the Indians' land claims in some instances, and other claims are before the courts as we speak.  The ultimate resolution of the problem is still on-going, but the settlement was fair enough and the conduct of the English conciliatory enough that the Indians were and are prepared to entrust the matter to the courts and the law, and for the most part have NOT resorted to violent action.

CU4 has exposed some of the most sordid examples of injustice that he could find in the history of our Canadian Indians.  I agree with him, these things are terrible and despicable.  Some of them, like the abuse of native children in residential schools, were successfully covered up for decades, so the Indians did not even know about them.   But even on the basis of the known abuse, racism and inequality, the combined grievances of the Indians were not such that they felt they had no alternative to rising up in arms against their oppressors.  CU4 attributes the lack of armed Indian resistance to the degree to which they were "broken."  As if that could make the oppression right.  I think right there, CU4 just made my case, for the inference to be drawn from his argument seems to be that if they had NOT been "broken," if they had maintained enough strength for armed resistance, then that armed resistance would have been totally justified.

Here you have to ask yourself, IF the Israelis failed to "break" the Palestinians the same way that the English broke the Indians, that in no way affects the legitimacy of Palestinian armed resistance any more than the success of the English in "breaking" the Indians can delegitimize any armed resistance that the Indians could have been able to offer.  The resistance in both cases could not depend for legitimacy on the success or failure of the colonizing power to "break" the native inhabitants, but on the injustice of the invasion, expulsion and occupation itself.

So the short answer to CU4's phony conflation of the stolen Indian lands with the on-going occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of the Gaza Strip is, simply:  Here in Canada, that's a dead issue.  What remaining land is being fought over in court today is NOT the properties on which the whites are living today, but vast swaths of mineral-rich wasteland which 99% of our population have never set eyes upon.

[Amianthus]

Maybe I should start a movement to return control of Mexico to Austria.

[Christians4LessGvt]

Michael Tee's logic:

"well we got our huge theft under the wire...150 years ago....even
though all Canadian Indians were still not able to vote in Canada until 1968...
so we can all sit at Starbucks and throw stones at Israel...pretending
we are on a high horse but our diaper is full of shit too"

Canada's land is every bit as stolen as Israel's if not more so....just because
the horrible theft was done years ago does not make it ok....why not
return at least half of Canada to it's "rightful owners" the native Indians?
Why do you Michael Tee have the right to keep "squatting" on native
Canadian's lands? Because it happened years ago? Should White Americans
use that excuse concerning slavery? "Well thats a settled issue
that happened years ago". Canada has the same duty to return
"stolen property" as Israel. Michael Tee's logic? Ha Ha Ha
the Statute Of Limitations Has Run Out So I get To Keep
All My Stolen Goodies, and then be outraged when
others settle their disputes"

Michael is right about one thing:
 "The ultimate resolution of the problem is still on-going"
and thats true all over the world in violent and non-violent wars over land
in the year 2010. There was a bombing just today in Russia over
a land dispute. Somebody thinks Russia "stole" some land from them
many years ago.....somebody thinks they were and are being treated
badly by the "Russian Occupiers". Does Michael Tee condemn the
Russians for injustice over the 1940s transportation of Chechens to
Central Asia, with enormous loss of life, by dictator Josef Stalin?
No No No No Michael Tee's outrage is reserved for Israel while he
sits in luxury in the stolen lands of Canada. Michael cheers for certain
"favored groups" violence but then pretends in other disputes
"human progress" is a reason that brutality should be stopped.

[Michael Tee]

It's really funny how the Canadian Indians have largely abandoned violence and are prepared to let their land claims work their way through the courts, while CU4 seems more upset about their problems than they are.

Whatever happened in the past is past, CU4.  Bad things happened, attempts were made to redress them and some of the outstanding disputes are before the courts.  If the Canadian Indians have accepted the situation and are prepared to let the courts take care of their remaining claims, so be it.

The theft of land, the eviction into the streets, the stoning and beating of Palestinian children by Jewish settlers, these aren't things that stopped in 1968, they are going on as we speak.  The Palestinians AREN'T prepared to let the courts in Israel settle the problem, because they have excellent reasons not to trust those courts.  TODAY (not as of 1968) the Palestinians are prevented by force from returning to the lands they used to inhabit.  Jews farm their land and harvest their crops while they, the former owners, watch from refugee camps.

The Palestinians aren't outnumbered by the Jews to the extent that the Indians were outnumbered by the whites.  They don't have any reason to stop their armed resistance and so they won't.  They'd have to be crazy to give up the fight or leave it to the Israeli courts.  There isn't enough land in all of Israel to give the Palestinians the same kind of reserves that the English gave to the Indians in Canada.  I guess the real difference is that in Canada the English stole the land of the Indians and did a lot of shitty things to them, but they made it up in the end at least to the grudging satisfaction of the Indians, not complete restitution but enough so that they wouldn't feel that armed resistance was the only way; OTOH, in Palestine, the Jews stole the land of the Arabs and did a lot of shitty things to them, but were not and are not able to make it up to them with land or anything else, and so the Arabs must continue with armed resistance as the only viable means of redress.

[BSB]

A point of view taken by some both in Iran and out:

Not only is Israel a member of the Mushroom Shaped Cloud Club but so are Pakistan and India. Like Iraq under Saddam, Iran does not have a strong enough conventional force to project substantial self-protective power in the region. Therefore they feel a need to arm themselves beyond the ability to fight only within conventional theater.

Should this view be respected? If it were to be respected it might be a view that the United States could turn in its, and Israel's, favor.


BSB

[BSB]

Snowblower: "Whatever happened in the past is past...."

One more time: Snowblower says, "Whatever happened in the past is past...."

I believe Crocat used to call this supplying the rope at your own hanging.


BSB