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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iran confident of ability to hit back if US attacks |
| 2006-02-03 |
| Iran's clerical regime is supremely confident, has a firm grip on power and is ready to retaliate against attacks by America or Israel with missiles or by activating terrorist allies, according to the latest US intelligence assessment. In his first public address on the threats facing the US, John Negroponte, its national intelligence director, delivered an implied rebuke to those in Washington hoping the West can engineer regime change in Teheran. But as the International Atomic Energy Agency's governing body prepared to vote on a resolution to report Iran to the UN Security Council, Mr Negroponte suggested there was no imminent threat of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. Teheran "probably" did not have an atomic bomb or the fissile material to make one, he said. But the risk Iran could make or buy a nuclear device and mount it on its missiles was "reason for immediate concern", he added. Mr Negroponte told the Senate's intelligence committee: "Iran already has the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East. And Teheran views its ballistic missiles as an integral part of its strategy to deter and, if necessary, retaliate against forces in the region, including United States forces." Washington's neo-conservatives drew heart from President George W Bush's veiled call in Tuesday's State of the Union address for the Iranian people to rise up against the mullahs. But Mr Negroponte's analysis highlighted the difficulties of confronting Iran, politically or militarily. "The regime today is more confident and assertive than it has been since the early days of the Islamic Republic. Several factors work in favour of the clerical regime's continued hold on power," he added, citing Teheran's "generous public spending" funded by record oil revenues as one of them. He also noted that the Iranian-backed Hizbollah group in Lebanon "has a worldwide support network and is capable of attacks against US interests if it feels its Iranian patron is threatened". Mr Negroponte said Iran's involvement in Iraq was a "particular concern" but added: "Teheran's intentions to inflict pain on the United States in Iraq have been constrained by its caution to avoid giving Washington an excuse to attack it, also the clerical leadership's general satisfaction with trends in Iraq, and Iran's desire to avoid chaos on its border." While Washington's hawks believe America needs to be more confrontational towards Teheran, Bush administration officials are speaking with great caution. In particular, they are hailing the diplomacy that has won the support of Russia and China in hauling Iran before the UN Security Council. Stephen Rademaker, the acting assistant secretary of state for security and non-proliferation, said that America's patience had "paid off". He added that America was still hoping Iran would prove to be a textbook example of how to deal with a crisis through "effective multilateralism". |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #9 controlled triggereing to condense the mass is the trick, Bobby - hard to do without highly accurate triggers, et al. If I was one of these rogues, I'd make sure I tested at least one. The blackmail (which is what they all want) power is much higher with an acknowledged workable nuke |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-02-03 23:30 |
| #8 Regime Change in Iran will take ten decades. A thorough trashing will take six weeks, if we do it right. I don't want to be at war for another century, Mr. President, I'm an impatient old fogie, and I want it over yesterday! Just blast everything apart until they live lives lower than road-kill, and they'll quieten down and be nice doggies. If that doesn't work, turn the place into a glass parking lot. You can drill through glass. With directional drilling, you can capture 99.9% of the oil from the least radioactive areas. And radiation decays. People don't come back from being blasted into atoms. The few that survive will understand that messing with the US is a definite way to shorten your lifespan - immediately. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2006-02-03 22:51 |
| #7 According to the current issue of Scientific American, any idiot (Mullahs included) can build a Hiroshima-type bomb if they can get the Highly-Enriched Uranium (HEU). This type of A-Bomb was not even tested, because the physicists KNEW it would work. Nagasaki-type (implosion) bombs require much less HEU (or plutonium) but are MUCH harder to build. I believe there are Rantburgers more knowledgable than I, so..... did I get it right? |
| Posted by: Bobby 2006-02-03 20:41 |
| #6 Doesn't everyone know those Mullahs are magical, and have fairy dust that will allow outdated 30 year old American equipment, and miscellaneous equipment from other places stand up to our current technology. Ayatollah Khomeni made a 100 years supply of fairy dust before he descended into the firey regions! Iran can't loose ;) |
| Posted by: BigEd 2006-02-03 13:19 |
| #5 "Engineering regime change from within" has got to be one of the sillier notions around. It has long been noted that revolutions come exclusively from the middle classes, in that the wealthy can buy exemption from the rules, and the poor do not have the resources to do much of anything. But pushing the middle classes so hard that they are forced to revolt just tears a country apart. Iran would have to be like Zimbabwe before there would be a chance for a revolution. So what we are really focusing on in Iran is to split the Persians from the Kurds, Arabs and Baluchs. An entirely different concept, and one that even on its own might not cause "regime change" in Persian Iran, just deny them many of the resources they need to be obnoxious. But laying the groundwork for this isn't easy. We must convince the Iranian Kurds to join with the Iraqi Kurds, in a "greater Kurdistan" either inside Iraq or possibly creating enough inertia to form their own country. Then we must make it up to Iraq by inviting the Iranian Arabs to join with the Iraqi Shiites in the South, enlarging Iraq. The Baluchs are most problematic, in that they are probably not able to exist as an independent nation. For this reason, we would encourage Pakistan to grab Iranian Baluchistan, which would solve much of the Baluch problem in the region. All told, the bottom line is the partitioning of Iran. But the only way that the international community would accept this notion would be as a "national death penalty" against Iran for aggressively using a nuclear weapon (hopefully unsuccessfully), which would sway all of the nuclear powers to such a radical solution as partitioning. Stripped of its oil and reduced in stature, Persia would no longer be a regional threat, but could become a true partner in the Middle East. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-02-03 09:24 |
| #4 Mr Negroponte said Iran's involvement in Iraq was a "particular concern" but added: "Teheran's intentions to inflict pain on the United States in Iraq have been constrained by its caution to avoid giving Washington an excuse to attack it, also the clerical leadership's general satisfaction with trends in Iraq, and Iran's desire to avoid chaos on its border." Pain avoidance may be the key Ponte, but they're still in dire need, and loooong overdue for a good arsss whoop'n. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-02-03 09:21 |
| #3 "effective multilateralism". ahahahahaha..yeah right. That's nearly as funny as "moderate muslim". |
| Posted by: JerseyMike 2006-02-03 08:31 |
| #2 Today's edict: No lampposts |
| Posted by: Jake-the-Peg 2006-02-03 04:25 |
| #1 The Iranian tyranny has so many internal enemies, that the US intelligence apparatus has no doubt benefited from information given by innumerable walk-ins. In that context, targeting can be effective to the point of neutralizing the enemy, quickly. I believe that 2 weeks after the attacks begin, Ahmadnejad will be hanged from a lamppost. |
| Posted by: CaziFarkus 2006-02-03 03:26 |