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The Iranian Buildup To War With The West

I hope this thread will serve as a permanent record of the facts, thoughts and feels leading up to what looks like a final confrontation between Iran and the West over the matter of Nuclear weapons.

I think Iran's insistence on having nukes will provoke a war that Iran wants. Either they get nukes and we hold our breath while Israel braces for Iran to wipe them off the map, which would trigger WW4 or we draw a line in the sand and do what we have to do. This would include diplomacy and sanctions and if necessary military attacks and, if Iran crosses the line, responding by launching air strikes to destroy the Iranian nuclear weapon production sites spread around Iran and deeply buried below ground.

This might trigger a massive uprising of Muslims who could see this as a more serious offense to Islam than the invasion of Iraq. There are thousands who might possibly rise up in armed jihad around the world.

Also, there are some who believe some of the former Soviet Union's missing nuclear devices have been smuggled to strategic locations around the world and await a signal of some kind before being detonated. There are independant reports which suggest an America Hiroshima scenario. (See the new fall season CBS TV network show, "Jericho.")

The danger of Iran having nuclear weapons is that they would be able to use them to intimidate their neighbors to achieve regional and eventually global supremacy and that they would follow up on Ahmadinejad's vow to rescue the Palestinians, SOON and to wipe Israel off the map.

Israel can defend themselves to a point. The sheer number of Iranian nuke sites are more than the IDF could handle by themselves. These would be a stiff challenge for US forces to bomb completely. And whether that was successful or not the real danger would be the possible unleashing of terrorists and terrorism by the world's leading terrorism exporter.

Here are a few signs of the Iranians preparing for war.

Here they are moving to eliminate dissent. And when we hear no protests coming from Iran but lots of dissent from Americans in the next weeks and months over whatever the conflict becomes if you see our side becoming discouraged and wonder why the Iranians aren't discouraged, lack of dissent in the media is one reason.

Iran closes daily paper

http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1870588,00.html

Julia Day and agencies
Tuesday September 12, 2006
MediaGuardian.co.uk

Iran's most prominent reformist newspaper has been closed down for failing to remove an executive accused of publishing blasphemous articles and insulting officials.
The country's press supervisory board, run by the culture ministry, ordered the closure of the Persian daily paper Sharq yesterday after it failed to replace managing director Muhammad Rahmanian.

The board said the paper had been given one month to replace him, but after the deadline ran out on Sunday he remained at the helm.

"Because of 70 cases of violations, including insulting officials, religious and national figures, publishing blasphemous articles and also articles creating discord ... the board demanded the replacement," the board said in a statement, according to Reuters.
The international press freedom watchdog, the Committee to Protect Journalists, condemned the move.

"There can be no press freedom in a country in which government agencies hire and fire editors," said the CPJ executive director, Joel Simon.

The newspaper angered authorities by criticising the rulings of the supreme national security council, which is in charge of Iran's nuclear negotiations with the west.

A cartoon it published last week was seen as another example of the paper's attempts to undermine the council, Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, spokesman for the Iranian Committee for the Defense of Freedom of the Press, told the CPJ.

Mr Shamsolvaezin said Sharq had come under pressure from the judiciary because of its editorial line and its closure was a clear message intended to silence critics and other reformist papers.

Reuters reported that Mr Rahmanian asked on Sunday for a two-month extension to find a successor and intends to appeal against the order. But Mr Shamsolvaezin said the ban appeared to be permanent.

Another Iranian newspaper has also been closed down - political monthly Nameh has also been shut for blasphemy and insulting religious figures.

The paper's editor, Majid Tavallaei, said it was closed for publishing a poem by dissident female poet Simin Behbahani, according to an Associated Press report.

"The closure of these two publications is further evidence of the Iranian authorities' determination to silence dissenting voices and stifle media freedom," said CPJ's Mr Simon. "We call upon the authorities to rescind the closure orders."

Meanwhile, the authorities lifted a ban on the state paper, Iran, which will publish under a new team of managers and journalists and with a new design. The paper had been banned on May 23 after publishing a cartoon that sparked riots by Azeris in the north-western city of Tabriz.

According to the CPJ, Iranian courts have closed more than 100 publications since 2000, most of which were reformist. Last month the Iranian government urged the judiciary to clamp down on dailies that spread "lies".

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Iranian president calls for purge of liberal lecturers

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Iranian president calls for purge of liberal lecturers

Robert Tait in Tehran
Wednesday September 6, 2006
The Guardian

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's outspoken president, fired an ominous warning at the country's educated elites yesterday by calling for a purge of "liberal and secular" academics in the universities.
In what some analysts interpreted as the start of a clampdown, Mr Ahmadinejad derided secular lecturers as a fifth column of western colonialism which he said was seeking to expand into Iran.

"Today students should protest and shout at the president asking why some liberal and secular professors are still present in the universities," he told a gathering of young scientists. "Our educational system has been under the influence of the secular system for 150 years. Colonialism is seeking the spread of its own secular system." While acknowledging it was difficult to change this system, he said: "Such a change has begun."


Mr Ahmadinejad, a hardline Islamist, also said his government had tried to reduce the political influence of university chancellors, many of whom were seen as pillars of the reformist government of his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami.

"A political predominance existed among many of the university chancellors but we have tried to reduce it because we don't believe chancellors should enter into politics at all," Mr Ahmadinejad said.

The president's salvo recalled previous outbursts against ideological targets, including a call for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and a demand for western music to be barred from Iran's airwaves.

His latest comments will intensify fears among student and faculty members of an incipient crackdown.

In recent months, several student activists have been imprisoned and dozens of liberal lecturers forced to retire before the statutory age. Last year, Mr Ahmadinejad appointed a radical cleric as chancellor of Tehran university, the country's most prestigious institution.

The government has also buried "martyrs" from the 1988 Iran-Iraq war in some universities in what activists see as an excuse to allow security forces on to campuses to keep watch on the student body.

Iran's Islamic authorities have kept universities under close surveillance since a wave of student protests demanding greater freedom in 1999. A student leader, Akbar Mohammadi, died in jail in July after a hunger strike started in protest at being reimprisoned following a long-term release on medical grounds.

Some critics saw Mr Ahmadinejad's remarks as presaging a general repression of internal critics under the cloak of Iran's confrontation with the west over its nuclear programme. The government's official spokesman appeared to herald such a move recently by instructing judges to prosecute journalists who published "lies" about the government

But Professor Sadegh Zibakalam, a political scientist at Tehran university, dismissed suggestions of an imminent purge. "Ahmadinejad is a populist trying to create a charismatic image for himself," he said. "These comments are aimed at those who voted for him and perhaps designed to divert attention from Iran's economic problems. They don't mean there is an orchestrated plot against more liberal lecturers."

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What Would War Look Like?

A flurry of military maneuvers in the Middle East increases speculation that conflict with Iran is no longer quite so unthinkable. Here's how the U.S. would fight such a war--and the huge price it would have to pay to win it

By Michael Duffy

09/19/06 "Time"

WHAT WOULD COME NEXT? (After we bombed Iranian nuke sites.)

No one who has spent any time thinking about an attack on Iran doubts that a U.S. operation would reap a whirlwind. The only mystery is what kind. "It's not a question of whether we can do a strike or not and whether the strike could be effective," says retired Marine General Anthony Zinni. "It certainly would be, to some degree. But are you prepared for all that follows?"

Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, who taught strategy at the National War College, has been conducting a mock U.S.-Iran war game for American policymakers for the past five years. Virtually every time he runs the game, Gardiner says, a similar nightmare scenario unfolds: the U.S. attack, no matter how successful, spawns a variety of asymmetrical retaliations by Tehran. First comes terrorism: Iran's initial reaction to air strikes might be to authorize a Hizballah attack on Israel, in order to draw Israel into the war and rally public support at home.

Next, Iran might try to foment as much mayhem as possible inside the two nations on its flanks, Afghanistan and Iraq, where more than 160,000 U.S. troops hold a tenuous grip on local populations. Iran has already dabbled in partnership with warlords in western Afghanistan, where U.S. military authority has never been strong; it would be a small step to lend aid to Taliban forces gaining strength in the south. Meanwhile, Tehran has links to the main factions in Iraq, which would welcome a boost in money and weapons, if just to strengthen their hand against rivals. Analysts generally believe that Iran could in a short time orchestrate a dramatic increase in the number and severity of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. As Syed Ayad, a secular Shi'ite cleric and Iraqi Member of Parliament says, "America owns the sky of Iraq with their Apaches, but Iran owns the ground."

Next, there is oil. The Persian Gulf, a traffic jam on good days, would become a parking lot. Iran could plant mines and launch dozens of armed boats into the bottleneck, choking off the shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz and causing a massive disruption of oil-tanker traffic. A low-key Iranian mining operation in 1987 forced the U.S. to reflag Kuwaiti oil tankers and escort them, in slow-moving files of one and two, up and down the Persian Gulf. A more intense operation would probably send oil prices soaring above $100 per bbl.--which may explain why the Navy wants to be sure its small fleet of minesweepers is ready to go into action at a moment's notice. It is unlikely that Iran would turn off its own oil spigot or halt its exports through pipelines overland, but it could direct its proxies in Iraq and Saudi Arabia to attack pipelines, wells and shipment points inside those countries, further choking supply and driving up prices.

That kind of retaliation could quickly transform a relatively limited U.S. mission in Iran into a much more complicated one involving regime change. An Iran determined to use all its available weapons to counterattack the U.S. and its allies would present a challenge to American prestige that no Commander in Chief would be likely to tolerate for long. Zinni, for one, believes an attack on Iran could eventually lead to U.S. troops on the ground. "You've got to be careful with your assumptions," he says. "In Iraq, the assumption was that it would be a liberation, not an occupation. You've got to be prepared for the worst case, and the worst case involving Iran takes you down to boots on the ground." All that, he says, makes an attack on Iran a "dumb idea." Abizaid, the current Centcom boss, chose his words carefully last May. "Look, any war with a country that is as big as Iran, that has a terrorist capability along its borders, that has a missile capability that is external to its own borders and that has the ability to affect the world's oil markets is something that everyone needs to contemplate with a great degree of clarity."

http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle15020.htm