Belmont Club posts an interesting discussion on the brewing crisis over Iran and what people who contemplate such matters are thinking about today. There are a number of interesting tidbits and anecdotes strewn among the analysis. Here are a few excerpts:
...the chances of an Israeli strike (over the near term) are slight, unless Tel Aviv receives clear, unambiguous evidence that Iran has--or is about to acquire--working nuclear weapons. The consequences of an Israeli attack would be monumental--for Israel, the U.S. and the entire region. An Israeli strike on Tehran's nuclear sites could well be followed by an Iranian strike on Israel's population centers, using a SHAHAB-3 missile carrying biological or chemical weapons. Assuming that an Iranian warhead gets through Israel's missile defenses (and inflicts heavy casualties), the Israelis would likely respond in kind, or up the ante and go nuclear. The pressure on an Israeli Prime Minister to respond to an Iranian missile attack would be overwhelming, and quite likely, irresistible.
Wretchard at Belmont Club cites an account from another blogger which, he avers, illustrates the "level of resolution" that results from our own forces being in contact on the ground.
We had captured a weapons cache in Afghani, a BIG one and as we piled the weapons up the next door neighbor tribal leader showed up and "told" me he was taking those weapons from the feuding tribe we just confiscated them from. Being surrounded by two infantry Platoons he had these two girlie men (no kidding, they were out of a very bad B movie) charge their AK's as an act to threaten us. I told my terp to translate to them "you just made a very bad mistake and you could have been killed " as my Marines drew in on them as they charged their weapons. So after detaining him and his two girlfriends we sat them a safe distance away from the pile of weapons on an adjacent hill but high enough for them to watch the fireworks show.
Ace of Spades reports on the deployment of the 122nd Fighter Wing to 'Southwest Asia'. Where could they mean? Southwest Asia? That's sorta between Iraq and Afghanistan, I guess:
My own guess is that the US -- and Israeli --policy towards Iran is constrained by the knowledge that the only lasting way to keep the Bomb from extremist Mullahs isn't an air strike, but regime change. If the objective is to keep Iran from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, air strikes, however effective, can only delay the process of acquisition....
And diplomacy will continue, not because it has any prospect of success, but from want of an alternative. Iran knows better than anyone that Israeli lacks the ability, and the US probably lacks the will, to mount a regime change. In this context diplomacy acquires a different significance. It's playing for time, hoping that the regime in Teheran will slip up somehow and provide an opportunity for effective action. That slip-up, if it occurs, can only be induced by taking Iran to the brink. The objective of diplomacy is probably to stress Iran to the max, such as by staging wargames on its margin, threatening to refer the matter to the UN Security Council (which means to the United States, which alone provides the teeth to the Security Council), etc, not in the expectation that Teheran will crack, but in the hope that exploitable fractures will occur.
Good stuff, although we're not sanguine about the chances of the tactic of pushing the mullahs over the brink actually working. It may, and we hope that it does, but there has to be a back-up plan. The world simply can't sit on its collective hands and let the madmen in Iran - men who have said that Israel would have a hard time destroying the Arab world with nuclear weapons but that one pre-emptive nuke will destroy Israel; men who have said that Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth; men who have promised that if they ever had nuclear weapons they'd use them against Israel; men who have turned Iran into the world's chief state sponsor of terrorism - the world cannot allow such men to have the weapons they lust after.
Tragically, though, most of the world, especially Europe, will be perfectly content to allow Iran to acquire weapons which they will almost surely use, either themselves or through terrorist proxies.
Maybe the Democrats have a plan as to what we should do.