More like death advocate.

If we attack Ian many more than “… thousands of people may die.”

As I pointed out above, the deaths could end up being in the many millions, if things go out of control in the worst way. You are advocating world war by advocating attacking Iran.

Do you think Iran is just going to meekly cower in the corner after being attacked? Would you? The answer to both questions is a resounding NO.

Iran will counter attack using every weapon and technique they have developed. Remember, Israel and the US have been threatening Iran for years (the US even attacked Iran already using Saddam as a surrogate), so Iran has had lots of time to develop some formidable weapons and the Iraq and Afghan wars have shown the world how to defeat the US and Israel. Both the US and Israel will suffer tremendously for being stupid enough to attack Iran.

Of course, this totally ignores China. While China likes to do things in a very stealthy way, they are perfectly willing to use overt, brutal force if they have to. An attack on Iran which cuts off 10% of China’s oil could cause China to become very, very nasty to the US and Israel. China would have no problem nuking Israel and telling the US to just ignore the disappearance of Israel and unless the US wanted to lose a war with China, it would just look the other way. Yes, China can defeat the US, especially now that the US has severely depleted its military and is bankrupt. China has no desire to go to war with the US, but will not back down either. For those that understand Chinese culture, it is very obvious that China has been telling the US (in a coded way) to stop this nonsense. Note that China is “downwind” of Iran so any attack will not only cause China to lose its oil, but China’s people will also be collateral damage.

Recently several simulations of an attack on Iran have taken place in the US and Israel. In all cases the situation goes very bad for the US and Israel and NONE of the simulations included China!

If (big IF) Iran gets nuclear weapons that is NOT a problem, especially for any country more than 3000 km from Iran. It is definitely NOT a problem for the US. The only real problem for Israel is not that Iran would nuke them (they will NOT), but that Israel would no longer be able to threaten to nuke the Arabs and a significant part of the Israel population (which hold two passports) would just leave Israel for better, safer places. In other words, the bully would be cut down to size and would no longer be able to bully the world.

Note that IF Iran really wants nuclear weapons, they have chosen the least efficient way to get them. It would have been far less expensive and a lot quicker to just buy loose nukes on the black market. As both Obama and nti.org have pointed out, there is lots of unaccounted for and barely guarded nuclear material around. After getting screwed by the French (paid for, legal material was never delivered) and Russia (paid for, legal material was never delivered), Iran wants to be self-sufficient in everything that effects their future and Iran is well aware of the peak oil process and wants to use all their oil for export rather than internal usage. Nuclear power helps solve both situations.

Unless you want to have a miserable life, I strongly urge you to rethink your gleeful joy about attacking Iran. An attack on Iran could shorten you life to just a few more hours after the attack.

ANY attack on Iran will cause your life to deteriorate drastically, if not kill you.

Why is it so hard for people to understand that attacking Iran will cause:

- 25 to 40% of the world’s oil to disappear from the world market overnight because no insurance company will ensure any tanker in the ME and tanker owners will NOT move their ships without insurance. This is even before tankers start sinking.

- Less oil production means HIGHER oil prices – basic supply and demand economics. If you are in the US, this means Walmart can not fuel their trucks and can not restock their stores (Walmarts have only a few days stock of most items) and when Walmart can not restock their stores, Americans start starving.

- Iran will devastate Israel with conventional High Explosive weapons, of which Iran has lots – no need for a few nukes when lots of HE will do the same job and is much harder for anti-missile technology to counter.

- At that point it is very possible that Israel will start throwing nukes, contaminating the whole northern hemisphere and if they throw enough, nuclear winter (at least global warming will be “fixed”).

The outcome of attacking Iran will be terrible at best for Americans and could be extremely, awfully terrible.

As far as Iran getting nukes, so be it. They will not use them because they are not suicidal (most humans like to live the good life, not kill themselves, even so-called “religious nuts).

This is a power-play by Israel and it is long past time for the world to shut down Israel’s games.

If you want to grab your AK47 and invade Iran on your own, go for it. As for me, I have zero desire or need to attack Iran .

The problem for the US is, while the US has been squandering its treasure and alienating billions of people because of needless wars, China has been quietly buying up all the contracts for oil production around the world (including Alaska!) AND investing heavily in non-oil energy development and implementation.

The US has known about global peak oil since the 1970s, yet has done exactly ZERO to prepare for it.

Iran’s oil from now until the last drop is pumped is already sold to the highest bidder, China.

Worse still, as the US has found out in Iraq, it is impossible to control oil by force when the locals don’t want that to happen. An interesting “feature” of oil production infrastructure is that it is insanely easy to destroy and very expensive (both time and money) to rebuild. Whenever the locals don’t want THEIR OIL stolen by an invader, it is very easy to destroy the oil production capability and then concentrate on killing the invader (using the techniques “invented” by the original US minutemen – Yes, the original minutemen were terrorists – read up on it). If the invaders try to protect the oil infrastructure, they need to use millions of soldiers, who also become great targets for the insurgents. Either way, lots of invaders get killed and the oil stays in the ground until the invaders are gone. The US has no way to control Iranian oil, it will have to out-bid others to buy it and China has a lot more wealth than the US.

As I noted in a post yesterday, the US could stop this whole mess right now by treating Iran better than we treat our “friends” in Europe, but to do that, we would need to burn Isreal really bad and the US has a blind spot to doing that.

In the end, I expect the US will shoot itself in the foot (with a shotgun) rather than burn Israel. As a result, by 2016 everyone in the US will deeply suffer economically because of our inability to act in our own best interest.

Re CJCS Mullen’s ‘last option’; military attack. Two scenarios there- blow up the enrichment facilities and related uranium feedstock and product, or blow up stuff that has no uranium around it.

The first sort of attack is going to release the gaseous U-hexafloride working medium, radiologically poisoning a wide area, the watershed, soil, people and animals and sea. In effect, we would use their legal uranium as a ‘dirty bomb’ against their civilians. A radiological Dresden. Any metalic uranium not burned into toxic smoke will be lying around in valuable bits and chunks, easily collectable. Unless we accomplish all this with a nuclear strike, which only makes it worse.

The second sort of attack, a 1992-2002 sort of collective punishment, presumes that we can isolate Republican Guard or other military assets and destroy them without killing large numbers of innocents. In this fantasy, Khameini, Amadinijad, and the mullocracy become so sad and poor that they stop making enriched uranium, or maybe are killed by their enraged people, who put someone practical charge like…Rafsanjani?

As a practical matter, just bombing (and throw in some more sabotage) has the wrong psychology for national behavior mod. Did 9/11 make the US fold up and leave the Gulf? How has bombing the Israelis out of Palestine worked out? Did Bombing Saddam for ten+ years make him want to quit, or his people throw him out? Viet Nam? The London Blitz? The real Dresden? It makes folks that live there mad and stubborn.

Legally, under the UN Charter, the one we helped write, attacking another country that is not threatening ours is illegal and criminal. I know, we’re special and get away with it sometimes, but it’s still a crime. Even if we tell them nice we’re going to bomb their country ahead of time. If nuclear enrichment is legal for Pakistan, Israel or India (and it is) it is also a peaceful option for Iran. I don’t like it, I don’t like the nuclear economy in general, but there it is.

If we want to run this experiment less expensively, apply direct military pressure against a nuclear proliferator that is also selling missile delivery systems, we should do a deal with China, Japan and Russia to invade N. Korea. Pyonyang is already as isolated and poor as a country can be. Why is no one talking about doing that? Because even countries that really don’t like the NK’s ( Japan and S. Korea) see too much downside to a nearby war.

Same goes for Iran. Look at the map, and find a single neighbor that would favor a US air strike. Not one. Maybe the Saudis, but not publically. And they are feeling defensive about that whole Saddam invasion and WMD thing, like the US and probably have closet nukes themselves.

Now, run this analysis again, only have some other seemingly bullet-proof nuclear armed country try to punish Iran, scatter radioactive poison, or bomb them into giving up enrichment. How does that work out for them, and for us, in the long run? Can you multiply $5-10/gallon? Can you say ‘omigod, there’s a nuke power plant upwind from MY house!’ Because that kind of fear is built into our threat of attacking Iran.