Iran's Nuclear Program

Akrasia

America have one nuclear bunker buster in their arsenal, The 300 Kiloton B61-11

300 kilotons is not a small blast, the Bomb that destroyed hiroshima was 13 kilotons, but there are still doubts as to whether or not the B61 is powerful enough to destroy a deep bunker. Some scientists estimate it would take a 1 megaton bomb, but the fallout from such a device would be catastrophic. (moreso)

meditraitor

fly_agaric wrote:

Have you lived in Iran or something??
Comparing Iran to the US in terms of how it treats its citizens is a joke that only someone who doesn't get out enough could make. When are you getting your "J1" to work in Iran Mediatraitor?;)

Tell that to the black and hospanic population or the native americans or the sick(non insured) or the 12000 people a year that get murdered(its the governments responsibility to protect citizens) and im sure your little
Land of the free home of the brave tone might not sound so rosey, I reckon my diatribe would be closer to the truth...
Just because Daddy gave you his credit card one summer and you spent a few months in chicago doesnt mean you know how a country threats its citizens..
And yes I would love to go to Iran for the summer, aparantly its beautifull and the people are amazing....

fly_agaric

Blasted double post. Arrrrgh!

fly_agaric

meditraitor wrote:

Tell that to the black and hospanic population or the native americans or the sick(non insured) or the 12000 people a year that get murdered(its the governments responsibility to protect citizens) and im sure your little Land of the free home of the brave tone might not sound so rosey, I reckon my diatribe would be closer to the truth...

I never said the US was some kind of perfect society. Only a person who believes the US is the root of all evil would describe my small defense of how it treats its citizens in the face of unfair comparisons with Iran, Zimbabwe etc as having a "land of the free home of the brave tone".

meditraitor wrote:

Just because Daddy gave you his credit card one summer and you spent a few months in chicago doesnt mean you know how a country threats its citizens..

I have never been to the US on a J1. My father has been dead for quite a while and I never borrowed his credit card while he was here to use it.:)

Anyway, seeing as this thread is about Iran's nukes I think the US should do everything it can short of military action to hinder Iran developing any nuclear weapons.

This kind of proliferation may be impossible to stop in the long run and waging wars to prevent it (especially if it involves the ultimate hypocrisy of using nuclear "bunker-busters" to stop countries developing nuclear weapons) may actually increase the danger of the scenarios which the wars were meant to prevent coming true.

Pazaz 21

I think the fact that the U.S. has regained nuclear primacy for the first time since the early 1960's, makes any talk of American nuclear disarment, a futile exercise.
(Nuclear primacy is the ability to destroy an entire enemy countries long range, if not all, nuclear weapons in a first strike, thus negating the threat of a retaliatory strike)
America will soon, if not already, have the ability to destroy all of Russia and China's nuclear weapons in a first strike scenario, thus ending the era of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction). America continues to upgrade and improve its ICBM's, Nuclear Ballistic Submarines and Stealth Nuclear Cruise Missile programmes while Russia has only a few Nuclear Ballistic Submarines, which are usually in dock, and it's ICBM's are falling apart in their silo's. As for the chinease, they don't even have their Nukes pre-fueled, which would take upwards of two hours to complete.

As we enter an era of U.S. nuclear supremacy shouldn't we be questioning the U.S.'s intentions or should we learn to stop worrying and love the bomb!!

(Great article on this in the March/April edition of Foreign Affairs)

Pazaz 21

joebhoy1916 wrote:

Dont no about the rest of ye, but if anyone looks it up Iran has the right to do what they are doing, nobody can say there building nuclear cause you just dont no that. If India, Pakistan, Isreal, Britain, America and all the rest of the countrys have nuclear weapons sure what difference will it make if Iran has them. After all when America started to build them they said they were making them so they could defend there countrys. If ya ask me everyone should have them then no countrys would be attacking each other.

WTF? America developed the nuclear weapon to counter Hitlers attempts to build one, and Stalin's for that matter. If everybody had one we wouldn't be here having this conversation because out of incompetence, anger or sheer boredom someone would have launched a nuke and we'd all be in the sh*t!! Think about if they had nukes during the balkin war's, THEN we would have seen genocide !!

Pazaz 21

If the US launches a Nuclear attack on Iran, or if it bombs Iranian Nuclear facilities, won't that in turn make all the Oil in Iran, and the surroinding area, radioactive for a couple of thousand years?

Just a thought:rolleyes:

Pazaz 21

Akrasia wrote:

And what do you think will happen if there is a bombing campaign in Iran? The U.S. have identified about 400 targets that they'd need to hit in order to shut down their weapons facilities. Do you think Iran will just sit there and take that kind of punishment? An attack on Iran will escalate into an invasion.

The first Gulf war didn't turn into an invasion of Iraq (at the time anyway,:rolleyes: ). The US bombed the sh*t out Iraqi weapons installations and did a lot of damage.

The US could bomb Iran into the ground without having to send in one troop if it wanted to. If it wanted to it could assign a Nuke to every square foot of Iran and still have a couple of spares left. I'm not saying that it couldn't escalate into an invasion, and looking at the way bush has been fighting in Iraq using an updated Vietnam playbook it wouldn't surprise me if he did, i'm just saying that it's not an inevitability.

Akrasia

Pazaz 21 wrote:

If the US launches a Nuclear attack on Iran, or if it bombs Iranian Nuclear facilities, won't that in turn make all the Oil in Iran, and the surroinding area, radioactive for a couple of thousand years?

Just a thought:rolleyes:

well, the oil is really deep underground safe from the nuclear fall out.

Frederico

daveirl wrote:

This post has been deleted.

Nothing to do with proximity of South Korea, it was just impossible. North Korea has a HUGE standing army. Basically it could take out 37,000 US troops, something the US won't risk on premptive strikes. NK is no go for the US because it can actually fight back.

To a certain extent, but I'd hope that a lot of funding of groups with the aim of subverting the theocracy would still go on, just like I'd like to see all countries with dictators undermined.

Thats not the view the American administration has, not even close, they don't undermine Uzbekistan, what about all those African countries? Its a pro west anti west thing, simple as.

BTW, everyone is against Iran, stop trying to make this a US V Iran thing.

This is a US/Israel vs Iran thing.. imagine if Sudan had alot of oil or was a threat to Israel.. it would be all over the news, it was always going to be Afghanistan, Iraq, then Iran, I remember reading about all this in 2002.

I tell you one thing, if Iran did back down and let the Russians do the refining, the US administration would be dismayed, we all know that.

joebhoy1916

Pazaz 21 wrote:

WTF? America developed the nuclear weapon to counter Hitlers attempts to build one, and Stalin's for that matter. If everybody had one we wouldn't be here having this conversation because out of incompetence, anger or sheer boredom someone would have launched a nuke and we'd all be in the sh*t!! Think about if they had nukes during the balkin war's, THEN we would have seen genocide !!

It was a joke but look at the end of the day no matter what people think there not doing nothing illegal. They say its for energy, maybe they are telling lies but who would you believe them or the US. Where are Iraq's nukes gone? They never had any in the first place but yet the US had information that they did have them. Who would you believe.

Who is the only other country in the world to drop a nuke on
another country?

There is no way the US would attack Iran. George Bush is history soon
he is trying to leave on a good note (not that he will anyways).
But they would never get the support for this nobody in Iraq really gave a sh*t about Saddam but its alot different in Iran they love there president. Iran would give them alot harder of a fight than the Iraq's.

North Korea has nuclear weapons but why aint they attacking them cause they know well they will use it!

KerranJast

joebhoy1916 wrote:

Where are Iraq's nukes gone? They never had any in the first place but yet the US had information that they did have them. Who would you believe.

Iraq never had nuclear weapons and the US never claimed they had. They did have substancial evidence that Saddam wanted and was trying to get nukes (which was true) up until the first Gulf War. As for who you believe, the US is a legitimate and open democracy which has been and is a staunch ally and aid to this country. I think that gives them the edge.

Manic Moran

Pazaz 21 wrote:

The first Gulf war didn't turn into an invasion of Iraq (at the time anyway,:rolleyes: ). The US bombed the sh*t out Iraqi weapons installations and did a lot of damage.

That's a bit of a misconception. Air power works fantastically against infrastructure, less so against ground weapons unless directed by an FAC or on the defense. After the Kosovo campaign, Serbia moved almost all its equipment intact back across the border, despite the expenses and effort made to destroy it. Similarly, to quote an Iraqi colonel from the '91 war: "After three weeks of air bombardment I had lost four of my thirty-two tanks. After three minutes of combat against M1s I lost the whole battalion"

I don't think that 'bombing Iran into the stone age' will be politically acceptable anyway. More surgical strikes, probably including some airmobile ground forces, would be far more likely.

Obviously there would have to be verifiable disarmament by all sides.

And this would be verified how? How hard is it to hide something in a cave or wherever which is about bomb-sized in an entire country? Or worse, one which is small enough to be fired out of an artillery cannon or man-portable rifle.

The same response would apply, immediate retaliation, just not using nuclear weapons. Iran would know for certain, that any use of nuclear weapons would lead to the destruction of Iran.

I think you're missing a stage in the logic here.
Step 1: Country A (We'll say Iran) uses a nuke.
Step 2: The world goes "Aha! We will now retaliate. Quickly, let us base our forces in nearby countries so that we may smite the transgressor"
Step 3: Iran quietly points out to neighbouring countries: "If you let any forces stage from your country or fly over your country to strike at us, you'll never guess where the next nuke is going to go"
Step 4: Saudi, Iraq, Kuwait, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Turkey etc, who have no intention of getting nuked, tell the international community "Go ahead, bomb the crap out of Iran, but you're not doing it from our country"
Step 5: The Rest of the World goes.. "Umm...."

Or better, what if the country which uses a nuke is one which is extremely formidable in conventional combat. Let's say China uses a small nuke to take over Taiwan. You'll have a war with casualty rates akin to the Somme campaign if the rest of the world tries to spank them. Russia and the US would be as hard to take on. I think the nuclear deterrent option makes a lot more sense from that point of view.

They were kicked out because Iran Wants everyone to know that they're pursuing nuclear weapons. There's no point of a deterrent if nobody knows about it.

It makes a lot more sense to wait until the weapon is made before announcing it to the world. Otherwise you don't have a deterrent, you have an incentive for people to stop you. My guess is they figured 'better have a little doubt over our plans than have the inspectors announce it as a fact'

I'm not sure that the nuclear primacy claim is entirely accurate. The Russians have been keeping their strategic forces fairly up-to-speed as it's a lot more cost-effective than their conventional military which is a little...underfunded.

NTM

KerranJast

Manic Moran wrote:

I think you're missing a stage in the logic here.
Step 1: Country A (We'll say Iran) uses a nuke.
Step 2: The world goes "Aha! We will now retaliate. Quickly, let us base our forces in nearby countries so that we may smite the transgressor"
Step 3: Iran quietly points out to neighbouring countries: "If you let any forces stage from your country or fly over your country to strike at us, you'll never guess where the next nuke is going to go"
Step 4: Saudi, Iraq, Kuwait, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Turkey etc, who have no intention of getting nuked, tell the international community "Go ahead, bomb the crap out of Iran, but you're not doing it from our country"
Step 5: The Rest of the World goes.. "Umm...."

The US, Russia and China (I think) have long range ICBMs. The US and Russia also have Nuclear subs which could strike from the Persian Gulf. Retaliation wouldn't be a problem in reality.

Ping Chow Chi

Manic Moran wrote:

I think you're missing a stage in the logic here.
Step 1: Country A (We'll say Iran) uses a nuke.

Step 2: US turns Iran to glass using its gulf fleet and stealth bombers which have the range to reach Iran without them stepping a foot on any of their neighbours land

... isnt that what their clear blue skies strat all about?

Manic Moran wrote:

And this would be verified how? How hard is it to hide something in a cave or wherever which is about bomb-sized in an entire country? Or worse, one which is small enough to be fired out of an artillery cannon or man-portable rifle.

I agree that verifing would be next to impossible, I dont see how being able to fire a nuke from a portable rifle would be that much worse than being able to carry it as the blast radius of a nuke tends to be a little large, unless they have guns that will fire a nuke over 100's of miles

Pazaz 21

Akrasia wrote:

well, the oil is really deep underground safe from the nuclear fall out.

I got that, but won't you have to dig down through the layers of radioactive soil to get to it? Won't the entire area be so radioactive that it would be impossible to extract and transport it ?

Pazaz 21

joebhoy1916 wrote:

Who is the only other country in the world to drop a nuke on
another country?

Other than who?

Pazaz 21

Manic Moran wrote:

That's a bit of a misconception. Air power works fantastically against infrastructure, less so against ground weapons unless directed by an FAC or on the defense.

I was referring to infastructure as a strike would be targeting the nuclear and missile facilities and not ground weapons such as tanks.

I'm not sure that the nuclear primacy claim is entirely accurate. The Russians have been keeping their strategic forces fairly up-to-speed as it's a lot more cost-effective than their conventional military which is a little...underfunded.
NTM

Russia has 39 percent fewer long-range bombers, 58 percent fewer ICBMs and 80 percent fewer Nuclear Ballistic Submarines than in 1990. Russias strategic bombers are located at only two bases and thus vulnerable to a surprise attack, their silo-based ICBMs have exceeded their original service lives and plans to replace them have stalled due to failed tests.Russias Nuclear Ballistic Submarines have reduced their patrols from 60 per year in 1990 to 2 per year in 2005, these submarines, 9 in total, spend most of their time in port making easy targets.

Ya that sounds like they are keeping "Up-to-speed".

Sand

I cant see them striking Iran militarily. I can see them sabre rattling and sending strong signals to Iran to try and intimidate them, but its a mexican standoff. The US (and indeed the world) has two conflicting strategic needs - pacify Iraq to allow exit, prevent Iran from developing nukes. If they strike Iran to achieve the second then Iraq will somewhat co-incidentally explode into another level of violence - with renewed targeting of US troops on the ground there (US casualties were down to their lowest ever level since the insurgency kicked off last month afair). Before they can hit Iran, they need to exit Iraq. And I doubt Iran hasnt noticed that their interests are best served by having vunerable US targets just across the border.

And Bush simply does not have the mandate to embroil the US in another war. If he tries, itll be rejected and more than likely hell be impeached.

Nothing to do with proximity of South Korea, it was just impossible. North Korea has a HUGE standing army. Basically it could take out 37,000 US troops, something the US won't risk on premptive strikes. NK is no go for the US because it can actually fight back.

Nukes are fairly good for eliminating numberical advantage tbh. And North Korea has a huge standing army of badly equipped, badly trained, badly led, poorly motivated guys who are most useful for beating up peasants and torturing dissidents tbh. The army is so large because they need those numbers to keep the country enslaved. Numbers are pretty meaningless if you have no command and control. Sun Tzu and all that. Whilst its not wise to fight the last war, back in the 50s North Korea was almost overwhelmed and had to tag in China for help.

Manic Moran

KerranJast wrote:

The US, Russia and China (I think) have long range ICBMs. The US and Russia also have Nuclear subs which could strike from the Persian Gulf. Retaliation wouldn't be a problem in reality.

Not possible in that hypothetic situation, as by the treaty, everyone's disarmed their nukes. You can lob ICBMs with conventional warheads, but it's a tad expensive.

I dont see how being able to fire a nuke from a portable rifle would be that much worse than being able to carry it as the blast radius of a nuke tends to be a little large, unless they have guns that will fire a nuke over 100's of miles

The M28 tripod-mounted rifle fired its nuke a total of about a mile and a quarter. Its big brother the M25 did about two and a half miles. This is 1950s technology here, shouldn't be too hard for another country to come up with it these days. Back then the thinking was that everyday combat would be nuclear, it was just a more effective bullet.

NTM

joebhoy1916

KerranJast wrote:

the US never claimed they had.

Are you trying to say America never said Iraq had nukes? :eek:

Dave!

I think they were saying chemical weapons and "WMDs" rather than nukes, were they not? Can't remember really.

joebhoy1916

They said they had proof that Saddam had chemical, bio and WMD
its the same thing. Do you not remember they claimed they had pictures
then after the war they said they most of moved them to Iran.

KerranJast

joebhoy1916 wrote:

Are you trying to say America never said Iraq had nukes? :eek:

Yep. Check it out if you like. They said they had chemical and biological WMDs and were trying to get nukes. If they thought they really had nukes they would have finished the job in '91. The "we told you there were no WMDs" line from the likes of France, Germany and Russia is a joke anyway because the intelligence agencies of the so-called anti-war countries believed exactly the same as CIA/MI6. Political leaders just didn't want to act militariliy.

KerranJast

joebhoy1916 wrote:

They said they had proof that Saddam had chemical, bio and WMD
its the same thing. Do you not remember they claimed they had pictures
then after the war they said they most of moved them to Iran.

One of Saddams ex Air Force Generals (2nd in command I think) was on the Daily Show. Claims some of his troops reported after the invasion to him saying they had been ordered to fly WMD stockpiles to Syria (can't remember if Iran was mentioned - doubt it as Saddam wouldn't be very popular there after trying to invade).

pete

KerranJast wrote:

One of Saddams ex Air Force Generals (2nd in command I think) was on the Daily Show. Claims some of his troops reported after the invasion to him saying they had been ordered to fly WMD stockpiles to Syria (can't remember if Iran was mentioned - doubt it as Saddam wouldn't be very popular there after trying to invade).

March 22, 2006 General Georges Sada, who served under the command of Saddam Hussein, appeared on The Daily Show last night to discuss his new book “Saddam’s Secrets“:

JON STEWART, HOST: Then, is the battle between our two countries, was it drummed up between Saddam and his interests to dominate the Arab world and our interests to have stability? Was it inevitable? Is it something that came through misunderstandings of culture?

GENERAL GEORGES SADA: Well let me tell you, it was not misunderstanding between the cultures, but t was the Saddam intentions and Saddam wanted to rule that part of the world. He was always going to go for weapons and of course he had weapons of mass destruction that he had managed to hide and to mislead the United Nations countries.

STEWART: This is obviously the most controversial part of the book. In it you say that right before the invasion of Iraq Saddam had his weapons of mass destruction taken to Syria.

SADA: That’s true. He had them there before Americans came and liberated the country. The weapons were transported to Syria by air and by ground.

STEWART: That would seemingly get the Bush administration off the giant hook that it appears to be on. Why wouldn’t they pursue that line of evidence? Or have they? It seems like for us it would be hard to understand that that really happened. Given that the whole world was looking for those.

SADA: I am sure in the coming days the authorities are going to tell the public and tell all Americans after they will have all the evidence in their hands and they can verify everything to the Americans.

STEWART: You still feel, now this is first-hand knowledge of yours? Somebody told you this? You’ve seen it in documents? You’ve seen it on video.

SADA: Oh yes, the weapons of mass destruction I have seen them myself because you see I was the number two man in the air force. Then I know how they were used against our nation. Of course—
STEWART: But in the later ‘90s after they thought they had rid them of it, you still saw them.

SADA: After the ‘90s they were there. How I knew they were there, after they were transported the pilots who transported they told me.

STEWART: The guys that flew them …

SADA: The guys who were responsible.

STEWART: How do you fly a weapon? Isn’t that a large thing or do you put it….

SADA: No. They are raw materials; some of them are like barrels, yellow barrels, of course, with skulls and cross bones on them.

STEWART: You think if you’re going to hide that stuff you think you might paint something like you know, spam.

[laughter]

STEWART: In your mind this will all come out. We will learn that there are weapons of mass destruction. You can understand how it’s hard for us to be a little bit skeptical but I like you.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1601210/posts


things to bear in mind:

• he's promoting his book, "Saddam's Secrets"
• he apparently retired from the iraqi airforce in 1986, i.e. about 15 years before this is alleged to have happened
• he was allegedly imprisoned by Hussein in 1991
• he is "now a national-security advisor for Iraq's new government"

so no danger of a hidden agenda here, then.

Frederico

Sand wrote:

I cant see them striking Iran militarily. I can see them sabre rattling and sending strong signals to Iran to try and intimidate them, but its a mexican standoff. The US (and indeed the world) has two conflicting strategic needs - pacify Iraq to allow exit, prevent Iran from developing nukes. If they strike Iran to achieve the second then Iraq will somewhat co-incidentally explode into another level of violence - with renewed targeting of US troops on the ground there (US casualties were down to their lowest ever level since the insurgency kicked off last month afair). Before they can hit Iran, they need to exit Iraq. And I doubt Iran hasnt noticed that their interests are best served by having vunerable US targets just across the border.

And Bush simply does not have the mandate to embroil the US in another war. If he tries, itll be rejected and more than likely hell be impeached.



Nukes are fairly good for eliminating numberical advantage tbh. And North Korea has a huge standing army of badly equipped, badly trained, badly led, poorly motivated guys who are most useful for beating up peasants and torturing dissidents tbh. The army is so large because they need those numbers to keep the country enslaved. Numbers are pretty meaningless if you have no command and control. Sun Tzu and all that. Whilst its not wise to fight the last war, back in the 50s North Korea was almost overwhelmed and had to tag in China for help.

Yeah but they have an aim, the parallel. They got 60,000 to 100,000 special forces troops, lotta artillery, theres no sea in between, in a conventional fight there would be huge casualties on both sides. NK is too much of a Vietnam scenario for the US to have contemplated back then, now NK's centrifuges are spinning and God knows how much big bombs they are churning out. The only way for regime change in NK is internal.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

joebhoy1916

daveirl wrote:

This post has been deleted.

Who expected them to find WMD.
Everyone knew that there were no weapons
can anyone here honestly say they thought
Saddam had nuclear weapons.

Finally I assume people think America was wrong during the Cuban Missle Crisis too?[/QUOTE]

No i think they were right after all if you see a country that well lets just say wasnt
your best friend at the time if you see them bringing weapons that have the
range of firing on the US you would be very worried.

But do ya not think the Russians were worried about
American missiles in Turkey?

just been watching BBC news 24 .

The President of Iran has been saying some choice things about Israel again... except this time, his rhetoric was of the nagasaki variety.
He compared it to a dying tree stump and that it would be obliterated in a great storm

Talk about handing the west (especially the U.S) a gift in terms of confrontation.
Not that a gift is the best description.