Loosening Up in IranFollow

The spice oil must flow.

Meh, they don't get a nuke, but it won't be hard to get one if they want it. Surveillance hopefully allays some fears that it's happening in secret. Israel and Saudi Arabia won't like it, but it'll take. Given there are still sanctions in place this is probably just some kind of temporary "test-the-waters" kind of agreement before hammering out something better in the future. Assuming everyone takes this seriously they'll be hashing out something new after our mid-term elections.

I think the flowing the oil is necessary to provide economic security in the country more than it is necessary for our own US interests.

More importantly our "friends" in the region don't trust Iran. I think most people in this country probably could care less and only pay attention to them when they're acting like North Korea.

They also agreed to inspections which is fairly significant. But multiple sources I've read note that the most difficult part of enrichment is to 5% so allowing them to continue that is effectively allowing 75% of the effort to enrich up to 90%.

I don't have any real hard opinions. We weren't going to sanction them entirely into dropping their nuclear program (see: N. Korea) and compared to where we were a month ago this looks like a fairly significant first step.

I like the way they substitute the word "tumbled" for a 1% drop in price. Are we really that adverse to change these days?

Also relevant.

Edited, Nov 25th 2013 10:00am by someproteinguy

I assume it's mostly hope that because stuff is happening more will in the future.

Iran lies. This current regime always has, and I see no indicators they really want to change their ways. Sure they will allow inspections at their "show" site. And they'll continue right along as before in one of their many underground locations, call any breach "action by extremist elements, we're sorry, give us more money" and then use most of the money we give them to buy guns for "freedom fighters". Meanwhile they will continue to repress their citizens, only now with a more effective and better armed police state. They're laughing at us all the way to the bank. Again. Great political move for el' Presedente though.

Life isn't actually a bad action movie, you know. All nation states lie. The Unites States foremost among them. It might be wise to recall the path to power the current government of Iran took, and how much of that was facilitated by US adventurism. The reality of the situation is that sanctions were hurting poor people in Iran and doing essentially nothing to impede progress towards them building a working nuclear device. The US just basically intentionally destabilized Egypt and doubled down on Assad in Syria, because, you know, the mass murdering sociopath you can do business with is probably ok at heart. All of that strengthened Iran's position. The idea here is to save face for the US, that's it. That's the entire context. If Iran wants a nuclear device (and who wouldn't, really) they'll have one in 10 years. This is identical to the circumstances a year ago. What may be different is that the .00005% chance they would use such a device in the region might be reduced to .000025% if relations thaw. Which is good.

I'm not sure how anyone would be against this sort of agreement. The other option is the status quo, which doesn't work. No one wants war with Iran. While it's required that media in the US paints their military as comically inept, they are, in fact, fairly good at war. Their leadership is certainly better equipped for it than that of anywhere we've fought in 40 years, and the cost for no tangible gain would make it unpopular fairly quickly. Israel will get over it. Or not, it really doesn't matter much. They'd lose a conflict with Iran *badly*.

Well, the good news the Rs have a chance to say that O planned all this to distract us all from the fiasco of Ocare.

I am curious as to what Netanyahu will do. He is not exactly subtle about his intentions. Last time I checked online Israeli press, the war question was that of when, not if.

how do you figure? Israel has 700 aircraft to iran's 500. Most of Israel's air force fighters are export variant F-15 and F-16's, with fairly modern avionics and weapons packages. Most of Iran's fighters are F-14A tomcats or Mig 29 B's with a serious lack of spare parts and likely some chinese avionics packages and weapons, but overall not as capable an air force (the F-14-a is the tiny baby tomcat that was replaced by the D variants later). Assume comparable pilots, Air superiority likely to Israel, even wiht the defense vs. offense aspect of a fight assuming it takes place over Iran. Land war, Israel has around 1200-ish Merkava Mk III and IV main battle tanks, equivelent to about an M1-a1 in terms of armor and a little lighter on the gun. Iran has about the same number of T-72 variants, I'd be willing to call that a wash given the defender home court advantage. Of course egypt could always throw some of their actual M1-A1's Iran's way, but we would probably intervene at that point somehow. Attack helicopters and support helicopters, israel wins, Light infintry, I'd be inclined to call it for Israel based on numbers, weapon and vehical superiority. Iran probably does have more large Artilliary around than Israel so i'd give that to Iran in a hypothetical situation, though Israel does have 600 M109's. Navy? Israel wins no question. Combat Engineering? Probably Israel. Mass destruction? Iran has chemical biologicals, Israel has nukes. Top all that off with an intact industrial infrastructure, banking sector, and a very large reserve force percentage of population and I don't see Iran winning by a major margin, if at all.

So when do we get a "bomb their country into glass" option? For any country, really.

Yeah, we could never find a way to break through glass!

I thought the best options was a War Games scenario, where we poke Iran enough that they do something stupid enough to warrant Israel turning them into glass.

Pretty much why the nuke talk is just the hogwash cover story for how the big boy table wants to spend the money generated by the emerging economy of Iran. Did you know their GDP is nearly the same as Canada's? Heck the few $B being released is @#%^ all to them really. They also trade pretty openly with the 3 of the fastest growing economies in the world (India, China, South Africa). These "talks" have little to do about a nuclear threat...that much is evident when the 2 most potentially impacted nations by a nuclear Iran Saudi Arabia and Israel weren't even invited to have a say.

And again if Iran wanted a nuclear weapon they could have had on years ago. They have had the capacity to generate required fissile material since the 90's. Sanctions don't stop nukes (North Korea). Sanctions are intended to play the public against the established government in order to insight regime change...unfortunately the US and the UK really killed any hope of Iranians adopting Western ideals in 1953 when they decided they would give Iran a "proper" Government (ie. one that would happily sell out Irans resources for next to nothing to the West.) It also doesn't mean much when the sanctioned money is really arbitrary in terms of the size and function of the Iranian economy.






Edited, Nov 26th 2013 12:19pm by rdmcandie