In a post eerily reminiscent of the Frosts’ attitude toward health insurance, Cernig Fester opines:
Creature at State of the Day read through Bush’s speech on his intention to deploy a missile defense base in Poland with the tracking radar in the Czech Republic and pulled out a very interesting statement:
In his speech here, Bush said intelligence estimates show that Iran could have the capability to strike the United States and many European allies by 2015.
Even if one assumes that the Iranian strategic leadership either is not rational and thus not deterable today, or that there is a significant probability that its future leadership will not be deterrable in the future, and thus poses a significant strategic threat to the United States or its allies despite the highly credible threat of either a conventional or nuclear retaliation, even the ‘best‘ Bush picked intel does not think that the Iranian government will have the capacity to do anything for a while.
Besides the fact that press reports since at least the late 90s have estimated that Iran is continually seven to ten years away from building an ICBM/MRBM capacity, the statement that the best guesstimate is eight years in the future means that at least half of the public relations roll-out for at least brinksmanship, if not escalation into overt military conflict is called into severe doubt.
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The point being that the threat is not ‘imminent.’ So, shit. Rebuild New Orleans just as before. Why not?
UPDATE: From The Next Hurrah (h/t Wishbone)
From Stratfor:
The premise here is that the time to “do something” is after Iran develops the nuclear capability. Although I am not in favor of a military strike against Iran yet, it seems obvious that this premise is flawed.
I don’t wish to alarm anyone…
but a picture is worth a thousand words. Looks like the Shahab 4 puts most of NATO under threat TODAY.
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/images/iraqs_missiles.jpg
But according to the Leftist school of thought, we should wait until Iran takes a pot shot at Israel, and wait until a few thousand Jooooooooos and US military are killed before Iran become an imminent threat.
I know…let’s offer the Iranians the opportunity to develop their nuclear capabilities right here in the US. We could locate their labs in New Orleans. Ninth Ward. Who’s with me?
wishbone:
Let them fire one of those puppies into Italy, Germany, or even France when they are capable. If you’ve visited Europe lately you know that half of the people they fry up will be Muslim anyway.
Speaking of which, isn’t it ironic that frying Muslims smell just like bacon? er…at least that’s what I heard
First of all the vast majority of people screaming about a military strike in Iran are permanent residents of the BDS wing (you know, the one with padded furniture, grated windows and the Sponge Bob Square Pants Bongs perpetually baking redolent Panama Red) who are convinced that BUSH AND CHENEY’S FINGERS ARE POISED AT THE TRIGGER!!! This reflects both their ignorance of strategic realities and their own, well, drooliness when it comes to all things Bushitler.
ICBM capability to the US is not the issue. Iran needs geopositioning satilite capability as well as a number of other technological innovations, non of them cheap. As wishbone points out the Shahab 4 threatens Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and most of Eastern Europe. Is it just possible that we have compelling National Security interests in that part of the world for a variety of reasons like NATO, Israel and the stinking oil?
This is just an intelligence assessment (and boy, howdy, they’ve certainly served us well in the last ten years) that tries to guess capabilites based upon current and future factors. As has been pointed out ad nauseum the time to deal (in whatever effective form) with Iran and their nuclear ambitions is not after they have a working arsenal
Why the hell is this so tough to understand?
Face it, folks. They’re gonna give these gomers a free shot with a home-grown nuke. Some city somewhere is gonna have to die an ugly death before we take the mad mullahs seriously enough to exterminate them.
BJ – It is really quite simple. You are applying facts and logic. Those that decry our imminent strikes on Iran are the same nobloodforoilwarmongerer BSD sufferers that think that Team Bush does nothing but sit around and make up new reasons to kill brown people.
mojo – I hope you are not right, but suspect you are.
> … despite the highly credible threat of either a conventional or nuclear retaliation …
Unfortunately, deterrence only works for rational actors. The Mullahs (especially the 12th-imam sectarians) think of MAD as “Mutually Assured Salvation” for Iran. Why would they care?
Obligatory: Though their men are generally unimpressive as such, I’m absolutely sure I saw penises in Japan.
And yes, either Iran/Syria/[list of proxies] nails Israel, or Israel pre-nails them so successfully that some supposed allies of ours go Nazi-flashback in return — because only killing Jews passes the “global test” — then the real shit starts.
I advocate, as I always have, the pre-emptive destruction of Europe.
Where did psych’s “obligatory” comment come from?
Was that perhaps in question at some time?
Hi Dan,
Firstly, it was Fester’s post, not mine.
Secondly, you might want to mention that the Next Hurrah’s graphic is highly hyperbolic, having been originally produced by the utterly-nutterly MeK terror group’s political wing. The Shahab4, which is a derivative of the No-Dong you correctly cite as having a 1,500 km range, has at most a range of 2,500km not 4,000km. With a payload capable of being an actual nuke, it only ranges 2,200km at maximum. It’s still in prototype stage after several setbacks, as is the Shahab3.
Here’s the real deal, from an actual expert: http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/948/iran-the-bomb-2-irans-missile-capabilities
Third, there are no actual nukes to put atop these prototype missiles, and won’t be for years.
Regards, C
Why do you suppose Iran’s missiles will be launching out of Kuwait, practically?
“Even if one assumes that the Iranian strategic leadership either is not rational and thus not deterable today, or that there is a significant probability that its future leadership will not be deterrable in the future”
Since when was a forgone conclusion that this Islamist theorcracy would EVER act rationally.
Cernig – Thanks for the clarification. That rush of air the flew over your head. That was the overall point blowing past you like a Papelbon fastball.
An ABM shield and Iran’s nuclear ambitions are two different, albeit related, issues.
Regarding an ABM site in Eastern Europe, this isn’t a case of “A defense site in 30 minutes or your next one’s free.” Having the ground based radar in Poland and the interceptors in the Czech Republic means this is a large scale, fixed system. Those take time to construct once the funding and other political wrangling is done. A 8 year timeline is not too unreasonable since you’d like to have it on-line prior to Iran fully developing it’s longer-range missile capability.
Realted but different is that there are more ways to deliver a nuclear weapon than as a ballistic warhead. Ideally you’d want to stop them from having such weapons in the first place. Russia and China will make that difficult but they aren’t in range anyway so it’s no matter to them.
PT
BTW, the “they” in the last sentence refers to China, specifically Bejing. Moscow already has ground-based interceptors around it as a legacy from the Cold War. Those will just need to be refurbished.
Here’s a clip from Jane’s about the Shahab 4. Perhaps I’ll concede Cernig’s range point. But, please Cernig, pay no attention to the next-to-last paragraph. For that seems to be the policy that you advocate. Not paying attention, I mean.
http://www.janes.com/aerospace/military/news/jdw/jdw040927_1_n.shtml
I’ll take the 1450 km figure in the article and take say Kharmanshah in western Iran and Bandar Abbas in the southeast. The Strait of Hormuz, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Suez Canal, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the inconsequential Incirlik AFB are within range. Nothing to worry about here, folks. Nothing at all.
So, please, Cernig–enlighten us when it time to worry. When the centrifuges go live? Already there. When a test is imminent? After a test? I’m curious here. If you have the secret to deterring the mullahs offer it; please tell me how one goes about deterring Hamas or Hezbollah.
Iran is not the Soviets. Remind yourself of that. And then maybe…just maybe you’ll get it.
Thanks, C. I fixed the attribution.
To be clear, I personally hope that the Iranian theocracy is toppled before we do anything extroverted to stop them from acquiring a nuclear weapon, but that doesn’t mean that the only way in which they might acquire one is through their own efforts, or that a long-held event horizon will continue to hold.
I also am against the nuclear annihilation of Cuba, however much certain Cubans are an affront to American values. I wish these morons would arrive at the same conclusion vis-a-vis Israel, however responsible for all the problems of Arabia they may be.
Three men are sitting at a table in a tavern, where a drunk has been raving belligerently all night at the bar. The drunk turns to the smaller guy sitting on the stool next to him and threatens to blow his head off.
The first man says to the other two at his table: “I think we ought to jump that guy right now and disarm him before he hurts someone.”
The second man replies: “I think we ought to try talking to him to see if we can calm him down. If that doesn’t work, we ought to see if we can get some others to join us in pressuring him to leave. We’ll jump him as a last resort, if nothing else works.”
The liberal jumps up: “You bullies! Leave him alone! Why are you picking on that man? What right do you have to tell him he can’t have a gun?!”
What’s fun, and ironic, is that in this case the BDS sufferers are doing George W. a favor and don’t know it.
Whether or not military action is actually intended, a credible threat of military intervention is useful, in fact almost indispensible for proper diplomacy. Given American inaction in the past (see Khobar Towers, USS Cole, etc.) a threat of such action isn’t particularly credible — but with the Left-loonies screaming to the high heavens that Bush is just sitting there with his finger on the Big Red Button and an anticipatory smile (smirk) on his face, the likelihood of such a thing actually, you know, happening looks a lot better, at least from outside. This increases the deterrent effect of the threat.
So, Cernig. Were you aware that you’re an unwitting tool of the Bush Conspiracy to Conquer the World? Makes it even more fun, don’t it?
Regards,
Ric
Even if one assumes that the Iranian strategic leadership either is not rational and thus not deterable today
It takes a special kind of willful blindness to even consider such a statement. The ghost of Chamberlain still haunts us all.
A very old friend, as in he’s an old guy (now retired and living in Scottsdale), who spent the better part of the 1960s working in Iran for the CDC, told me this. Iranians lie, through their teeth, for anything, at all times.
Watching the Frontline episode last night on PBS – about confronting Iran, I was reminded of this adage. The gist of the documentary was how Bushco sqaundered the overtures of the Iranian “reformists” after the invasion of Afghanistan and ushered in dinner-jacket and the loons and hence the situation we find ourselves in. (Of course everything is the fault of the clumsy neo-cons, isn’t it?)
Anyway as part of the access granted to the documentary crew … were interviews with various mouthpieces of the mullocracy to spout various propaganda and loony Persian truthiness (unchallenged of course). All these interviews were punctuated with overt threats of retaliation should we EVER deign to fuck with them directly.
And they kept coming (the threats). Like the worst poker tells, the nehru collars kept showing (to me) that they held no cards at all. As things have progressed with the surge and the military taking down the Qods in Iraq, the Iranians have stepped up the threats. After the Israeli’s took out their little science lab in Syria, the more strident the threats became. “We will harm your interests”, “It will be your biggest blunder”, Baghdad Bob in redux.
Sure they can do a couple of things with Hizbullah or some other proxies in South America. Bomb an Embassy/Synagogue/Whatever … but what can you after your home turf has been reduced to rubble and your oil infrastructure turned into a pool of metal and your are forced to make fire by striking pieces of flint? Proxies demand cash in advance and don;t take no IOUs.
Deep down, faced with that, what more can you do but bark in desperation with your tail tucked between your legs hoping that some easily scared libtard will back off and walk away.
They don’t have shit, they may some stuff working, but beyond that all they got is raising and re-raising trying to buy the pot.
Like Ric says above, we just have to keep checking.
Fuck them.
I’m down with OTT.
Agreed, if by “refurbished” you mean something like “replaced by missiles that can actually fulfill their intended function”. Preferably, also, not by replacing a groundburst with an airburst, because these were nuclear-tipped interceptors.
Hi Dan and thanks for the linkage — let’s expand on my logic as you and I both know that blog posts are often built upon several years of previous writing. The Bush admin is admitting that any serious capability for an Iranian ICBM or at least an MRBM threat is many years away. Throw in the fact that the best available evidence shows that the Iranian centifuge program is either in the pilot stage and sufficient for civilian nuclear fuel enrichment (enrichment levels of less than 5%) or it is malevant but many, many, many years away from enriching uranium to the ~90% U235 concentration needed for a simple implosion design. The argument I am making is that the scary Iranian threat roll-out is a hollow one and not time pressing. Furthermore, if there is no nuclear threat, a limited number of MRBMs carrying conventional warheads are a miniscule threat that in my opinion does not justify the expense of THAAD deployment to Eastern Europe and the consquent increasing of tensions with Russia.
Responding to #18 Comment by wishbone on 10/24 @ 1:01 pm #
“I’ll take the 1450 km figure in the article and take say Kharmanshah in western Iran and Bandar Abbas in the southeast. The Strait of Hormuz, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Suez Canal, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the inconsequential Incirlik AFB are within range.”
Ballistic missiles make absolutely horrendous anti-shipping weapons, the Iranian capacity to threaten to close the Straits of Hormuz is based on a combination of three old Kilo class submarines, mines, fast attack craft, shore based artillery, and shore based anti-ship cruise missiles. As for the rest, the Isrealis have Arrow, Incrilik was designed to NATO standards which were at a level to withstand a concentrated Nuclear/Chemical onslaught from a near peer power with several orders of magnitude firepower (decom, HSAs, Red Horse battalions etc), and the Saudi refineries and distirbution network is already under threat by current capacity.
Well, you know, fester, the US actually completed a couple of nuclear bombs within 4 years, without benefit of the same staggered centrifuge technology that the Iranians are utilizing. Can you tell me why Iran is stating that it is too late to stop their nuclear efforts?
It was assumed the Soviets would take ten to 15 years to develop the atom bomb. it took them less than 3. 5000 centrifuges isn’t a pilot stage. The number admitted to by the Iranians. Much faster than the gas diffusion method.it also produces much purer uranium. So take the projects amount of time and divide by two.That’s how much time we have.In any event. Why give them the time to perfect their process? Miniscule threat to everyone except those they land on. Never assume the guy who just threatened your life is bluffing.
Ballistic missiles make wonderful anti shipping weapons when they hit a port.
Why is everyone so worried about high-tech? Missile and estimated ranges and all that…
What’s wrong with low-tech? A tramp steamer pulling into New York Harbor, or a 60-foot boat cruising the Mediterranean, or a simple cargo truck pulling up to a checkpoint in Jerusalem.
We’re assuming that the Iranians are eager to do things in the same order we did – simple (almost foolproof) bombs, multiple tests, then lots of safety factors built in before military-standard deployment.
We already know that they have been sponsoring Hamas and Hezbollah for years, and that they (through the Syrians) also influence events in Lebanon. Why would they scruple to use proxies against a common foe?
Someone please check where I said “ship.”
Fester,
You miss the very obvious political implications of a nuclear Iran with even MRBM capability. And please ask the Israelis if they are confident enough in the Arrrow to just ignore the threat.
My last point on this subject is that most of the time, fanatics mean exactly what they say. Ahmanrumpledlook and the mullahs he takes orders from mean what they say. Kicking the can down the road because they don’t yet have the capability to do something that they are actively working to accomplish on all fronts is willful intellectual dishonesty.
That kind of thinking gives me very little comfort.
Sorry to break this to you, but THAAD is, originally, Theater High Altitude Area Defense. It’s not a system that gets deployed to a fixed site, it gets moved around with troop forces. IOW, it’s for battlefield defense, not for population defense. Conceivably it might be used to defend populated areas if there’s a threat, but it’s certainly not designed with that use in mind. And certainly production isn’t geared toward that being anything other than an incidental use.
NB: I did work as THAAD SETA for six or seven years, so I do have some notion of how these things work. It’s always possible that some folks are lobbying to have THAAD adapted to permanently emplaced population defense, but I haven’t heard anything to that effect.