Found this good article.............. Question: Is Iran a Nuclear Threat to Israel? Iran's--or, more precisely, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's--threat to wipe Israel off the map gets almost as much ink as Ahmadinejad's bad suits. The threat hangs from the same racks where Ahmadinejad gets his suits: way out there by the remainder bins of hand-me-down posturing from Iran's Revolutionary Guard, which occasionally needs to reassert itself in the eyes of an increasingly skeptical Iranian public. The threats, to push the analogy into the lethal territory of radioactive clichés, is threadbare. So: Is Iran really a threat to Israel? Answer: Empty or not, nuclear threats must be taken seriously for that they imply, for what they say about those who make them, and just as pointedly, for what they say about those who answer them--Israel, the United States and, increasingly, Sunni-Arab regimes. Iran isnât out to nuke Israel, nor is it out to control the Middle East. It couldn't even if it wanted to, even if it had nuclear weapons. For starters, Israel and Pakistan have nukes, so does China and so, for that matter, do the United States and Russia. Even at the height of their rivalry during the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States tried to control the Middle East but proved comically (and more often tragically) incapable. The United States repeated the attempt as the sole superpower and failed rather miserably. A tertiary power such as Iran isn't about to best its predecessors in delusion. Iran wants to be a regional power, wielding influence where it can and even flexing its muscles by proxy through its clients (Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in south Lebanon, Shiite militias in Iraq). But, as Barack Obama must know (and his approaches toward Iran bear this out), Iranâs power through these clients is limited. Hamas is an essentially Palestinian force, and more to the point, a Sunni Muslim force. Its long-term interests are neither with Iran nor with a Shiite Islamic agenda. Nor, incidentally, is Hamasâ near- or long-term interest remotely connected to the potential for an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel. Distasteful and absurd as such calculations may be, such a strike would, by dint of geography, almost inevitably wipe out as many, or more, Arabs as it would Jews. (Remember: more than a fifth of the population in Israel proper is Arab, and some 5 million Palestinians rim Israel in occupied territories too close to avoid either a direct hit or the devastation from a nuclear strike.) What About Iranâs Support of Hezbollah? Similarly, Hezbollah is an essentially Lebanese force, its interests in Iran almost exclusively tactical. The way Hezbollah sees Iran is almost identical to the way Israel sees the United States: as a patron, an arms supplier, a cash cow, a blind ally. The relationship is not always a two-way street, and in that regard, too, Hezbollahâs relationship with Iran is similar to that of Israel with the United States. When itâs a choice between Hezbollahâs interests and its patronâs, Hezbollah neither bucks to Iranian demands nor hews to Iranian interests. Whatâs important to remember about Hezbollah above all is that itâs out to protect Hezbollah first and last, not to do Iranâs bidding. Thatâs not to say that Iran will not continue to try to flex its muscle through its regional allies. Thatâs what regional powers do, just as superpowers have always done, just as the United States continues to do. Itâs quite silly to expect Iran to sit back and do absolutely nothing while American and Israeli influence, overt or cover, runs the table in the Middle East. Itâs just as silly to act surprised that Iran would attempt to influence policy (or militants) in the region. Iran wants to be a player. The question is not whether it should be âallowedâ to be a player. It already is. The question is how to engage it constructively. Opposing it without engagement hasnât worked. Iranâs Internal Problems Dictate Its External Bluster Iran itself is pretty much a small version of the Soviet Union in the 1970s â approaching financial bankruptcy and ideological exhaustion. Its tired Islamic revolution, approaching its fourth decade, cannot be propped up except by pretense, and also by belligerence. The West will only prolong Iranâs cowboy act by playing into it, and feeding it, as the Bush administration did so well. The collapse in the price of oil may well force Iran to the negotiating table. Itâs up to Obama, and Europe, to come up with a compromise that could allow Iran to come out of its diplomatic isolation while giving it a face-saving way of maintaining some kind of civilian nuclear program while verifiably abandoning a military one. Why Bombing Iran Wonât Help Beyond all those reasons, there are other compelling reasons why bombing Iran would be a mistake. First, Iran isnât Iraq - it isnât a weakened country led by a discredited despot. With a population approaching 70 million, Iran has more than twice the population of Iraq, it has a functioning if anemic economy, a sizable if clunky military (and a fanatic Revolutionary Guard), and it has those proxy armies it can always call on for help. Iran wouldnât hesitate to use those armies as a hedge against an attack. Second, a single raid would not destroy whatever nuclear capacity the administration guesses Iran possesses. A bombing campaign would have to be widespread and lengthy. Its success would also be guesswork, but its consequences wouldnât be. Third, Iran would be radicalized again just as large segments of the population and parts of Iranâs government appear ready to look beyond belligerence. As The Economistâs Max Rodenbeck wrote in The New York Review of Books in January 2009, âair strikes cannot guarantee to stop Iran from getting the bomb, yet would likely ignite a cataclysmic regional backlash, particularly in Iraq. The fragility of the global economy has cooled tempers, too, since any threat to oil supplies from the Persian Gulf could destroy chances of a recovery. Bitter experience has also shown that shunning Iran, and brandishing sticks without accommodating legitimate Iranian concerns, have merely served to entrench Tehran's own hard-liners. Not only has Iran defiantly accelerated its nuclear program, it has also made embarrassing strategic inroads, via such ideological allies as Hezbollah and Hamas, against American interests in Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq.â http://middleeast.about.com/od/iran/f/iran-israel-nukes.htm
You seem confused. I'm not suggesting putting any of our boys at risk in bombers. I want our nuclear subs and/or ICBMs to pulverize and incinerate the entire country and, as I have expressed, kill every man, woman and child that inhabits the land. I'm not concerned with their flimsy defenses. They are simply not a top tier military power and we should not hesitate to destroy them if they threaten us ... and they have. I am not concerned with their population being radicalized because my hope is there will not be a population to be concerned about. Let me be crystal clear. I'm talking about making this a baron wasteland that would not be capable of supporting human beings for decades or even a century. I would not be averse to using a few dozen nuclear weapons every five years or so to assure the land remained baron and uninhabitable and, more importantly, to remind the region of our capacity for inhumanity once we are threatened.
And on an unrelated note: Iran to launch new nuclear plant project http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/...-to-build-new-nuclear-plant-by-early-2014-tv/
------Japan and China to start direct currency trading--------- http://news.yahoo.com/yen-yuan-direct-trading-start-friday-japan-003721822--finance.html i guess US should nuke those two as well..
Societies have a responsibility for those they allow to lead them. The consequences of picking this type of leadership must be draconian or else the populations will be lax. Let's wake the world up to what happens if you sit back and let those who threaten the most powerful empire the world has ever known. If we do not respond to those who threaten us, our might, instead of serving our ends, becomes just an expense that weakens us. The weak do not last at the top.