Tag: Iran

Iran Just Following Israel’s Lead with ‘Deterrence by Uncertainty’

Buck Banks

Maybe, maybe not: Political observers are drawing parallels between Iran’s approach to developing nuclear capabilities and the way Israel developed its own nuclear program — in secrecy that breeds uncertainty.

In developing its nuclear program Iran is using strategies that allowed its enemy Israel to assemble the Middle East’s only atomic arsenal without admitting it had one, according to a leading expert on the Israeli program.

The elements the Israeli and Iranian nuclear programs have in common are secrecy, concealment, ambiguity, double talk and denial.

“Whether deliberately or inadvertently, there are elements of resemblance between the way Iran is pursuing its nuclear program today and the way Israel was pursuing its own program in the 1960s,” Avner Cohen, author of a landmark study entitled “Israel and the Bomb,” in a telephone interview.

“This is a great irony of history but Iranian policymakers and nuclear technocrats may be strategically mimicking the Israeli model,” said Cohen, senior research scholar at the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies.

As Cohen sees it, the elements the Israeli and Iranian nuclear programs have in common are secrecy, concealment, ambiguity, double talk and denial.

Iran’s probable strategy, he says, is to create the perception of having a secret weapons program, or being close to it, without actually testing a bomb or declaring its possession or impending possession.

That echoes the Israeli program, which began in the late 1950s at the Dimona nuclear complex in the Negev Desert. Since then, Israel has declined to confirm or deny it has nuclear weapons, saying only it would not be the first to “introduce” them into the Middle East.

Over the decades, Israel’s attitude has been “let the world guess” or as former Prime Minister Shimon Peres called it, “deterrence by uncertainty.”

Read more here.

Poll: Most Americans Support Seeking Diplomatic Solution to Iran’s Nuclear Threat

Buck Banks

It’s coalition time again: A new Reuters/Zogby poll released today finds us Americans viewing Iran about the same as we viewed Iraq before Bushco invaded — favoring a multilateral, international, diplomatic approach.

A majority of Americans want the United States to increase diplomatic efforts over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, while 70 percent oppose the use of U.S. troops to thwart Iran, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Thursday.

Asked the best course of action for the United States in dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, 45 percent said Washington should join with allies to increase diplomatic efforts and another 17 percent said the United States should step up diplomacy on its own.

One in four respondents, 26 percent, said they supported the use of U.S. ground troops in Iran, while 70 percent opposed it. Nine percent favored air strikes on selected military targets in Iran.

The Reuters/Zogby poll found 42 percent supported a strike on Iranian facilities if carried out by the Israeli military, with 47 percent opposed.

The national poll of 1,000 likely voters, conducted on September 22-25, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

Gardiner Says U.S. Already Conducting Military Ops in Iran

Buck Banks

War’s on: A retired Air Force colonel is making the rounds in the media saying that the United States government is already conducting military operations inside Iran, and is preparing to start targeted bombing attacks. Sound familiar?

Just now on CNN, Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner (Ret.) said, “We are conducting military operations inside Iran right now. The evidence is overwhelming.”

Gardiner, who taught at the U.S. Army’s National War College, has previously suggested that U.S. forces were already on the ground in Iran. Today he added several additional new points:

  • The House Committee on Emerging Threats recently called on State and Defense Department officials to testify on whether U.S. forces were in Iran. The officials didn’t come to the hearing.
  • “We have learned from Time magazine today that some U.S. naval forces had been alerted for deployment. That is a major step.”
  • “The plan has gone to the White House. That’s not normal planning. When the plan goes to the White House, that means we’ve gone to a different state.”
‘The real U.S. policy objective is not merely to eliminate the nuclear program, but to overthrow the regime’

In a press release issued by the Century Foundation today, Gardiner asserts that Bushco is making plans to bomb Iran into submission:

In a new report for The Century Foundation, Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner warns that some in the Bush administration are making the case for air strikes aimed not only at setting back Iran’s nuclear program, but also at toppling the country’s government. He says that these officials are undeterred by the concerns of military leaders about whether such attacks would be effective.

“If this uncertainty does not appear to worry the proponents of air strikes in Iran it is in no small part because the real U.S. policy objective is not merely to eliminate the nuclear program, but to overthrow the regime,” he writes. “It is hard to believe, after the misguided talk prior to Iraq of how American troops would be greeted with flowers and welcomed as liberators, but those inside and close to the administration who are arguing for an air strike against Iran actually sound as if they believe the regime in Tehran can be eliminated by air attacks.”
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