This one falls under the radar because Herman Cain had sex again, but not only did a nuclear facility in Iran’s 3rd largest city explode – it was the second one in a month.
This will really help:
Major-General Giora Eiland, Israel’s former director of national security, told Israel’s army radio that the Isfahan blast was no accident. “There aren’t many coincidences, and when there are so many events there is probably some sort of guiding hand, though perhaps it’s the hand of God,” he said.
So the Jewish (and Christian?) god told them to smite those damn Muslims. That’ll go down well.
You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy. But you cannot have both.
Whatever Works 
Not only that, but the Iranians retaliated by storming the British Embassy. The silence from the American press on the second explosion at the Isfahan uranium conversion facility leads me to believe there is a self-imposed media blackout of the story at the behest of the US government. Usually, David Sanger at the NYTs would be all over this. Now, he is conspicuously silent.
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I don’t expect to see that story on the TV “news”, but that it’s not in our papers . . . I watch BBC America news and the difference between it and our 1/2 hour network “news” shows is simply shocking.
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Ain’t that the truth.
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Maybe this has the “Obama fingerprints” on it.. No drama, under the radar, no call to arms – just fix it at the singular points.
And no huge defense budget attached to the operations.
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Maybe. We’ll see . . . I’ve always thought Israel is entirely safe from a nuclear Iran, becuase one missile from Iran and Israel would wipe out Tehran. Wipe it out.
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Does the ‘offensive war’ against a NUCLEAR Iran continue?
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Not from us I hope.
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Hand of God my hiney. There’s more going on behind the scenes that we realize, I’m convinced.
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“my hiney” 🙂 Now there’s an archaic word!!
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I have begun to suspect that these are not “accidents” as well. The idiotic GOP candidates keep yelling about how they would have “covert” operations going on here. Like the morons they are, they of course miss the point. Covert means exactly that. I’m sure covert operations are going on in a lot of places. I wonder how many others get the obvious though.
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Not too many Sherry, not too many. The obvious is inconvenient to the narrative you know . . .
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Sherry,
These incidents definitely aren’t accidents. Earlier this year, one or more Iranian nuclear scientists died in car bombings. I suspect joint covert Israeli-American action in deliberate acts of sabotage to roll back Iran’s nuclear program. I believe that the policy began with the Bush administration (with the possible development of the Stuxnet worm) and were continued and enhanced by the Obama administration.
I think it is good policy. After all, if the Iranians plotted to bomb a crowded restaurant in Washington, DC, frequented by US senators without the protection of a nuclear deterrent, imagine what actions they might pursue with one.
I think these incidents are likely going to lead to further escalation over the next several months. It is about time the US struck back against Iran. For instance, that countries IEDs have led to something like 40% of American deaths in Iraq. They’ve been attacking US forces since at least 2003. It is about time we dealt with them like the enemy they are.
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Sean I will often to defer to your superior knowledge of things military but dear Elvis, I don’t think this coulntry could survive another ‘enemy’. We always have an ‘enemy’ and I’m tired of it.
Iran is the very definition of blowback. As you well know, in 1953 we (and the Brits) overthrew their democraticaly elected president because we thouglht he leaned a bit left. He was thoroughly Western, the country was westernizing with a highly educated population. That was an important step in what was then a growing process in that part of the world that was throwing off the Islamist influence. Now we’re paying the piper.
IED’s got into Iraq because Iraqi Shia wanted them there. US weapons kill people all over the world on multiple continents and have for half a century – are they all supposed to come get us because of it?
Taking it to Iran is the exactly wrong thing to do. There are options. I will not support my country invading another country. What, is North Korea next?
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I don’t support an invasion either. But I do support rolling back their nuclear program, which one can accomplish via sabotage or air strikes.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind these IEDs. They didn’t sell them to the Iraqis, they gave them the explosives. There is no moral equivalency with the US here.
As for North Korea, we can’t do anything about them now because they have nukes. Members of the current administration recommended a precision strike on North Korea’s reactor in 1994, but Jimmy Carter negotiated a deal at the last minute. Had Clinton executed Op Plan 5027, North Korea likely would not have nuclear weapons today.
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I expect China will take care of North Korea and we should stay out of it. What exactly are our interests in the region?
As for the IED’s in Iraq, we invaded the country. We were/are an occupying force. Iran gave weapons to their old enemy cuz we created the longed for opening for them in Iraq. More blowback.
I know we can’t have consistency in foreign policy, but let’s not forget that it was rich and prominent Saudis who financed Osama and Saudi nationals who attacked us.
By the way, Iran hasn’t attacked another country for 500 years. And attacking their nuclear program is a sure way to turn the young generation of the Green movement against us. They’re damn proud of that.
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Moe,
Regarding North Korea, our primary interest is ensuring regional stability. Without our presence, Japan and South Korea would likely acquire nuclear weapons as a hedge against North Korea, which would add to regional instability. In regard to China, the North Koreans have been bucking the Chinese for quite some time, and it is becoming increasingly clear that they have almost as little influence in changing North Korean behavior as we do.
On Saudi Arabia, I don’t like them much either, but they posses about 60% of the world’s spare oil capacity. Unfortunately, being on good terms with the Saudis is in our vital national interest.
The Green Movement has less of a chance of overthrowing the Iranian government than OWS does of overthrowing our government. Without arms or the support of arms (kind of like our influence in Libya), the Green movement doesn’t stand a chance.
Iran’s been a constant purveyor of bad behavior, overrunning embassies, supporting terrorism, importing missiles to Lebanon, kidnapping Americans, and sinking ships in the Persian Gulf in the 1980s, firing ballistic missiles at Iraqi population centers during the Iran-Iraq War, and sending operatives to help repress Syrian civilians. Iran also stirred up the al Sadr uprising in Iraq and the recent Shia uprising in Bahrain. Whether we like it or not, we’ve been fighting a proxy war with Iran since 2003. We might as well defang the beast.
I actually think Obama is doing the right thing here. At the beginning of his administration, he dangled the noose by offering to put everything on the table and the Iranians rebuffed him, thereby putting their heads in the noose. Now no one can say that the President didn’t try diplomacy first. A very shrewd policy, indeed.
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I guess the thing about all these Middle Eastern countries is one can make a case for multiple, even conflicting, policy decisions (I wouldn’t want to be the one charged with choosing!). Also, when something works in one instance, we tend to try to apply it to all situations, which of course doensn’t work. (think Westmoreland, Vietnam).
The thing is, when I look at the Middle East, I think we have a very mixed record. For instance, there was hardly a whisper of a consideration by us going into Iraq of the Shia-Sunni struggle for dominance. Saddam kept Sunni’s in charge by force. Once we invaded, Iranian influence exploded, expecially in the south. Sadr City became nearly another country.
Saddam was the buffer zone for the other Arab countries – they figured he’d keep the Shia at bay with his guns. We didn’t prepare for that within or without Iraq.
Does Saudi have more or less oil than Iraq these days? I know it’s fungible, but still we aren’t nearly as dependent as we used to be. And as for 6%, the US could give up our share of that in a heartbeat if we’d even consider some smart national conservation moves as part of a national energy policy. But we don’t. Which screams greed and carelessness to me. Add that people get klled because of it, and I’d add deeply immoral.
Ironically, our military is instituting more ‘green’ projects than anywhere else here in the country.
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Moe,
My worry is not that either side uses nukes deliberately, but that one side does something innocuous like conducting a missile test, and the other side miscalculates and ushers in nuclear armageddon in the Middle East.
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A good point, and always a threat Sean, but that’s a threat in many parts of the world. It hung over our heads for most of my life and was always a real possibilitiy. But bad things can always happen and there is precious little we can do to prevent it.
We could keep our rails and bridges in tip top shape and test all our opertaors. And having done all we could, the train can still go off hte bridge for a myriad of reasons – some of which could have been anticipated even. But shit will happen and all we can do is weigh costs.
We didn’t stop Hitler till millions died. We didn’t stop Stalin till millions died. Millions have died in the last decade in African countries and we didn’t stop it. And for most of these, we COULDN’T have stopped it. We can mitigate, but sometimes that is all we can do.
I’d weigh the balance of stopping Iran’s prograqm vs. making US an even bigger satan in the US and probably subject to more terrorist attacks. Our days as the world’s superpower aren’t over, but we’re winding down and we need to look to our own future.
Whew. Shut up Moe!
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“A good point, and always a threat Sean, but that’s a threat in many parts of the world. It hung over our heads for most of my life and was always a real possibilitiy. But bad things can always happen and there is precious little we can do to prevent it.”
But in game theory, a bipolar system is far more stable than a multipolar one. If Iran gets nukes, the Saudis, Turks, Egyptians and Syrians will seek them too. In the end, you have a Middle East with >70% of the world’s oil reserves on a hair trigger. Just one miscalculation amongst thousands of individual decision makers could not only imperil the Middle East, but also our way of life here. Imagine if food prices spiked 50x as food suppliers struggled to ship food to market due to dwindling fuel supplies and lower crop yields from reduced use of agricultural machinery.
This happened (cut off of fuel supplies from Russia) in North Korea in the last century and ~2 million people starved.
I’m with you on diversifying our energy independence via alternative sources, but also think we need more domestic production at home from more traditional sources as well. That said, we also need to prevent Iran from going nuclear through negotiation or outright coercision. I’d rather have someone hate me ten thousand miles away than have my neighbor contemplating me and my family as a source of food. The stakes here are far higher than they seem.
BTW, did you see that the French and Italians are recalling their embassy staffs from Iran? I think something big is definitely up. The Libyan intervention never made sense to me. However, couched as a quid pro quo for French, Italian, and British cooperation on Iran, it suddenly seems to make a heck of a lot more sense.
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[The Libyan intervention never made sense to me. However, couched as a quid pro quo for French, Italian, and British cooperation on Iran, it suddenly seems to make a heck of a lot more sense.]
Very astute observation. Never thought of that, but I can definitely see it. Quid pro quo.
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Moe please check this post and the link…..
You also Mac if ya get a chance….
More things are afoot than meets the eye….
http://www.politicaldog101.com/?p=40940
Politics is EVERYWHERE!
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You redesignede!!! Looks good.
The conventional wisdom is that the attack on the British Embassy was entirely orchestrated by the government. THey tried to make it look citizen led and claimed it was, but it wasn’t.
The current grand Ayatollah is said to be more moderate than Amajindad, which is ironic in the extreme!!
Really like the new look james.
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I really don’t know what to make of this anymore – things are blowing up randomly in Pakistan and Iran, and now this embassy storming.. is it big or small? have no idea….
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Add in Europe redesigning itself over this financial mess and alliances shifting . . . we could be in a very altered world in ten years.
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Ms. Holland,
” Maybe. We’ll see . . . I’ve always thought Israel is entirely safe from a nuclear Iran, becuase one missile from Iran and Israel would wipe out Tehran. Wipe it out. ”
Iran can afford to have one nuke take out Tehran, Israel cannot afford one Iranian nuke, that is the difference. Iran is much larger than tiny Israel.
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So Iran is willing to sacrifice a 3000 year old city of 8.5 million (and another 4 million in the suburbs) that is the financial, educational and business center of the country . . . sure.
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