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So will Israel now bomb Iranian colleges and kill students as part of a "pre-emptive defense" against terrorism?
Probably...
Mircea
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mathguy
Read about the fighting between Iran and Iraq, Iraq was fighting with T-62, MIG's, SU's and Iran was fighting with F-4's, Chieftans, M-60's etc.
Iraq also had US military advisors.
And the US Navy sank all of Iran's destroyers.
Also don't forget that the Iranian military commanders who participated in the botched coup attempt instigated by the US prior to Khomeini taking power were either summarily executed, or relived of duty.
Accordingly, the US erroneously believed that Iran was weak militarily, and that's why the US pushed Iraq into attacking Iran. When I was at TRADOC Headquarters in '84 I had an opportunity to do a 6 month stint in Iraq as an advisor, but I was already slated to go to Egypt and train troops.
Advising...
Mircea
Quote:
Originally Posted by Toyman at Jewel Lake
What constitutes "modern" history to you? 1980s...
Um, it was Iraq who attacked Iran at the behest of the US. You might want to actually read the link, even thought it is from the unreliable Pukipedia.
Constituting...
Mircea
Quote:
Originally Posted by Casper in Dallas
Just a question why does Iran need Nuclear power when they are sitting Gallons of Fuel???????
To modernize.
I've explained this about a million times.
Iran is a net-importer of food. How does Iran free itself of dependence on imports while simultaneously becoming a net-exporter of food?
Simple. Build nuclear reactors.
Iran can develop the Iranian Plateau for agriculture, but only if Iran can bring cheap electrical power and water to the Plateau. That is where the dual-reactors at Bushwher come into play.
One of the reactors will power a series of water desalinization plants along the Persian Gulf coast. Desalinization plants are energy intensive, because electricity is part of the process. This water will the be used for two specific purposes:
1] to irrigate the Iranian Plateau for the development of agriculture; and
2] to provide water for the petro-chemical industry (which is water intensive).
Iran has a problem with 20% perennial unemployment. Developing agriculture will reduce unemployment.
Iran has maxed out on its hydro-electric capacity in the Zagros. Iran has no coal. As a result, all remaining electrical power plants are either natural gas fired or oil-fired. Nuclear power will allow Iran to shut down all of its natural gas and oil fired power plants.
Iran can then divert the natural gas that was used to provide power to refinement into chemical fertilizer for use in developing agriculture on the Iranian Plateau.
Iran can then divert the oil that was used to provide power to its non-existent petro-chemical industry, which will create even more jobs and lower the 20% perennial unemployment rate.
It also means that more natural gas and oil will be sold on the world market, increasing supply and helping offset demand which results in lower oil prices.
Iran can also refine more oil into diesel and gasoline for domestic consumption, eliminating the need for fuel-rationing (which Iran does now) and lowering the cost of fuel (which the government partially subsidizes as well).
All of those things lead to greater economic stability through the expansion of Middle Class and that ultimately forces a shift to more democratic forms of government, usually peacefully.
Imagine if we the US never let radical Islam take over in the Mid East due to our covert operations for oil. The world would have been a much, much better place if we just minded our own damn business
Quote:
For more than a half-century, American foreign policy dealing with oil has typically been manipulative and misguided, often both at the same time. The pattern of intrigue has ranged from U.S. officials' secretly writing tax laws in the 1950s (so the Saudi royal family could collect more money from the sale of its oil and American companies could write off the added payments on their tax returns) to overthrowing a government that showed too much independence in handling its oil sales. To illustrate the dark side of American oil policy, we offer two tales, stitched together from declassified government documents and oil-industry memos, involving a pair of Iraq's neighbors, Iran and Afghanistan.
The first one begins with the rise of a member of Iran's parliament, Mohammed Mossadegh, an impassioned speaker and popular politician who had long chafed at British domination over his country's oil. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., partly owned by the British government and a predecessor of today's British Petroleum, held the concession for all of Iran. It set production rates and prices as well as Iran's token share of the proceeds. Mossadegh sought a fifty-fifty sharing agreement, which was then becoming the common arrangement between other oil-producing countries and U.S. companies. The British refused. In 1951 Mossadegh successfully pushed to nationalize Anglo-Iranian, became Iran's Premier and established the National Iranian Oil Co.
The British boycotted Iranian oil, and the U.S. joined them. No international oil company would buy Iran's oil. The Iranians had no independent system for delivering it. They had no technical skills to produce it, since the British had long relegated Iranian workers to menial jobs. Even when Mossadegh threatened to flood the world with half-price oil, he was able to deliver only a trickle because of the economic blockade. As the Iranian government withered, the Eisenhower Administration cut off foreign aid. Unrest followed, and angry citizens took to the streets. This prompted suggestions that the communists were coming, even though Mossadegh was as anti-Soviet as he was anti-British. On Aug. 19, 1953, after the deaths of about 300 people in street riots, the 71-year-old Premier was overthrown. He was replaced by a retired army general, Fazollah Zahedi. The American-friendly Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who had earlier fled the country, returned triumphantly, resumed the throne and reasserted his control.
Media accounts of the coup were seemingly straightforward. The Washington Post reported that Iran had been saved from falling into communist hands and that the communists were blaming Brigadier General H. Norman Schwarzkopf "for alleged complicity in the coup." The paper said Schwarzkopf, whose namesake son would lead U.S. forces nearly a half-century later as they drove the Iraqi military out of Kuwait, had visited Iran "but only to see friends, the State Department said." TIME reported: "This was no military coup, but a spontaneous popular uprising."
It was anything but. When Mossadegh delayed settling with Anglo-Iranian on the takeover of the company, the British approached the CIA with a plan to remove the Premier and get Britain's oil back. The British could not do it alone, since they had left Iran. Allen Dulles, the CIA director, and his brother John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, agreed. The Dulles brothers assigned the task of overseeing the clandestine venture to Kermit Roosevelt, a longtime intelligence operative and the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt.
In the months leading up to the coup, Roosevelt spent much of his time in Tehran, coordinating efforts of CIA agents and Iranian sympathizers. To ensure the cooperation of a then indecisive Shah, the CIA turned to one of his old friends, General Schwarzkopf, who in 1942-48 worked with an internal-security force under palace command that helped the Shah maintain rule.
The CIA's fingerprints were everywhere. Operatives paid off Iranian newspaper editors to print pro-Shah and anti-Mossadegh stories. They produced their own stories and editorial cartoons and published fabricated interviews. They secured the cooperation of the Iranian military. They spread antigovernment rumors. They prepared phony documents to show secret agreements between Mossadegh and the local Communist Party. They masqueraded as communists, threatened conservative Muslim clerics and even staged a sham fire-bombing of the home of a religious leader. They incited rioters to set fire to a pro-Mossadegh newspaper. They stage-managed the appearance of Mossadegh's successor, General Zahedi, whose personal bank account they fattened.
With Mossadegh gone, British Petroleum returned to the Iranian oil fields. Some newcomers tagged along. They included five American companies, the ancestors of today's ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco. Meanwhile, the U.S. government opened the foreign-aid spigot. Over the next 25 years, more than $20 billion in U.S. taxpayers' money would pour into a decidedly undemocratic Iran, most of it military aid and subsidized weapons sales for the Shah's armed forces and SAVAK, his secret police. As for American oil companies, they would extract 2 billion bbl. of oil from their new Iranian fields. But the access came with a stiff price tag in U.S. government dollars and Iranian lives. And the Shah's oppression led to the establishment of the first American-hating Islamic republic, when the Shi'ite Muslim clerics duped by the CIA overthrow of Mossadegh masterminded their own takeover in 1979, installing the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. For two decades and counting, American oil companies have been barred by the U.S. government from doing business with Iran. Now the Shi'ites are seeking to turn Iraq into an Islamic republic.
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Amazing how we overthrew an autonomous nation with a democratically elected govt that simply wanted a 50% share of profits from ITS OWN OIL! WW1, WW2, the mess in the mid East, and global terrorism.....my oh my how we are STILL paying dearly for European imperialism.
Last edited by fibonacci; 02-03-2012 at 12:57 PM..
Sure, but still, it's none of our business, frankly. If Iran wants to have nuclear power plants for whatever reason, it is their decision.
Russia has nuclear power plants despite her huge fossil energy resources...
It is our business if they want to enrich their fuel and use it to build nukes, which they are (count on it), they are not run by stable people and they would have No problem giving or selling a device to someone that would use it. Do you really think it is wise to trust them, if you are wrong you may very well be dead wrong.
Iran is run by crazy people that make Dennis Kucinich and Newt look sane.
You prefer Israel just start nuking them to stop their craziness? Once Iran has nukes it is a matter of time before one magically appears in Lebanon to be strapped to a small rocket for a trip into Israel.
It is our business if they want to enrich their fuel and use it to build nukes, which they are (count on it), they are not run by stable people and they would have No problem giving or selling a device to someone that would use it. Do you really think it is wise to trust them, if you are wrong you may very well be dead wrong.
It is not for me to decide who is a stable person. I distrust American and Israeli politicians as much as I distrust Iranian ones.
Without sanctions and instead included in the world community Iran would not have to sell anything. People sell risky stuff when they need money urgently.
Nor would Iran attack anyone first, they know they could never prevail against the rest of the world. To Iran, and any country for that matter, atomic bombs would be a defensive weapon.
Land or resource grabs are not interesting to Iran, they have a huge country sitting on all kinds of resources. They need the world to buy their resources, thus they would never attack the world and thus its clients.
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