UK and U.S. 'draw up joint plan to attack Iran': Evidence of nuclear programme raises tension

Daily Mail [UK] ^ | 11/3/11 | Ian Drury

[Wuli]

“We came close to war with the Soviets on numerous occasions, the most famous of which was the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Yes, “Close”; as I acknowledged, we had many such moments, yet we did not make a preemptive strike, not even on Cuba.

“OIL. Notice what flows out of the Persian Gulf. And see above.”

Middle East oil diminishes in importance to the U.S., as every year goes by. In not so many years we may not be in need of Middle East oil for U.S. use at all.

“And when an Al Qaeda like group takes over Saudi Arabia from the corrupt fundamentalists, using the same excuse that the Saudi clan did to overthrow the Hashemites? When instability allows a faction of a government to hand nukes over to one of 2 dozen terrorist groups, what then?”

When and if such what-ifs actually happen - all speculative, then we will, with confidence, have a different posture in terms of “Middle East security issues” than we do today. We cannot act today as if your speculations have already happened.

“I’m not talking technology.”

But it is with technology that we have matured at tracking proliferation of nuclear material and the proliferation of the technology to use it (and even know where it came from). The fact is that even as mature as we have become today (and we have interdicted “dirty bombs” already), and as much as we will continue to improve in this area, the scenario you portend does not need a nuclear-armed Iran to be a reality; it is in fact feasible today. Knowing that fact we may even be ready to interdict an “Iranian hand-off”. However, Iran or no Iran, we will never be perfect at it 100% of the time and some nut only has to be perfect in it once, to make a statement. But, making war against Iran on no more than our speculations of a lot of maybes can never be American policy.

For Israel, the case is different. The Iranian leaders have pledged to rid the map of Israel and Iran is already fighting Israel, by proxy via Hezbollah and Hamas. Should Israel see the Iranian nuke developments and your speculations as “proof” of an “immanent” crisis, SHE may feel obligated to act. If she does, I would support her and I would hope so to would our government. Meanwhile, my position is we should keep our powder dry.