Summary: Our conflict with Iran is complex, multidimensional, with deep roots in history. On the FM website we’ve provided a series of posts examining aspects of this conflict, each with summaries (and links) to primary sources and expert analysis. This is especially important since so much of what the mainstream media report is incorrect or misleading. Here are the full series of reports. This information can help us understand how we got here, our choices, the nature of global conflict in the 21st century — and most of all, provide lessons so that we don’t repeat these mistakes.
Past predictions of an atomic Iran
- Is the War on Terror over (because there are no longer two sides)?, 3 September 2008 — Rumors of covert ops by us against Iran, including aid to terrorists
- Iran’s getting the bomb, or so we’re told. Can they fool us twice?, 16 January 2009
- Iran will have the bomb in 5 years (again), 2 January 2010 — Forecasts of an Iranian bomb really soon, going back to 1984
About Iran
- Have Iran’s leaders vowed to destroy Israel?, 5 January 2012 — No, but it’s established as fact by repetition
- What do we know about Iran’s nuclear ambitions?, 6 January 2012 — US intelligence officials are clear: not as much as the news media implies
- What does the IAEA know about Iran’s nuclear program?, 9 January 2012 — Their reports bear little resemblance to reports in the news media
What happens if Iran gets nukes?
- What happens when a nation gets nukes? Sixty years of history suggests an answer., 10 January 2012
- What happens if Iran gets nukes? Not what we’ve been told., 11 January 2012
About our conflict with Iran
- About the escalating conflict with Iran (not *yet* open war), 4 January 2012
- Status report on the already-hot conflict with Iran – and the looming war, 12 January 2012
- Has Iran won a round vs. the US-Israel?, 17 January 2012
- Is Killing Iranian Nuclear Scientists Terrorism?, 19 January 2012 — By Kevin Jon Heller (Senior Lecturer at Melbourne Law School)
What can we learn from these events?
- Continuity and dysfunctionality in US foreign policy (lessons for our conflict with Iran), 13 January 2012 — Insights about today from Cold War strategist Colin Grey
- What the conflict with Iran teaches us about modern State-to-State war, 16 January 2012
- Let’s look at ourselves in the mirror created by the conflict with Iran, 20 January 2012
We collectively are going to repeat these mistakes.
At issue, instead, is what – if anything – you or I could do individually to deal with the subsequent fallout.
Nuclear scientist/engineers now concede, that the civilian nuclear technology is simply too near to the military variety to be safe. Anyone having a full civilian technology and general world class technology can inside months come up with a bomb. They voice this as a further thought about Fukushima. So, we might get rid of the Iran problem and Fukushima problem together, if we abandon nuclear power.
Who are these “nuclear scientists” you’ve chatted with, that say civilian technology is “not safe”? Do these scientists recommend bombing Japan, or are they giving expert political assessments of Iran as well as atomic engineering?
I can only guess from your brief comment (emphasis on guess), but it suggests that you are an easy mark for US government propaganda. I suggest reading the large body of evidence I cite in those dozen posts. That America has so many such people makes it quite easy for our ruling elites to govern us. Saddam’s WMD’s! The Tailiban staged 9-11! Gaddafi’s genocide!
housewife77 – every country or business running nuclear power projects might be able to make nukes . Maybe ones with specialist abilities to cause specific effects over a deliniated time or place , so MAD could not be assured . Iran’s bomb will be irrelevant when nukes could be anywhere . Pandora’s box cannot be shut . As in ,who still holds smallpox virus ? We cannot know .
Before poo-pooing the idea , think how long UK and US brass hats refused to beleive Germany’s technological abilities in WW2 . How we thought about computors ,mobile phones , boardgames back in the ’60s.
All of these same stories have been around for thirty years! What is different today? The media eight ball indicates — situation normal, no change expected.
Instead, watch for a silence, or even a reversal.
I personally am not quite sure what to do with the thought that Iran may never have actually said that it actually intends to destroy Israel as a state. It is difficult to know, in the Middle East, with its tradition of ‘death to…’ hyperbole, whether people mean what they say or not, or even whether they have actually said it or not, since they often say one thing in some media and another in other media. Not to speak of ‘translations’. What is for sure is that most Israelis (and not just the current regime) have convinced themselves that Iran is, indeed, intending to destroy them. This is not a case of ‘the Holocaust Racket’ – it is a real fear among a Holocaust-traumatised people.
I had a few more thoughts on Israel’s increasingly strident threats to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. I don’t really find them credible, because I cannot see how such an attack might achieve its overt objective. But you never can know… http://oserblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/the-purpose-of-a-nuclear-deterrent/