And... guess what, a majority of it is and will be exported to North America, Western Europe, Japan, and Australia, because it makes more economic sense than hoarding it for themselves.. The time Iran starts to have trouble is precisely the time that the rest of the world will have trouble.

As I already stated, WHEN this will happen is irrelevant, thus I do not need to prove to you that it will happen "soon". The UN shouldn't be able to define when "soon" is. It's hypocritical to say, "Hey Iran, just hold off on the nuclear tech till this dictator dies, K?" They should have the option to retrofit themselves ahead of time which is a responsible decision.

So you're saying that you can't find a source stating Iran is running low?

Read my edited post.

Ok, and said Dictator should be able to then hold out for 3 months for the rest of the world to agree that their intentions are peaceful, especially when said dictator has already threatened a neighbor with a demise that can be met far more easily with nuclear technology. Stop thinking in the vacuum, Free.

As we found out with Iraq, just because a nation doesn't cater to inspectors doesn't mean its intentions are hostile. The only way to be sure is to witness hostility.

Suppose you were the one who made the decision to attack Iran's nuclear facilities because they wouldn't bow to the UN's will. After the attack was over, amazingly only one person was killed: a 34 year old scientist. For the rest of your life, you'll never know if you killed him in vain or if you saved millions of lives. Could you sleep at night after that, 'cause I couldn't. What I'm saying is that your method of diplomacy is ethically weak, and mine isn't.

You keep compairing this to Iraq. I haven't done this. This is different from Iraq. I didn't agree with the reasons the Bush administration sent us to Iraq. Had they told us the truth, sure, I would have supported them, but they decided to make **** up. Iran on the other hand, is flat out telling the world its intentions. They want Israel gone. The Caliphate of the world is declaring that the Jews don't belong anywhere near them. They are setting the stage of a massive crusade, and you sit there telling me that we should just trust them? Yeah, here's hoping you become the U.S. rep at the U.N...

You're damn right I do.

Iran could have legions of troops, armor, and aircraft mobilized, missile silos armed and pointed at Israel, and make death threats against Israel every day for all I care. The moment they act on it is the moment I act on it. That's not to say that I wouldn't mobilize my defense if I was in charge of Israel, I would, but I wouldn't attack until either attacked or war was declared on me.

That's just solid ethics at work.

Like we didn't know Dubya had this in mind from day one, Israel or no Israel...

He should be thrown out on his heiney before he does anything drastic as far as I'm concerned.

Unfortunately, the only nation you could compair the current state of Iran to is North Korea. The only other nation that comes close is Lybia, and I say that because both Iran and Lybia are willing to take their cause elsewhere. Lybia and Iran are both willing to behead their own civilians for converting to anything outside of islam. N. Korea on the other hand was willing to use nuclear weapons to force the Western World into giving them money. You'd have to be blind to think this worked. The rest of the world ignored N. Korea because the only nation they could directly attack is Japan, which would cause many more parties to become involved. Iran, on the other hand has stated their exact aim: to destabilize the Middle East into an Islam vs. Judeo-Christian crusade. It is their aim to drag as many parties as they can. I'm athiest and I don't like what they're doing. Screw their aim at wiping the Judeo-Christian center off the map. I'm worried about their attempt at dragging the U.S. and E.U. into a decission of whether or not a full-scale war against islam is a requirement of Western survival. Iran's past of not only inventing suicide tactics, but their deployment of suicide tactics as a first-wave strike against conventional forces is frightening. Do not mistake my belief that Iran needs to answer to this decission as a cry of the West will "survive" and will "prevail." My belief that Iran needs to answer to their decission is this: I believe that Iran, especially after Russia and China have declared they need to back off (both of which have much to gain from the destabilization of the West), needs to be delt with. They will bring to fight to the rest of the world. They will drag as many parties into this as they can. They are not N. Korea. They do not care about what their neighbors think (this is obvious especially after Iraq and Afghanistan have fallen to Western forces). They have made their intentions clear. They have already stated that Europe or the U.S. needs to relocate Israel or face its demise. They are waving the flags of war and are in the process of alocating the means to bringing this war to reality. Why are you sitting in your arm-chair stating that we should trust them?

hoo hoo... wow....



You're saying this is going to elevate into another crusade unless we attack them now?

lol

And BTW, you're in just as much an arm-chair as I am, pal.






I'm not saying we should TRUST them, jesus, I sure as hell don't.


I'm saying we shouldn't preemptively attack them.

I am a man of consistency. If Iran can't have nukes (and they can't), neither can anyone else. It's all or nothing baby.

Yeah, aside from the fact that I've been in International Relations courses (including Middle Eastern politics, modern standard arabic, and various religious courses with an emphasis on islam) in order to achieve the Mil-Intel status I want through ROTC, I guess you're right. I have no idea what's going on in the Mid-East...[/sarcasm]

Tell me, Free. You basically just dismissed all I said, China, Russia, the U.N. all saying Iran needs to back off because you think we should trust them. You dismiss this because I brought up crusade...a phrase that works in more ways than just "christians trying to force their beliefs upon a specific region." So really, tell me, why should we trust a nation ruled by a man who dismisses the Holocaust and has internationally declared that another soverign nation be wiped off the map at the same time he wants to throw his nuclear research program into full-swing?

Ok, so you're very much into ghost-editing. Ok, you don't trust them. Then why shouldn't we prevent them from allocating nuclear technology. I've stated they don't need it as an energy source. You keep stating this is only temporary without sources. I bring up that they want to wipe an entire nation off the face of the earth and you say "so what?" If this were WWII and the Germans were placing orders for ovens, would you state they needed them for bread?

We shouldn't. But that doesn't mean we should strike preemptively, because it's unethical.

Now respond to my next post...

We can't keep them from developing weapons and technology because they are a sovereign nation. They don't have to answer to other countries.

Well then, you have no reservation to the Iraq invasion because the U.S. is a sovereign nation that shouldn't answer to anyone...

They should be held accountable for killing the citizens of another country.

So your position is that the world should only respond only after Israel is made into a massive crater?

Yes, there you go.

I see. A nation has no right to preserve its own existance in an age where first-strike can easily equate to total destruction of its populace. You're living in the past where warfare took a large period of time to obliterate a population. Today it only takes 17 minutes. The international community has to respond in a pre-emptive course, because millions of lives depend on it. I cannot understand how you can sit on your ivory pillar and state that only after a nation is destroyed that the rest of the international community has any right to do anything.

I think mutually-assured destruction takes care of those concerns, like it did in the Cold War.

The United States and the U.S.S.R. came far too close to making each other craters in the ground, but they didn't. We should allow Israel and Iran the same privilege.

That's definitely a good point, but can you see the US budging any time soon? If anything I'm more afraid of America, China and the USSR with their massive stockpiles than one 'rogue state,' who, yes, we can indeed close down easily with military action. Someone needs to actually be ballsy enough to say 'right, we're getting rid of our nukes,' and sensible people should follow. But they won't. Not while America still has the red button to push, and even after that.




But they share this planet with all the other nations and are actively seeking the destruction of another. For starters, such behaviour has implications for the international community. For another, it's a dispute between two parties. Typically such disputes are overseen by the peers of said parties, and in the case of Iran, this is other nations.




And indeed they should. That's why I still think Iraq is justified, if we forget the pathetic issue of WMDs. Saddam killed other people, Saddam paid.

MAD warfare does not play a role is this scenario. Israel is 50m-100m. Iran is around 5 times larger. The U.S. and Russia are absolutely massive compaired to the rest of landmasses that make up the world. You can take 5 nuclear weapons and destroy the entire Israeli populace. Iran would require around 15-20. Unlike the Coldwar, in which both sides had early-detection systems established to ensure a counter-strike, Israel and Iran have none. Whoever throws the first nuclear stone wins. If we can prevent that first stone from being casted, I feel we will be doing the entire world a favor.

[edit - are = and...]

Do not mistake that as my own beliefs. I was merely trying to sum up Free's ideas into my own words so I myself could understand.

Okay, but how about MAD in the "flies on ****" sense. The moment Iran lobs a few nukes at Israel, the rest of the world will be on Iran like flies on ****.

So then, we have two craters where nations once were, instead of a complete nation, and a nation that has to answer for its denial of international inspection? Yeah, you've sure proven to me that it's peace you're after...

My whole point is that MAD assures that everyone will remain unscathed as it did in the Cold War.

Except you're ignoring the whole point that the Iranians are extremists that (as I've stated) invented suicide tactics as a means of first-wave strikes. They don't care about MAD, as long as what they're fighting against suffers at least equal casualties. Did you just skip over the whole Iran-Iraq war? These people are not affraid of winning through death. They have no reservations against dying in order to destroying their target (this case Israel). You're ignoring the fact that they are the Caliphate. Destroying them puts the rest of the muslim world in a very awkward position. Their global center is gone, and was destroyed in a western attack in retaliation against a strike against the Jews; an enemy they believe is immoral and does not belong in their region to begin with. As I've stated numerous times, Free, this is not a vacuum senario, this will grow to a much larger conflict than just "Iran nukes Israel, we nuke Iran."

So what is your solution, o enlightnened one?

Stop them. Whatever it takes. Prevent them from creating an international conflict.

The world would hate the United States for doing it.. I would too

The world would hate the U.S. for doing what? Stopping them? Is that why (AS I'VE STATED NUMEROUS TIMES) many key players of the world are telling Iran to stop? That even China and Russia, the major players that time and time again attempt to butt heads with the U.S. don't agree with Iran ignoring U.N. sanctions and are currently warning them to stop? That Germany, one of the largest and most powerful nations of the E.U., is threatening Iran to halt all progress "or else?" Oh no, Free, looks like you just made my argument crumble...

I don't see how the United States could do anything to Iran without causing an international conflict.

Don't you ever stop to think that all this foreign meddling is what causes the problem in the first place?

I'd say destroying their nuclear facilities (if it came to that) would do such a thing. Is Iran going to attack the U.S. or Europe over three bombed nuclear plants? Can Iran attack targets so far away? I doubt it.

Don't you think that it was our ignoring the Middle East after the USSR raped them during the cold war is what caused many of these problems in the first place? I can honestly say Afghanistan would not be in its current state had the U.S. backed it after the Afghan war.

[edit - wat = what, HAHA]

No.

If everyone just left the Middle East the hell alone, the place would be a lot better off.

Oh yes, the extremist government in Lybia (Which isn't even in the Middle East, it lies well within Africa) sure as hell show that. What with the murdering of its own citizens and forceful extinguishing of any group that dares to present an alternative political view. You're right, the Middle East, which is home to many governments that are very similar to Lybia would be much better off if the rest of the world would just let them execute their non-believing citizens and destroy neighboring nations that housed populations of different beliefs. You've certainly opened my eyes, Free...

And this all rests squarely upon the shoulders of America? If the rest of the civilized world shared your view, then they would have committed military resources to screwing with these countries. Why does everything have to be done by America? Let other ****ing countries have a shot at it. Why hasn't Canada stepped up to the plate? Germany? Australia? France?

Perhaps it is because they respect the sovereignty of other nations.