As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
LETS START A WAR! START A NUCLEAR WAR! [IRAN]
matt has a problem
Points to 'off'Points to 'on'Registered User regular
Points to 'off'Points to 'on'Registered User regular
The threats have been flying in the past few weeks. Flying unlike a missing US military drone, which Iran has enjoyed showing off...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43819984/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/reports-us-drone-shot-down-over-iran-nuke-site/
You can say, yeah, sure, everybody gets lucky once, Yugoslavia managed to knock out an F-117 too, but... Not happy with Iran's persistence at getting in on the atomic age, the US decided to throw down with some new sanctions on Iranian oil exports, backed by France, Britain and a few other countries that tend to tag along. Adding insult to injury, China, while not backing the sanctions, has cut its imports of Iranian oil by about half too, and is demanding lower prices.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/29/opinion/nasr-iran-oil-hormuz/index.html
Which caused the Rial to drop sharply, although it recovered.
Iran, predictably, has a problem with this. With partial control over the Strait of Hormuz:
...through which a good 20% of the world's oil flows, they decide to pull out all the stops: Mess with us, and we'll block the oil. In fact, we're going to run a few military "exercises" while we're at it. And show off our new cruise missile that is definitely not a 'shop job.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/world/middleeast/iran-tests-naval-cruise-missile.html
With a range of 125 miles, they can now hit US warships stationed in the Persian Gulf.
And a slap fight ensues! The US says "Try it."
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-12-28/middleeast/world_meast_iran-us-hormuz_1_strait-iran-hormuz?_s=PM:MIDDLEEAST
Iran says "We took a few pictures."
http://news.yahoo.com/iran-says-recorded-video-us-aircraft-carrier-112952565.html
Pictures of the USS Stennis as it left the Persian Gulf, on a routine trip. Not exactly hard, since it wasn't trying to hide in the first place. While they're at it, they decide to make another threat.
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/03/world/meast/iran-u-s-/index.html
That's right. Bring it back and there will be trouble.
Enjoying the limelight, they went on to announce:
Theirs isn't inanimate and carbon, it's Uranium and currently in a test reactor.
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-01-01/middleeast/world_meast_iran-nuclear-rod_1_talks-with-world-powers-nuclear-fuel-nuclear-program?_s=PM:MIDDLEEAST
Of course, one uranium fuel rod does not a nuclear arsenal make, but it shows they've managed to recover from any damage the Stuxnet worm may have done, and that they have no intention of deviating from their usual response to the rest of the world when the rest of the world tries to tell Iran what to do:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43819984/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/reports-us-drone-shot-down-over-iran-nuke-site/
You can say, yeah, sure, everybody gets lucky once, Yugoslavia managed to knock out an F-117 too, but... Not happy with Iran's persistence at getting in on the atomic age, the US decided to throw down with some new sanctions on Iranian oil exports, backed by France, Britain and a few other countries that tend to tag along. Adding insult to injury, China, while not backing the sanctions, has cut its imports of Iranian oil by about half too, and is demanding lower prices.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/29/opinion/nasr-iran-oil-hormuz/index.html
Which caused the Rial to drop sharply, although it recovered.
Iran, predictably, has a problem with this. With partial control over the Strait of Hormuz:
...through which a good 20% of the world's oil flows, they decide to pull out all the stops: Mess with us, and we'll block the oil. In fact, we're going to run a few military "exercises" while we're at it. And show off our new cruise missile that is definitely not a 'shop job.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/world/middleeast/iran-tests-naval-cruise-missile.html
With a range of 125 miles, they can now hit US warships stationed in the Persian Gulf.
And a slap fight ensues! The US says "Try it."
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-12-28/middleeast/world_meast_iran-us-hormuz_1_strait-iran-hormuz?_s=PM:MIDDLEEAST
Iran says "We took a few pictures."
http://news.yahoo.com/iran-says-recorded-video-us-aircraft-carrier-112952565.html
Pictures of the USS Stennis as it left the Persian Gulf, on a routine trip. Not exactly hard, since it wasn't trying to hide in the first place. While they're at it, they decide to make another threat.
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/03/world/meast/iran-u-s-/index.html
That's right. Bring it back and there will be trouble.
Enjoying the limelight, they went on to announce:
Theirs isn't inanimate and carbon, it's Uranium and currently in a test reactor.
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-01-01/middleeast/world_meast_iran-nuclear-rod_1_talks-with-world-powers-nuclear-fuel-nuclear-program?_s=PM:MIDDLEEAST
Of course, one uranium fuel rod does not a nuclear arsenal make, but it shows they've managed to recover from any damage the Stuxnet worm may have done, and that they have no intention of deviating from their usual response to the rest of the world when the rest of the world tries to tell Iran what to do:
matt has a problem on
0
Posts
They can puff their chest and proclaim that they will rain fire down from the skies, but as soon as they ACTUALLY do it, all of their so-called allies are going to take three steps back as the collective forces of the western world ruin their shit. And they will, because if there is one thing every goddamned country in the world doesn't like, it is unstable powers with world-altering weaponry.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
GAY BAR
GAY BAR
...had to be done...
Destroy trade routes permanently as a fuck you?
try to actually hit an announced enemy?
I doubt it would be to smuggle something into the US to use. Not that its the only thing that would really hurt us.
I dont see a nuclear retaliation for much less then what we had planned with Russia, it's for MAD and deterrance. Even if iran snuck something over here and detonated I see a full on invasion and not nuclear response unless they started hitting allies nearby.
http://www.bloomberg.com/article/2011-12-23/aYoOcZ6NT3wo.html
Basically, this is going to get ugly. Nuclear war ugly? I think not, but our next war is going to be with Iran.
This.
There's no MAD here. There's just AD. Assured Destruction. The only thing Iran has going for it, is that the west (the US specifically) isn't willing to lose an aircraft carrier or a division to a tactical nuclear strike, let alone a city in a neighboring ally.
But that's it. That's all they've got. One potentially nuclear armed missile so much as get's fueled, and that's all over.
I think it's just pwecious.
It looks like it was made for a five-second scene in Logan's Run. Or as the butt of a joke in Futurama.
Real life military technology doesn't look awesome compared to movies. It is however, a lot more effective.
Whoops, take that back, it's a Lockheed RQ-170.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_RQ-170_Sentinel
Although the X-47B is an unmanned combat drone going through testing now, which is basically a scaled down B-2.
Damn you, Iran!
I need to hear the details of this, because it blows my mind. I thought China's policy was "sell us oil, we pay more and you can be as genocidal as you want and we wont ask questions."
Hugo Chavez does the same thing, often picking on one of his neighbors as an antagonist and framing that nation state's supposed aggression as a proxy for American Imperialism every time people start asking why Communism hasn't transformed Venezuela yet.
I don't think that Iran's going to take that extra step necessary to actually provoke a war. Most of their blathering is about domestic interests rather than international interests. Whatever leaders America elects both in this election and beyond need to understand, however, that we have a difficult balancing act to achieve. While we need to be strategically postured to defend our own interests, any overt hostility we display towards Iran plays into Ahmadinejad's hands by supporting his assertion that we're out to annihilate them.
www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/03/russia-crude-china-idUSL3E8C31W120120103
They're basically fighting over prices for it, and buying it from Russia and Vietnam to make up for the shortage.
My mind = blown.
If Iran blocks the straits, it'd be another persian gulf war (the first one) except this time China will help
Getting a working nuke is the only thing that can save Iran at this point.
For all the talk in the West about how we all dislike North Korea, there's a single reason no one actually does anything about it. For all the talk in the West about how Pakistan is a traitor to NATO (not my position, but a widely popular one), there's a single reason no one does anything about it. Heck, if Gaddafi had a working nuke he'd still be in power.
The Iranian government faces ruin from not possessing a working nuke, rather than from pursuing one. To do otherwise is to rely solely on the good graces of the West to not simply topple them whenever it's felt they've outlived their usefulness - something Iran has fairly recent experience with. A nuclear deterrent is the only thing that truly commands the West's respect in foreign policy.
Huh? From what I understand, is that they have a small nuke or two, but no effective delivery systems. Their aircraft are all old and the last missile they tested fell into the sea.
I don't agree with this. If you have a working - deliverable nuke, then you have to start playing grown-up politics. Nobody believes North Korea can actually deliver a nuke to a target. But everybody believes it would be a Vietnam/Iraq level catastrophe to do anything about them (no oil to promise an "easy rebuild" and well, its a country full of asians - countries full of asians have done pretty well against the US historically).
1-1-1 and however you count the Philippines?
On the other hand, Iran is run by hard-liner anti-Israel/Western religious nut jobs, who are losing power amongst the many internal players in Iranian society. A nice war with the west can help cement and unite those factions, at least for a while. Ultimately, Iran's regime is living on borrowed time no matter how you slice it. Such is the way of most totalitarian regimes.
Most of Iran's weaponry is purchased from Russia and China. They have some very capable anti-ship missiles, and AAA. All that will amount to jack shit against the U.S. Navy, if things get ugly. They can posture and drill all they want. In the end, unless they get a super dose of the crazies, they'll mind their p's and q's until either a) The economic sanctions crush their economy and force them to the table, or b) they get The Bomb, and threaten Israel with it.
In the post-Nuclear era, we have never gone to war with any country that has nuclear capabilities.
But don't forget, it's not just Iran vs. the US. The Iranian government is also facing internal pressure from their population, which is increasingly liberal and unhappy at being ruled by a dictatorial theocracy. One of the ways their government can maintain its power is by saber rattling- it looks really, really bad for them to have to surrender to any western demand. People love it when they do shit like this. So they'll continue to rattle their sabers as hard as they can, right up until the brink of war, and one of these days they might just go a little too far.
Wouldn't South Korea be an easy target for a nuke?
Basically this.
Um, geography? They did fight a war along with the British and French to seize the Suez Canal which I'm guessing is what you're thinking of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_3#Plot
Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
That is all.
Actually, its probably the Straits of Tiran, which is Israel's sea access to the Red Sea. Egypt blokaded it in the run up to the 6 Day War of '67.
But of course the Suez has been done too. Doesn't have the word Strait in it though!
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/137497/the-middle-east-thread-now-featuring-a-primer-in-the-op#Item_2617
But its probably good for this to have its own thread, the threat of war is in my mind greater than it has been since the rhetoric started post 9/11.
As much as I know what a gut blow it would be to the economy at this particular moment, I really think the general American schmuck needs to be made fully aware of how fully dependent our first world status and all of our wonderful first world technology is on fossilized dinosaurs. So just like watching a car wreck unfold, I nefariously almost want it to happen, which scares me. And thats knowing the geopolitical ramifications of it, i.e. becoming even bigger chums with Saudi Arabia and its only slightly worse chucklefucks.
Because we need, and entirely deserve, a 1970's oil embargo style wake up call.
Also as deplorable as the Iranian theocracy is, it should not be forgotten that it is a vicious by-product of the US and UK fucking with Iran circa the cold war, and we've reaped what we had sown. As much as people may like to think that the regime is getting into a tight squeeze with the saber rattling and internal protesting/dysfunction, imposing even more sanctions and allowing US/Israeli war-hawks to trip over themselves and spew more trigger-finger rhetoric does not help with dialogue and diplomacy to encourage its people to continue protesting their government.
Basically there is a certain irony that US hawks continue to keep yelling "IRAN!" yet there goes the government selling more jet fighters to Saudi Arabia. But that's cool, cause like the Bushes were pals with Saudi royals.. or something.
Dude, get real. An ICBM is a difficult delivery vehicle to manufacture, because:
1) Your telemetry data has to be very good in order to hit a city rather than an open field in Bumfuck Nowhere.
2) You have to build a multi-stage rocket in order to get the thing across the ocean.
A 'short-range' (tens to hundreds of kilometers) missile is easy to build and deploy. Hell, you don't even have to build them - you can just buy old SCUD missiles from former bloc states. Do some rudimentary math, put in a reasonably accurate pendulum timer so it drops on the city you want to hit (just like the in old V2 rockets on which the long range missile concept is based), and you're done. Install the warhead and call it a day.
NK's 'problem' has been that they want a missile that can hit Washington D.C. (theoretically decapitating a U.S. response by landing a large enough payload on top of the White House & Pentagon, assuming they caught enough of the executive in the blast), and not even the Soviets were able to build something with that kind of reach (they had to rely on submarines and, eventualy, the base in Cuba to get the U.S. in their crosshairs) - so their nuclear program is going to be eternally stalled because it's chasing an impossible goal.
Iran just seems to want power to project against it's neighboring countries, which is more worrisome because it's simple to achieve. We know that Ahmedinjad is completely crazy (he's already attempted to blow-up a restaurant & embassy in D.C. last year, if you recall, which could've sparked a war that would've been disastrous for him & his country), so talking about him like he's a rational actor is nonsense (the Mullahs are probably somewhat less crazy, in that they clearly like the current status quo, and in theory they have more legal power than Ahmedinejad. In practice, Ahmedinejad has the loyalty of the military, and has all of the clout with the police forces that the Mullahs use to keep the population suppressed. It's an unstable relationship) - he really seems to think that if he can just draw some blood from the west, Muslim fanatics will rally and destroy our sinful & hedonistic empire.
What will really happen, of course, is that Iran will make some stupid & horrifying act of war (blowing a ship out of the water, attacking a neighboring ally, etc), and the west will bring the hammer down, and Iran will be find itself caught in the lovely regime change cycle that we seem to enjoy putting the Persian Gulf through (rather than supporting popular movements when they spring-up).
Wait, what? Soviet ICBMs could hit Washington, D.C. ICBMs can literally hit anywhere in the world, they actually leave the atmosphere and come back down, delivery to anywhere you want in 30 minutes or less.