An odd and disturbing story out of Iran today. One of their border posts in Baluchistan was attacked, and 14 or so Iranian border guards were killed, with more being injured. Iran responded by hanging 16 prisoners, who were presumably related to the attack in some fashion though who knows. The assailants then fled into Pakistan.
Much of Iran's south-eastern border is a very violent place. Baluchistan has never really been ruled by anyone, it is very desolate and sparsely inhabited, and those that do live there tend to be tribes that resist outside control. This applies to both the Iranian and Pakistani side of the border. Beyond that, the area is a huge smuggling route, as enormous quantities of opium and heroin move from Afghanistan into Iran. Iran fights drug smugglers like a war; their DEA equivalent get killed doing this job all the time. But 14 at once is a huge amount, and the Pakistan thing adds an element to this as well. The article mentions Jundallah as well, one of the Sunni groups in the south east that fights against the Iranian government, though there is no word on who was responsible.
Think you might be interested in this article. I don't think it is surprising to any of us who watch the region pretty heavily. Still a decent read. Always fun to get a refresher on how much effort the Saudis are putting in to counter some of the better moves of Obama administration in the region.
The U.S. isn't as reliant on Saudi/Persian Gulf oil as it used to be. The GCC is also finding that South and East Asia are better clients than the U.S. (I can't find the data that this professor in Dubai showed us, because he's really secretive re: data on the UAE and GCC states... and is working on a book iirc. The chart on trade with Vietnam is illustrative though; their oil exports to India, China, and Japan have grown exponentially faster than their exports to the U.S. and western Europe. U.S. oil consumption has iirc stayed flat or even dropped a bit.
"If the Saudis were to join the U.N. Security Council they would have to follow the U.S. and Russia's lead," Landis told Foreign Policy. "There would be heavy pressure on Saudi Arabia to stop subsidizing Salafist militias in Syria and they don't want to do it. Russia and America would say ‘Look, you are part of the United Nations and you have to sever your ties with the Syrian rebels and stop sending them arms and money.' But Saudi Arabia doesn't want to rein them in."
This is what I was getting at with that post a week ago when the Saudis first announced that they were giving up the SC seat -- there has to be some realpolitik consideration behind it. This might be it, though I don't know for sure.
Overall, though, the Strait of Hormuz is just way too important a region geopolitically (for literally the entire world) for U.S. withdrawal (including diplomatic). The relationship presses on, imo, but can't be taken for granted to the extent that it was in the 20th century.
Next we'll hear that Bibi knows that the Palestinians are the descendents of conquered Jews and that Israel has a nuclear weapons program that creates polonium as a byproduct!
This article caught me off guard this morning. Mainly because "Ethiopian migrant killed in Saudi crackdown" did not prepare me for "Saudi Arabia arrests 16,000 migrant workers in the space of 48 hours." Not sure what regional repercussions this will have, but sending thousands of impoverished, jobless, desperate men back to their home countries seems unlikely to improve the situation.
Am I the only one who is actually kind of impressed we even got to this point? Incredibly vagueness and fragility of the potential deal aside?
I was expecting way more intransigence.
I also think we won't have a stable capitalist Afghanistan or a American troops out of Okinawa in my lifetime.
Oh, Bibi is acting like a petulant child still. But considering how he's treated Obama the past five years, it's no wonder that he's finding that the Oval Office has...selective hearing in his case.
Ehh Israel isn't the big one here it is the Saudis. The same Saudis who seem to be looking into getting the bomb for themselves.
Israel makes the US news but the real power pushing to keep Iran isolated are the big players in the Sunni block not the Israelis. And they have more power. The Saudis have been watching the US move away from the traditional allies like Israel and the Saudis to others in the region or perceived others in the region is causing a lot of cool and scary shifts.
In general I felt this was going to go through after the last set of negotiations. My guess is that Rohani has the backing the Ayatollah in this to try and at least lessen the economic issues since it is starting to really hurt general legitimacy including his.
The key is for this to lead to more opening and maybe a shift in the axis of the current foreign policy in the region. Iran may be a dick but I rather talk to them than the Saudis when it comes to a lot of things.
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
There's an Iranian in my game design class and we've had quite a few discussions about how people back home feel about Iran's nuclear ambitions and their pariah status in the wider international community.
He tells me that Iran already has a bomb, or at least are being told that they have one, and that most Iranians don't care about it because they only see the suffering that the economic sanctions are imparting on their lives and how shitty their general education and infrastructure prospects are.
Am I the only one who is actually kind of impressed we even got to this point? Incredibly vagueness and fragility of the potential deal aside?
I was expecting way more intransigence.
I also think we won't have a stable capitalist Afghanistan or a American troops out of Okinawa in my lifetime.
Oh, Bibi is acting like a petulant child still. But considering how he's treated Obama the past five years, it's no wonder that he's finding that the Oval Office has...selective hearing in his case.
I feel like between this and the Syrian deal, we are seeing both some of the biggest benefits of having a sane US President around and the idiocy of so much of the US's foreign policy from it's media and it's congress-people.
Am I the only one who is actually kind of impressed we even got to this point? Incredibly vagueness and fragility of the potential deal aside?
I was expecting way more intransigence.
I also think we won't have a stable capitalist Afghanistan or a American troops out of Okinawa in my lifetime.
Oh, Bibi is acting like a petulant child still. But considering how he's treated Obama the past five years, it's no wonder that he's finding that the Oval Office has...selective hearing in his case.
I feel like between this and the Syrian deal, we are seeing both some of the biggest benefits of having a sane US President around and the idiocy of so much of the US's foreign policy from it's media and it's congress-people.
I reluctantly agree. I am far from a fan of the administration's foreign policy (with its policy toward Afghanistan/Pakistan being my biggest issue), but there's no way we'd have avoided war with Syria/be negotiating a peace with Iran under McCain or Romney.
Granted, I am pretty pessimistic about these negotiations' chances of long term success, but even a possibility of detente is better than "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."
Continued economic sanctions against Iran seems cruel and overly punitive. The Iranian rial has more than doubled its loss in value in one year alone. (16,000 rials:1 USD in 2012, 36,000 this year). Their unemployment has been above %10 for at least 15 years now. It seems like the sanctions are punishing innocent people due to the acts of previous hardliners like Ahmedinijad. Iran's economy might become less dependent on oil reserves if you can strenghten its overall workforce, and bolster other sectors of their economy, such as manufacturing and technology.
EDIT: Obviously the sanctions are not the direct cause of Iran's economic problems, but they certainly don't help. Sanctions seem like chronic steel boots impeding any progress for Iranian citizens.
As long as this agreement serves as a prelude to a second, final, arrangement and Iran's facilities are tightly supervised I think this solution is pretty much ideal. I always found sanctions morally problematic. The Iranian people should not collectively suffer because their government is unreasonable. My only fear is of the Iranians covertly breaking the deal and assembling a bomb before anyone can stop them.
Israel's one to bitch and complain about Iran and the bomb. It's not like they have any nukes or anything...
well when you fight a couple of defensive wars against against every single country that borders you there is a need for them.
The Suez war was hardly defensive. If every country which was attacked by one or more of its geographic neighbors and is still threatened by them to this day "needs" a nuclear weapon then pretty much every country in the Middle East deserves to get one.
With that said, Israel did not use the bomb in the Yom Kippur war despite the threat of imminent destruction so I do think it has shown itself somewhat trustworthy on this front, while Iran's leaders repeatedly literally threaten their neighbors with annihilation.
Grey Paladin on
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence
As long as this agreement serves as a prelude to a second, final, arrangement and Iran's facilities are tightly supervised I think this solution is pretty much ideal. I always found sanctions morally problematic. The Iranian people should not collectively suffer because their government is unreasonable. My only fear is of the Iranians covertly breaking the deal and assembling a bomb before anyone can stop them.
Israel's one to bitch and complain about Iran and the bomb. It's not like they have any nukes or anything...
well when you fight a couple of defensive wars against against every single country that borders you there is a need for them.
The Suez war was hardly defensive. If every country which was attacked by one or more of its geographic neighbors and is still threatened by them to this day "needs" a nuclear weapon then pretty much every country in the Middle East deserves to get one.
With that said, Israel did not use the bomb in the Yom Kippur war despite the threat of imminent destruction so I do think it has shown itself somewhat trustworthy on this front, while Iran's leaders repeatedly literally threaten their neighbors with annihilation.
This is said all the time, but I don't think its true. The "wiped off the map" statement was a mis-translation, likely on purpose. Unless there is another one that I'm not aware of.
Well, Iran had a eight or so years war after someone invaded them, in recent memory, then fell out with a superpower and bordered the other so it is not surprising they want the bomb.
As long as this agreement serves as a prelude to a second, final, arrangement and Iran's facilities are tightly supervised I think this solution is pretty much ideal. I always found sanctions morally problematic. The Iranian people should not collectively suffer because their government is unreasonable. My only fear is of the Iranians covertly breaking the deal and assembling a bomb before anyone can stop them.
Israel's one to bitch and complain about Iran and the bomb. It's not like they have any nukes or anything...
well when you fight a couple of defensive wars against against every single country that borders you there is a need for them.
The Suez war was hardly defensive. If every country which was attacked by one or more of its geographic neighbors and is still threatened by them to this day "needs" a nuclear weapon then pretty much every country in the Middle East deserves to get one.
With that said, Israel did not use the bomb in the Yom Kippur war despite the threat of imminent destruction so I do think it has shown itself somewhat trustworthy on this front, while Iran's leaders repeatedly literally threaten their neighbors with annihilation.
This is said all the time, but I don't think its true. The "wiped off the map" statement was a mis-translation, likely on purpose. Unless there is another one that I'm not aware of.
There are no others that are nearly as explicit. This reminds me of the We will bury you incident. What is the proper translation?
Grey Paladin on
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence
As long as this agreement serves as a prelude to a second, final, arrangement and Iran's facilities are tightly supervised I think this solution is pretty much ideal. I always found sanctions morally problematic. The Iranian people should not collectively suffer because their government is unreasonable. My only fear is of the Iranians covertly breaking the deal and assembling a bomb before anyone can stop them.
Israel's one to bitch and complain about Iran and the bomb. It's not like they have any nukes or anything...
well when you fight a couple of defensive wars against against every single country that borders you there is a need for them.
The Suez war was hardly defensive. If every country which was attacked by one or more of its geographic neighbors and is still threatened by them to this day "needs" a nuclear weapon then pretty much every country in the Middle East deserves to get one.
With that said, Israel did not use the bomb in the Yom Kippur war despite the threat of imminent destruction so I do think it has shown itself somewhat trustworthy on this front, while Iran's leaders repeatedly literally threaten their neighbors with annihilation.
This is said all the time, but I don't think its true. The "wiped off the map" statement was a mis-translation, likely on purpose. Unless there is another one that I'm not aware of.
There are no others that are nearly as explicit. This reminds me of the We will bury you incident. What is the proper translation?
The trick is that "wipe off the map" (meaning to destroy completely) is an idiom that doesn't exist in persian. What Ahmadinejad said was more like "The Zionist regime must be forgotten from the pages of history". The persian idiom doesn't carry the same connotations of destruction. On the other hand, now that I'm looking this up again, it seems like "wipe off the map" was an english phrase used on Iranian government web pages, so maybe I'm wrong here.
Anyway, when people talk about Iran calling for destruction/invasion/genocide, this is the phrase that spawned that.
This. Ahmadinejad's screaming for the fiery destruction of Israel and the United States was a political move. It worked, apparently - everyone remembers Ahmadinejad, even though he didn't run Iran's show.
Even so, you can understand why in this age of hyper sensitive diplomacy, promising to rain fire and damnation upon your enemies, even if it's well known you're full of shit isn't really kosher.
Iran (under Ahmadinejad) and North Korea are the only two really still doing it, and as a result they're the clowns on the international scene with no one taking them seriously, pausing in their laughter just long enough to hit them with a million sanctions.
Even so, you can understand why in this age of hyper sensitive diplomacy, promising to rain fire and damnation upon your enemies, even if it's well known you're full of shit isn't really kosher.
Iran (under Ahmadinejad) and North Korea are the only two really still doing it, and as a result they're the clowns on the international scene with no one taking them seriously, pausing in their laughter just long enough to hit them with a million sanctions.
The policy of the US and its allies toward Iran is not a result of Ahmadinejad's fiery rhetoric.
Also, Israel threatens to bomb the shit out of Iran on a monthly basis, and US leaders love threatening countries they don't like with horrific destruction, so Iran and NK are only alone in that their rhetoric is aimed at the US and its allies.
Lastly, it is ridiculous to say that no one takes Iran seriously.
Even so, you can understand why in this age of hyper sensitive diplomacy, promising to rain fire and damnation upon your enemies, even if it's well known you're full of shit isn't really kosher.
Iran (under Ahmadinejad) and North Korea are the only two really still doing it, and as a result they're the clowns on the international scene with no one taking them seriously, pausing in their laughter just long enough to hit them with a million sanctions.
The policy of the US and its allies toward Iran is not a result of Ahmadinejad's fiery rhetoric.
Also, Israel threatens to bomb the shit out of Iran on a monthly basis, and US leaders love threatening countries they don't like with horrific destruction, so Iran and NK are only alone in that their rhetoric is aimed at the US and its allies.
Lastly, it is ridiculous to say that no one takes Iran seriously.
The US actually does not go around promising to wipe states off the map. Even when they are threatening force they're usually careful to dress it up with language like "we are leaving all options open, up to and including military force". And right now they're usually even careful to specify the limits to which that force will go. See the recent "limited cruise missile strike" saga with Syria.
People take Iran seriously in the same way they take North Korea seriously. They have the capacity to cause a level of bother that we can't be bothered to deal with right now, but we all know they won't because if they force our hand they will get their arses utterly kicked.
Very true, but when it comes to trying to discern what one will actually do, what they are saying they will do has to be a factor. Otherwise diplomacy - the exchange of words stating intent - would not be a functional concept.
Grey Paladin on
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Even so, you can understand why in this age of hyper sensitive diplomacy, promising to rain fire and damnation upon your enemies, even if it's well known you're full of shit isn't really kosher.
Iran (under Ahmadinejad) and North Korea are the only two really still doing it, and as a result they're the clowns on the international scene with no one taking them seriously, pausing in their laughter just long enough to hit them with a million sanctions.
The policy of the US and its allies toward Iran is not a result of Ahmadinejad's fiery rhetoric.
Also, Israel threatens to bomb the shit out of Iran on a monthly basis, and US leaders love threatening countries they don't like with horrific destruction, so Iran and NK are only alone in that their rhetoric is aimed at the US and its allies.
Lastly, it is ridiculous to say that no one takes Iran seriously.
The US actually does not go around promising to wipe states off the map. Even when they are threatening force they're usually careful to dress it up with language like "we are leaving all options open, up to and including military force". And right now they're usually even careful to specify the limits to which that force will go. See the recent "limited cruise missile strike" saga with Syria.
People take Iran seriously in the same way they take North Korea seriously. They have the capacity to cause a level of bother that we can't be bothered to deal with right now, but we all know they won't because if they force our hand they will get their arses utterly kicked.
Well, except when they are part of the Axis of Evil, because Dubya's fucking speech writer wants to follow the rule of three.
Even so, you can understand why in this age of hyper sensitive diplomacy, promising to rain fire and damnation upon your enemies, even if it's well known you're full of shit isn't really kosher.
Iran (under Ahmadinejad) and North Korea are the only two really still doing it, and as a result they're the clowns on the international scene with no one taking them seriously, pausing in their laughter just long enough to hit them with a million sanctions.
The policy of the US and its allies toward Iran is not a result of Ahmadinejad's fiery rhetoric.
Also, Israel threatens to bomb the shit out of Iran on a monthly basis, and US leaders love threatening countries they don't like with horrific destruction, so Iran and NK are only alone in that their rhetoric is aimed at the US and its allies.
Lastly, it is ridiculous to say that no one takes Iran seriously.
The US actually does not go around promising to wipe states off the map. Even when they are threatening force they're usually careful to dress it up with language like "we are leaving all options open, up to and including military force". And right now they're usually even careful to specify the limits to which that force will go. See the recent "limited cruise missile strike" saga with Syria.
You are describing a difference in rhetoric, not in policy. A threat of war is a threat of war, whether it's phrased as "all options are on the table" or "Death to the Americans and Zionists." The US may not explicitly promise to destroy a nation or people, but it has done so often and recently, so the threat is fairly blatantly implied.
People take Iran seriously in the same way they take North Korea seriously. They have the capacity to cause a level of bother that we can't be bothered to deal with right now, but we all know they won't because if they force our hand they will get their arses utterly kicked.
I don't think North Korea and Iran merit any comparison beside the fact that they are foes of the United States. Iran has never been and will never be a "hermit kingdom." It is a regional power with various allies, whose regional foes regard it as their greatest threat.
If you're saying that Iran could not oppose the US militarily, that is obviously true. The US could surely destroy Iran utterly if it invested enough lives and money. But Iran is not an isolated, broken military state like North Korea.
Senior officials in the administration of President Barack Obama have conceded over the past few days in conversations with colleagues in Israel that the value of the economic sanctions relief to Iran could be much higher than originally thought in Washington, security sources in Israel told Haaretz.
In official statements by the United States immediately after the agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program was signed in Geneva between Iran and theF six powers at the end of November it was said that the economic relief Iran would receive in exchange for signing the agreement would be relatively low – $6 billion or $7 billion. Israeli assessments were much higher – about $20 billion at least.
Senior officials in the administration of President Barack Obama have conceded over the past few days in conversations with colleagues in Israel that the value of the economic sanctions relief to Iran could be much higher than originally thought in Washington, security sources in Israel told Haaretz.
In official statements by the United States immediately after the agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program was signed in Geneva between Iran and theF six powers at the end of November it was said that the economic relief Iran would receive in exchange for signing the agreement would be relatively low – $6 billion or $7 billion. Israeli assessments were much higher – about $20 billion at least.
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Much of Iran's south-eastern border is a very violent place. Baluchistan has never really been ruled by anyone, it is very desolate and sparsely inhabited, and those that do live there tend to be tribes that resist outside control. This applies to both the Iranian and Pakistani side of the border. Beyond that, the area is a huge smuggling route, as enormous quantities of opium and heroin move from Afghanistan into Iran. Iran fights drug smugglers like a war; their DEA equivalent get killed doing this job all the time. But 14 at once is a huge amount, and the Pakistan thing adds an element to this as well. The article mentions Jundallah as well, one of the Sunni groups in the south east that fights against the Iranian government, though there is no word on who was responsible.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24682729
hopefully this indicative of a change in fortunes for Nusra
sorry not much info in link
http://world.time.com/2013/10/26/activists-syrian-kurds-capture-border-post/
The U.S. isn't as reliant on Saudi/Persian Gulf oil as it used to be. The GCC is also finding that South and East Asia are better clients than the U.S. (I can't find the data that this professor in Dubai showed us, because he's really secretive re: data on the UAE and GCC states... and is working on a book iirc. The chart on trade with Vietnam is illustrative though; their oil exports to India, China, and Japan have grown exponentially faster than their exports to the U.S. and western Europe. U.S. oil consumption has iirc stayed flat or even dropped a bit.
This is what I was getting at with that post a week ago when the Saudis first announced that they were giving up the SC seat -- there has to be some realpolitik consideration behind it. This might be it, though I don't know for sure.
Overall, though, the Strait of Hormuz is just way too important a region geopolitically (for literally the entire world) for U.S. withdrawal (including diplomatic). The relationship presses on, imo, but can't be taken for granted to the extent that it was in the 20th century.
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/150444802/where-does-america-get-oil-you-may-be-surprised
Don't know if it is accurate, which is why I am bringing it before the thread.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24857488
Next we'll hear that Bibi knows that the Palestinians are the descendents of conquered Jews and that Israel has a nuclear weapons program that creates polonium as a byproduct!
This article caught me off guard this morning. Mainly because "Ethiopian migrant killed in Saudi crackdown" did not prepare me for "Saudi Arabia arrests 16,000 migrant workers in the space of 48 hours." Not sure what regional repercussions this will have, but sending thousands of impoverished, jobless, desperate men back to their home countries seems unlikely to improve the situation.
how/why is this coming out now? i thought Arafat had been buried for years
I was expecting way more intransigence.
I also think we won't have a stable capitalist Afghanistan or a American troops out of Okinawa in my lifetime.
Oh, Bibi is acting like a petulant child still. But considering how he's treated Obama the past five years, it's no wonder that he's finding that the Oval Office has...selective hearing in his case.
Israel makes the US news but the real power pushing to keep Iran isolated are the big players in the Sunni block not the Israelis. And they have more power. The Saudis have been watching the US move away from the traditional allies like Israel and the Saudis to others in the region or perceived others in the region is causing a lot of cool and scary shifts.
In general I felt this was going to go through after the last set of negotiations. My guess is that Rohani has the backing the Ayatollah in this to try and at least lessen the economic issues since it is starting to really hurt general legitimacy including his.
The key is for this to lead to more opening and maybe a shift in the axis of the current foreign policy in the region. Iran may be a dick but I rather talk to them than the Saudis when it comes to a lot of things.
He tells me that Iran already has a bomb, or at least are being told that they have one, and that most Iranians don't care about it because they only see the suffering that the economic sanctions are imparting on their lives and how shitty their general education and infrastructure prospects are.
I feel like between this and the Syrian deal, we are seeing both some of the biggest benefits of having a sane US President around and the idiocy of so much of the US's foreign policy from it's media and it's congress-people.
Granted, I am pretty pessimistic about these negotiations' chances of long term success, but even a possibility of detente is better than "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."
EDIT: Obviously the sanctions are not the direct cause of Iran's economic problems, but they certainly don't help. Sanctions seem like chronic steel boots impeding any progress for Iranian citizens.
well when you fight a couple of defensive wars against against every single country that borders you there is a need for them.
The Suez war was hardly defensive. If every country which was attacked by one or more of its geographic neighbors and is still threatened by them to this day "needs" a nuclear weapon then pretty much every country in the Middle East deserves to get one.
With that said, Israel did not use the bomb in the Yom Kippur war despite the threat of imminent destruction so I do think it has shown itself somewhat trustworthy on this front, while Iran's leaders repeatedly literally threaten their neighbors with annihilation.
This is said all the time, but I don't think its true. The "wiped off the map" statement was a mis-translation, likely on purpose. Unless there is another one that I'm not aware of.
The trick is that "wipe off the map" (meaning to destroy completely) is an idiom that doesn't exist in persian. What Ahmadinejad said was more like "The Zionist regime must be forgotten from the pages of history". The persian idiom doesn't carry the same connotations of destruction. On the other hand, now that I'm looking this up again, it seems like "wipe off the map" was an english phrase used on Iranian government web pages, so maybe I'm wrong here.
Anyway, when people talk about Iran calling for destruction/invasion/genocide, this is the phrase that spawned that.
This. Ahmadinejad's screaming for the fiery destruction of Israel and the United States was a political move. It worked, apparently - everyone remembers Ahmadinejad, even though he didn't run Iran's show.
Very succinct!
Even so, you can understand why in this age of hyper sensitive diplomacy, promising to rain fire and damnation upon your enemies, even if it's well known you're full of shit isn't really kosher.
Iran (under Ahmadinejad) and North Korea are the only two really still doing it, and as a result they're the clowns on the international scene with no one taking them seriously, pausing in their laughter just long enough to hit them with a million sanctions.
Also, Israel threatens to bomb the shit out of Iran on a monthly basis, and US leaders love threatening countries they don't like with horrific destruction, so Iran and NK are only alone in that their rhetoric is aimed at the US and its allies.
Lastly, it is ridiculous to say that no one takes Iran seriously.
The US actually does not go around promising to wipe states off the map. Even when they are threatening force they're usually careful to dress it up with language like "we are leaving all options open, up to and including military force". And right now they're usually even careful to specify the limits to which that force will go. See the recent "limited cruise missile strike" saga with Syria.
People take Iran seriously in the same way they take North Korea seriously. They have the capacity to cause a level of bother that we can't be bothered to deal with right now, but we all know they won't because if they force our hand they will get their arses utterly kicked.
Well, except when they are part of the Axis of Evil, because Dubya's fucking speech writer wants to follow the rule of three.
And it doesn't need to be explicit, either.
I don't think North Korea and Iran merit any comparison beside the fact that they are foes of the United States. Iran has never been and will never be a "hermit kingdom." It is a regional power with various allies, whose regional foes regard it as their greatest threat.
If you're saying that Iran could not oppose the US militarily, that is obviously true. The US could surely destroy Iran utterly if it invested enough lives and money. But Iran is not an isolated, broken military state like North Korea.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.562824
Obama has been playing down the things Iran gets out of the deal. The hawks won't be pleased to hear this.
Did you read the article? Because it's a bunch of bullshit.