Pentagon ‘three-day blitz’ plan for Iran

[Dion]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle2369001.ece

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

[Dion]

Meanwhile.....................

IAEA confirms the "peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear activities"

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...xt=va&aid=6655


The Director-General of the IAEA has also confirmed in an interview published by Profil, an Austrian magazine that it is highly unlikely that Iran would pursue the development of a nuclear weapons program.

The document is a slap in the face for the Bush Administration. In light of these developments, it is no surprise that the Washington is now seeking to justify military action on the grounds that Iran is allegedly behind the killings of American troops in Iraq. The fact of the matter is that the U.S. and its Coaltion partners, as confirmed by several reports, are in an "advanced state of readiness" to wage a military operation directed against Iran. What they now require is a new fabricated pretext which portrays Iran, in the eyes of public opinion, as a threat to world peace.

[Five-hole]

Where is the support for this coming from?

[Lanny_MacDonald]

Originally Posted by Five-hole

Where is the support for this coming from?

Support? The American people are too wrapped up in Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Michael Vick to worry about something as inane as world peace and the actions of their President. Bush doesn't need support as long as the press continues to pump out fluff, pro-American propaganda, and keep the population of the United States completely distracted. The greatest threat to world peace is Bush and Israel, or so says international polls.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/...ws_of_Bush.php
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0615/dailyUpdate.html

[Displaced Flames fan]

Support for a contingency plan? Do they need support for the one about defending an attack from Canada too...because I'm sure there is a plan for that event as well.

Bush is not going to invade Iran unles Iran does something unbelievably stupid in the next 15 months. It's NOT going to happen. This is a contingency plan. They have them for a plethora of military scenarios. It's called being prepared.

Meanwhile, the IAEA thing is certainly good news. Nice of the author to extrapolate his hate on for Bush and America into a completely false assumption or two.

1. The US is in a state of military readiness to invade Iran? Uh...no.
2. Iranians being behind military deaths in Iraq is being used as justification?...Really? News to me.

[Flame Of Liberty]

Originally Posted by Dion

“They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

Taking out the entire military that is in hands of apocalyptic religious zealots? Oh the horror! Unfortunately it is extremely unlikely to happen.

(Cant wait for the Bush = religious zealot = Ahmadinejad comments)

[Azure]

They have plans for all sorts of situations.

This one was leaked, big deal.

[Ford Prefect]

Slightly off topic, but it seems cruelly ironic, if not downright oxymoronic, that the director of national security works out of a place called the Nixon Center.

[CaptainCrunch]

The U.S. military has indepth plans for everything tucked in file cabinets in the Pentagon.

Not long ago there was a post on this board about the U.S. continuing to update thier plans for an invasion of Canada.

General's plan for everything in advance so that, if the balloon pops there's not chaos.

On another note, the American's know that they don't have the military assets to go after Iran, sure they have plenty of tanks, APC's, planes, ships and artillary pieces, but they don't have the boots in the mud to invade Iran.

A massive airstrike that eliminates the Iranian military makes sense, since the weak point for Iran is that thier airforce is incredibly weak, and thier high level air defense isn't great.

However unless Iran does something that motivates the American's to implement this its not going to happen.

Besides it goes further then that, a fairly recent white paper demonstrates that the plan is not only to attempt to eliminate Iran's military, but to reduce its ability to manufacture, transport, treat water and generally function as anything but a 16th century country.

[Vulcan]

As Chicken Hawk Bush moves to being a Lame Duck president, the flip side is that he doesn't need support for his idiocy. His recent statement that the USA got out of Viet Nam too soon, tells us what his megalomaniac war mongering ideas are. I wouldn't put it past him, to bomb Iran.

[guzzy]

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but the US has detailed plans on how to attack almost every country in the world....including Canada.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by guzzy

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but the US has detailed plans on how to attack almost every country in the world....including Canada.

Sure, everybody reading this thread knows that, but the US isn't beating the war drums to bomb Canada.

[octothorp]

There are a lot of people in the US beating the war drums about Iran, but the reality is that there is more active discussion between the two governments than there has been in years. However, it suits the public relations of neither government to draw attention to their points of agreement. Both governments benefit from the nationalistic support that results from heightened tensions.
I've been saying on here for months that all of the fears about Iran's nuclear ambitions are misplaced, so it's nice to see a report from the IAEA to back that up. Of course, they are far from infallible, but I trust their intelligence far better than that of various warmongering washington think tanks.

[Flameschick]

I wonder how Russia and China are going to react since Iran is a major nuclear-reactor technology customer of China and a huge conventional arms and missile technology customer of both countries.

[Ford Prefect]

Originally Posted by Flameschick

I wonder how Russia and China are going to react since Iran is a major nuclear-reactor technology customer of China and a huge conventional arms and missile technology customer of both countries.

They should be happy as it will be good for business. Iran should have a pretty long shopping list afterwards ...

[FireFly]

Originally Posted by Displaced Flames fan

Bush is not going to invade Iran unles Iran does something unbelievably stupid in the next 15 months. It's NOT going to happen.

Who says Iran needs to do something stupid? This is Bush we're talking about here...

[if.away]

Originally Posted by Displaced Flames fan

Bush is not going to invade Iran unles Iran does something unbelievably stupid in the next 15 months. It's NOT going to happen. This is a contingency plan. They have them for a plethora of military scenarios. It's called being prepared.

1. The US is in a state of military readiness to invade Iran? Uh...no.

Who said anything about an invasion? The article mentions massive air strikes that are supposed to cripple Iran so badly that nothing will probably function properly in that country for a long time.

[worth]

They [the source’s institution] have “instructions” (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don’t think they’ll ever get majority support for this—they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is “plenty.”

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...re-were-a.html
http://icga.blogspot.com/2007/08/pos...-war-with.html

Interesting to see what transpires.

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by if.away

Who said anything about an invasion? The article mentions massive air strikes that are supposed to cripple Iran so badly that nothing will probably function properly in that country for a long time.

Not likely, with hundreds of thousands of US troops already in a vulnerable position in Iraq. Iran probably already has a very efficient underground network functioning in Iraq. Imagine the number of insurgents in Iraq bolstered by half a million highly trained and passionate Iranian Republican Guard forces; they'll make the current al qaeda inspired insurgents look like amateurs. If they were given reason to use this network and their existing resources in an open assault on US troops stationed in Iraq, it would basically ensure the failure of the Iraq reconstruction and of the long-term US plans in the region. Both countries know this; that's why Iran is using the current situation to force diplomatic talks, and why the US has no choice but to reciprocate. Iran is probably safer from US airstrikes now than at any other time in the last 25 years, because they actually have a realistic threat of a counterstrike.

[Azure]

Oh great, here we go again.