I haven’t said anything about bombing anyone we don’t agree with. The initial post in the thread relates to the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, an attack that took place with Iranian support.

Iran, since the initial taking of the embassy hostages, has a signifigant history of this sort of behavior. They have consistantly shown themselves unwilling to act according to civilized norms or international law.

Despite all these provocations, there has not been much consequences for their behavior.

I strongly believe that a nation with that sort of track record cannot be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. We could debate non-proliferation as a concept, I don’t lose any sleep of India being a nuclear power for example, but for the most part, Iran wouldn’t fit into that ‘neutral’ concept because of their behavior.

I fully expect that their will be another ‘Beirut’ or ‘Khobar Towers’ in the future. We have shown Iran that they can engage in such behavior without consequence. If that happens, we would be well advised to send a different message next time. Given that this message needs to be sent, it would be far better for everyone, including ordinary Iranians, if Iran did not have nuclear weapons when that happens.

To get back to ‘incentives’ for a moment, I am not oppossed to that, so long as they are reasonable. I would be perfectly willing to work with Iran to ensure that they can produce nuclear power. Should Iran end their nuclear weapon program and provide assurances that this is done, and cease support of terror, I am perfectly willing to have them rejoin the civilized world and participate in greater trade. What I oppose though, is any sort of payments in return for them ceasing nuclear development as a form of ‘blackmail.’ This would be paying ‘danegeld’ and would not be a permanent solution, would encourage other nations to follow a similar path and would, in the end be far more costly than a military response now.

I am sure that you are correct that Iran will react in ways we don’t like to a military strike. I strongly believe though that Iran will react in ways we like even less to us allowing them to succeed in gaining nuclear weapons.

Let us say we decide that we ‘cannot justify or afford another war at this point’ and in 5 years Iran succeeds in gaining nuclear weapons and supports a signifigant terror strike against American targets. At that point, striking Iran would be far more expensive and dangerouse, and not striking them would also be expensive and dangerous. I don’t think that this scenario is unreasonable given Iran’s history. How does your plan prevent that from happening and if it does not, how can you justify saying we cannot afford taking action now? Peace in our time doesn’t have a great track record.

Even if they did though, I don’t see why we would have to invade them on the ground or occupy their territory in response. As long as we don’t occupy, any concerns about an insurgency in Iran are moot.

As for Israel not getting involved, I doubt that would be a problem. Israel has limited ability to harm Iran with anything other than nuclear weapons. It is almost certain that Israel will not use nukes as a retaliation for anything less than a WMD attack, and almost certain they will if WMD is used. That makes a WMD attack highly unlikely. It is also obvious that any campaign against Iran (other than possibly a limited strike only on nuclear facilities) would have eliminating Iran’s long range strike capability as a primary goal. It is unlikely therefore that Iran would be able to hit Israel hard enough that they would feel forced to respond.

I also think that you over estimate support for Iran from other middle eastern countries. A nuclear Iran is a nightmare scenario for everyone in the region. There may be some condemnation of U.S. actions from some of them for purely domestic reasons, but I would expect that support for such a thing would be high.

This is not, by any means, a cost free option. Iran would respond. They would certainly attempt to increase support for the insurgency in Iraq. One would also expect terror attempts at U.S. and other western targets. They would attempt, probably with some short term success, to close the Hormuz straight and that, along with the loss of Iranian oil itself would cause a dramatic jump in the price of oil, doing considerable economic damage.

Additionally, while a major air campaign would almost certainly slow down the Iranian nuclear program, and quite possibly make them think twice about future support for terror (after some sort of peace is arranged) it would not change the regime or their long term goals. It is unlikely that it would be a permanent solution.

Despite all of these problems, it is the best option I can see. Not necessarily to start today, but to make it clear that if Iran does not radically change its behavior that this will be the consequence and to follow through if need be. That is the diplomatic path I would take.

Even if I accept all your concerns though, when and how will the situation change? When will be a better time to deal with Iran? Certainly after they have nuclear weapons any such action becomes vastly more problematic.

As for saying ‘it is the time for diplomacy’ I regard that as a fairly meaningless statement. You can’t just advocate ‘diplomacy’ you have to advocate what to offer and what to threaten with (that is really what diplomacy is) and explain why Iran might think that taking the deal you offer would be in their interest.

Nuclear weapons are certainly a huge benefit to the Iranian mullahs. It will take a signifigant package to outweigh that interest.

Iran does have a limited number of missiles that could reach Israel, without nuclear weapons or other WMD the damage would be reletively minimal.

Of course once they have nuclear weapons, the situation changes.

What I don’t understand about your argument is that it expresses that Iran is too dangerous to attack now, so we have no choice but to let them get more dangerous. That seems very foolish to me.

Iran has been waging low intensity war on the U.S. for decades. For the most part, we have ignored them, which in effect rewards this behavior. It seems logical to me, that the more dangerous they become, the more willing they will be to increase the scale of this sort of warfare. Eventually, we will have no choice but to respond. If that eventuality occurs after Iran has obtained nuclear weapons the loss of life involved, from all parties, will be immensely greater than what it is now. Avoiding that, in my opinion, is worth a lot and makes otherwise unpalatable choices the only choices we can responsibly make.

It is pretty much impossible to mount an ‘insurgency’ against an air campaign. The problem with an air campaign is that it has limited ability to enforce one’s will on a territory, relying on punishing the enemy enough to force them to capitulate.

Iran seems to have a pretty consistent pattern of pushing just over the line of international norms and proper behavior while daring us to do something about it. This pattern began with the seizing of the embassy and has continued, periodically, to the present. In return, we have consistantly refused to confront them in any meaningful way, with the possible exception of our minor support for Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war.

I don’t think we can continue this pattern. It seems to me that the stakes are rising, and less blood, on both sides probably, will be shed if we change this pattern sooner rather than later.