War with Iran is Inevitable

[Toontown]

If Iran thinks that Israel is there enemy now then what is the point arguing about whether they were back in early 80's? The war would happen now.

To cloud the issue and thereby prevent readers from forming opinions or conclusions deemed inimical to the desires of the issue-clouder.

Just kidding. Actually, it is necessary to go through the entirety of human history in order to completely understand any current issue. If you ever manage to get to the current issue past all the arguing. Which, BTW, is the true goal of many forum posters. For many, it is the tediously argumentative journey, rather than the destination, that they seek. Which, come to think of it, is just another way of saying "to cloud the issue".

 

[Border Reiver]

I would doubt that the Israelis could pull it off. The plane most likely to be used would be the F-16, which has a combat radius of about 340 miles, presupposing you could get your tankers out over "friendly" airspace you are still looking at at least two refuellings for the bombers to get there and back, and then still have to deal with Iranian air defences on the way in and out, so the ordnance load would need to be set for both Air to Air and Air to Ground.

I would be very surprised if any of the locals lent their airfields to the IDF, those countries would still need to deal with the political fallout from such activity and the strike will at best delay the project, stopping it requires more than an airstrike or two, or 100...

 

[Toontown]

I would be very surprised if any of the locals lent their airfields to the IDF, those countries would still need to deal with the political fallout from such activity and the strike will at best delay the project, stopping it requires more than an airstrike or two, or 100...

I wouldn't be very surprised. Stranger bedfellows have found each other.

Do the locals have anything better to do than wait for Mr. Goodbar in the form of nuclear Iran?

 

[A'isha]

I snipped because nowhere was WC quoted as saying such a thing. Still a disconnect and no distinction. How this equates to dishonestly, is beyond me.

Because Wildcat was defending that statement and everything in it, including the usage of specific words, across multiple posts, as if he had said such a thing. It certainly reflected something he apparently firmly believed, to the point were he unprotestingly accepted the use and quotation of that statement to represent his own position. He may not have "said it", but he certainly said it was true and he stood behind it, and argued repeatedly and vehemently in support if it.

Is this really so difficult for you to understand?

Alright then, the author of the article.

Strangely enough, you feel the need to make the distinction between what Panetta stated and what the author did. Do you understand it now? Quoting and supporting said assertion?

Oh, I've made it quite clear in this thread that I'm well aware that Wildcat did not actually make the initial statement which contained the claim "Iran has always viewed Israel as its No. 1 adversary", but that he was wholeheartedly supporting the assertion.

And I'm puzzled that you don't seem to understand what that means when it comes to depicting and describing Wildcat's position in these threads.

Yep, ad hom. Couldn't have guessed it. Relates to the prior.

That's because I'm honestly having a difficult time understanding how you not only first thought, but that you continue to think that "Iran has always viewed Israel as its No. 1 adversary" is some sort of strawman or misrepresentation of Wildcat's position, simply because he didn't type those words himself.

"Iran has always viewed Israel as its No. 1 adversary" is Wildcat's position in this thread, the statement and assertion he supports. Period.

A difference of opinion on different matters is to be expected. We're not joined at the hip so don't patrionize me if I happen to have a difference of opinion with a detailed justification for it.

Except you have no such thing. That's why you have snipped out my own "detailed justification", because you have nothing to counter it.

Well, nothing but more insulting misrepresentations like saying this post can be summarized by saying "Talk about a stretch. A link of "citation needed" with an embedded link to the Great Satan wiki article equates to WC stating this very thing?"

I'm not patronizing you, I'm disappointed and confused. This isn't "a difference of opinion on different matters", this is you accusing me of "strawman and sheer fabrication" because I somehow made the heinous mistake of treating a statement that Wildcat has been supporting and defending (down to the wording) is actually representative and descriptive of his own position on the matter.

And I literally have no idea why you would do that.

 

[Mark6]

I would doubt that the Israelis could pull it off. The plane most likely to be used would be the F-16, which has a combat radius of about 340 miles,

No.

F-15I range: 4,450 km

 

[Border Reiver]

I wouldn't be very surprised. Stranger bedfellows have found each other.

Do the locals have anything better to do than wait for Mr. Goodbar in the form of nuclear Iran?

Strange bedfellows do come about, but in this case all they now have is a ticked off Iran with nukes, perhaps looking for a little payback against the parties that delayed them from getting into the nuclear club. If an airstrike or selected assassinations could stop Iran from getting nukes then it might be possible, but at this stage all either will do is delay Iran getting nukes and then the politicians have to make the calculation of whether they want Iran armed with Nukes in say 5 years and set up as the regional power who should be listened to, or Iran armed with nukes in 10 years and "upset" with the neighbours who let the Israelis use their country as a staging ground to attack them.

 

[bigjelmapro]

Because Wildcat was defending that statement and everything in it, including the usage of specific words, across multiple posts, as if he had said such a thing. It certainly reflected something he apparently firmly believed, to the point were he unprotestingly accepted the use and quotation of that statement to represent his own position. He may not have "said it", but he certainly said it was true and he stood behind it, and argued repeatedly and vehemently in support if it.

Is this really so difficult for you to understand?

So we've made progress. Yes, WC is defending the statement and didn't make it. So nobody can contribute said statement to WC.

I'm not going further into this.

Except you have no such thing. That's why you have snipped out my own "detailed justification", because you have nothing to counter it.

Detailed justification for WC's supporting of the statement in the article is what I was referring to, not that secondary, less important argument that you seem to go at great ends to respond to, rather than the argument of Iran viewing Israel as its no. 1 adversary.

This was the difference of opinion.

 

[bigjelmapro]

I know this wasn't your main point but Iran wasn't fighting solely for shipping lanes, it started fighting in self-defense, for its existence, against a very well-armed Saddam. To me that war is a valid counterexample.

I know, that's why I stated oil fields first, shipping lanes second. They were the main points for Saddam's interest in Iran. Iran on the other hand had a hand in trying to induce revolt against the Ba'athists, including allegedly supporting the Kurds against Saddam and that of Al Dawaa in its attempts on an Iraqi minister. Then there's the tit for tat attacks on the Shatt al Arab waterway. Previous treaties and agreements broke down, and with Khoemini veying for regional power, as well as Saddam doing the same.

I don't immediately see what the comparison is when you cite "more resources." More than what? Than what was spent on the Iran-Iraq war? You then say resources aren't the only measure to go by, and point to consistency, wide-range training and meddling, etc.

Do we actually know enough to quantify the "resources" argument?

Stated in other response that IMO it wasn't more than the almost decade long Iran-Iraq war and I stand by that. I do, however, think it was significantly more than what was thrown at pre-2001 Afghanistan. The latter was a short stint and nominal involvement.

Iran's involvement against Israel has spanned over a number of different countries, terrorist groups, and had direct Iranian involvement, which has continued strong throughout post-1979.

I don't exactly know what you're expecting in terms of quantification. General statistics? Receipts? What?

In terms of actual terrorist attacks - what has been the extent of Iran's proven involvement? Don't get me wrong, I have extreme suspicion of the IRI's well-organized thuggery. But I don't quite see the straight line of culpability that I do with the Saudi/Taliban axis, Libya, etc. I don't mind admitting my ignorance here, it's not something I've researched. But who was the relatively recent U.S. ally actually bombing Israel in 1991? Anyone think Iran had a hand in that?

Quds force and the IRGC have a pretty extensive history of supporting, training, financing, and directly partaking in terrorist attacks (Hezbollah being its direct proxy group) in a number of different countries (Iran and state terrorism. I don't see how you can draw a 'straight line' for the ones you mentioned and not the other. There have been a number of well-documented cases of Iranian arms shipments (markings and all, recently explosive devices along the Gaza-Israel fence/border this past week) and the IRGC being involved in the 2006 Lebanon war for instance.

This has gone beyond just pure speculation....

 

[Border Reiver]

No.

F-15I range: 4,450 km

Yes, but the F-15 is primarily an air-superiority fighter and is not designed to carry bombs, the F-16 is a multi-purpose fighter and can carry bombs.

And I think your range may be a bit off - and remember that this range is with three external fuel tanks - which would reduce the ordnance they could bring, meaning more aircraft involved, more chance of detection, etc. (read less chance of success).

 

[Oliver]

The fact remains that from the time of the revolution until the present day Iran has relentlessy fought Israel merely for existing, while other spats have come and gone.

You may disagree that this makes Israel their #1 adversary, but I'm standing by the assertion.

Also: Over the past decade, there have been thousands of suicide bombings by Saudis, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians and Pakistanis, but not been a single suicide attack by an Iranian. Is the Iranian regime — even if it got one crude device in a few years — likely to launch the first?

 

[A'isha]

So we've made progress. Yes, WC is defending the statement and didn't make it. So nobody can contribute said statement to WC.

I'll just let Wildcat's words from post sixty-one in this thread answer for me.

The fact remains that from the time of the revolution until the present day Iran has relentlessy fought Israel merely for existing, while other spats have come and gone.

You may disagree that this makes Israel their #1 adversary, but I'm standing by the assertion.

 

[bigjelmapro]

Yes, but the F-15 is primarily an air-superiority fighter and is not designed to carry bombs, the F-16 is a multi-purpose fighter and can carry bombs.

And I think your range may be a bit off - and remember that this range is with three external fuel tanks - which would reduce the ordnance they could bring, meaning more aircraft involved, more chance of detection, etc. (read less chance of success).

There are many different versions and all depends on the application, distance, ordanance and size of the squadrons involved. In the Syrian strike, F-15I's were the one's carrying the laser guided bombs with external tanks that were dropped on Syrian soil (there's pictures of this) with F-16i's and ECM platforms as support (Operation Orchard

The Osirak strike on the other hand had it flipped around, but had the F-16's at their design limit on the number of external tanks it could carry at the time requiring more planes for redundancy to strike one target, with F-15's as support. Unlike the Syrian strike, the Osirak strike used unguided munitions, requiring more bombs in order to hit the target. The more recent F-16i's have more non-ejectable fuel storage compared to previous models that puts a limit to ordinance it can carry.

In the end, it all depends on the application and where refueling would occur. I do think, however, like in previous operations, there will be a combination of F-16's and F-15's used in addition to a number of ECM platforms, be those pods or other jet types entirely.

 

[Toontown]

Strange bedfellows do come about, but in this case all they now have is a ticked off Iran with nukes, perhaps looking for a little payback against the parties that delayed them from getting into the nuclear club. If an airstrike or selected assassinations could stop Iran from getting nukes then it might be possible, but at this stage all either will do is delay Iran getting nukes and then the politicians have to make the calculation of whether they want Iran armed with Nukes in say 5 years and set up as the regional power who should be listened to, or Iran armed with nukes in 10 years and "upset" with the neighbours who let the Israelis use their country as a staging ground to attack them.

You are making the assumption that the regime can withstand 10 more years of increasingly crippling sanctions leading to an uprising. The politicians making those calculations will not concede that a nuclear Iran is inevitable. OTC, there are very powerful players who are saying repeatedly that Iran will not be allowed to go nuclear. These terse statements by countries such as the U.S., France, and the U.K. are somewhat at odds with your bland, unwarranted assumption.

 

[Border Reiver]

These were the same folks that said the same thing about North Korea, Pakistan, South Africa....

 

[Travis]

These were the same folks that said the same thing about North Korea, Pakistan, South Africa....

Of course those nations were not guaranteed to use their weapons regardless of consequences the way Iran certainly will.

 

[Border Reiver]

There are no guarantees with ANY weapon that people will use it.

There was a period in the 1950s when both the Soviets and NATO expected to be doing that whole ground war in Europe thing with Nukes being used as interdiction artillery to slow down the rate of reinforcements to the intial WP push, allowing NATO to get US and Canadian troops to Europe (which at the time would have been by ship, so 5-7 days at a minimum) to prevent NATO from having to pull another "Miracle at Dunkirk".

Then we anticipated a nasty nuclear exchange in between India and Pakistan - which hasn't happened yet.

Even more recently we were anticipating North Korea doing something.

I note that at this time none of that has happened. I'm not saying that I don't have concerns about Iran having nukes, but at this stage we're looking more at the problem of dealing with an eventually nuclear armed Iran. The time to have stopped the program and prevented it from happening in the first place is long past.

 

[Tricky]

Of course those nations were not guaranteed to use their weapons regardless of consequences the way Iran certainly will.

Now you sound like George W. Bush. Isn't this the same rhetoric that led us into Iraq?

 

[Travis]

Now you sound like George W. Bush. Isn't this the same rhetoric that led us into Iraq?

Good catch. It certainly is.


It should be noted I don't advocate for a war with Iran. At least not unless they actually do attack us or Israel.

 

[Tricky]

It should be noted I don't advocate for a war with Iran. At least not unless they actually do attack us or Israel.

The way you phrased it, you sound like you think they "certainly" will attack somebody. I don't necessarily think they will attack anyone. Heck, they're still years away from a deliverable nuclear weapon, even assuming that that is what they are trying to do.

But I tire of all the "they're so unstable" talk. I think most countries are quite aware of the suicide it would be to use nuclear weapons. Indeed, there is only one country that has ever used them against a civilian populace. If there's anyone to distrust with nukes, wouldn't it make sense that it would be the country that has actually used them?

No, I'm not some pie-in-the-sky peacenik who thinks we could universally disarm, but I do think that we ought to show a little humility when calling other countries "unstable".

 

[Virus]

If there's anyone to distrust with nukes, wouldn't it make sense that it would be the country that has actually used them?

Japan started it. Why do you ignore context?