US offered Israel advanced weaponry in exchange for delaying Iran attack!

DaltheJigsaw

US offered Israel advanced weaponry in exchange for delaying Iran attack: report

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/attack_offered_israel_advanced_weaponry_vJzadL8Qw5XoQ7akSRO9yK#ixzz1oXifIBJL

DaltheJigsaw

"Under the proposed deal, Israel would not attack Iran until 2013, after US elections in November this year."

KnightofBuddha

It's not a terribly surprising development. But it seems to be kicking the can. Only a few outcomes seem possible in the next 5 years or so:

1) Iran gains a nuclear bomb and causes a nuclear arms race in the region.

2) Israel will preemptively strike Iran

3) America will jointly strike Iran with Israel when Iran closes off the Straits of Hormuz

4) Least likely of all, the Iranian regime implodes.

person

Ok, well at least we can rule out global thermo nuclear war as the mechanism for Dec 21, 2012. :buck:

Mountains

Consider the source for this: The New York Post. Not exactly a bastion of responsible, ground-breaking journalistic excellence. Not saying it's necessarily untrue, but how come nobody else has picked it up? There's still a tiny sliver of me that hopes that Obama is not that cynical and deceitful. Netan-yahoo, yes. Obama, no.

KoB - I sincerely doubt Iran is capable of closing the Strait of Hormuz unilaterally. They could try, but there's enough firepower concentrated in and around the Gulf that they'd have a very tough time doing it. You can bet that contingency plans have been in place for many, many years in the Pentagon for just such a circumstance.

As for Iran gaining a nuclear weapon and starting a nuke race in the region - who else in the region has the ability or the desire to obtain one besides Israel? Egypt? Afghanistan? Syria? Turkey? I don't see an Iranian nuke capability setting off anything except hard-ons in Tehran. And if, like North Korea and Pakistan, Iran does get a nuke, then what? Are they going to use it any more than the North Koreans or the Pakistanis have? Anyone with enough sense to build a nuke knows that using it is a death sentence on his own country. Would the Iranians give nukes to Hezbollah or al Qaeda? If they did, and if they were used (heaven forbid), the nuclear signature would point straight back to its source, and Iran would cease to exist. Either way, even a regime as nuts as Iran's isn't likely to actually use nukes. I'm not in favor of their obtaining them, any more than I was of North Korea or Pakistan obtaining them. But if they do - and they will - there's little the world can or should do about it. The genie is long out of the nuclear bottle. Anybody with enough money and a deep enough cave can have a nuke if he wants it. It's the world we live in. If Israel and/or the US does strike Iranian nuclear facilities, no military person or nuclear weapons expert in the world thinks it will deter them from eventually obtaining the weapon if they truly want it. It might (maybe) delay them a few months or a year, but it won't prevent them. Just not possible.

KnightofBuddha

It all depends on how seriously you take the Mullahs' words. Not many other countries open meetings of Parliaments for calls of death and holocaust to other nations. I'm not sure whether they bluff or not when they say they want to annihilate the Jews. Either way, it's a cause for concern that state actors behave this way.

And it's true that they could not entirely seal off Hormuz, but the threat is all it takes. If suddenly supertankers must worry about being torpedoed, maritime insurance rates skyrocket overnight, and oil will explode to hundreds of dollars a barrel. They economic shock would be significant everywhere.