Message for Iran:
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.
Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.
President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late”.
I don’t doubt the accuracy of this story but versions of it have been floating about for a couple of years now. I don’t think the Iranians are particularly worried about it. They’ve heard it before and they appear to be pretty confident that we’re bogged down in Iraq. However, at some point the empty rhetoric stops and the message, while it may be the same, takes on new meaning. The survival of the Iranian regime likely hinges on their ability to see this point and shift course. I don’t see any signs of that happening.
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September 2nd, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Sunday linkage…
Selected for your perusal:
—- Did you hear the news? Someone’s finally serving time for the Duke lacrosse rape case – the person who most deserved it. But it’s not nearly enough time, in my humble opinion. ST reader Dana R…