Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Obama Threatens Iran with Nukes

By Robert Parry
April 6, 2010

In readjusting U.S. policy on when to launch a nuclear strike, President Barack Obama has repudiated the use of nukes against non-nuclear states with the exception of Iran, which he termed an “outlier” along with North Korea.

Read on.

5 comments:

Jake Cornelis said...

Yep. Iran has now been given a perfectly legitimate reason to acquire nuclear weapons: they now see themselves under overt threat of nuclear attack by the United States.

The big issue is, are the American people going to stand by and permit this madness?

pirestroika said...

A good way to reduce the U.S. nuclear weapons, is releasing some of the bombers, on Iran, so no longer need to dismantle them

Unknown said...

People in Iraq , Afghanistan , Palestine ,Pakistan , Yemen and Iran are all living under a reign of terror.

That the US is responsible is shameful.

Nat Parry said...

"There is a message for Iran and North Korea here," Gates told reporters. "If you're not going to play by the rules, if you're going to be a proliferator, then all options are on the table in terms of how we deal with you."

But wait, doesn't this necessarily ensure that Iran and North Korea become proliferators? More accurately, doesn't it make the United States a proliferator?

I mean, the doctrine of nuclear deterrence is on mutual assured destruction. If the US obliquely threatens Iran and North Korea with nuclear attack, it ensures that these "rogue states" will seek nuclear deterrence, which is the very definition of proliferation.

This makes us the proliferators, not them.

Unknown said...

Atomic threats against Iran suggest bluff, and caution, delay, yet a submissive suzerain Iran is vital to the Empire – so attack is sure to occur. Admiral Mullin advises against attacking Iran – why?

Well, what if the attack, a campaign really, fails? What if Iran does not give up? What if Iran sinks a fleet carrier, or two? What if, under (illegal) attack and in self-defense, Iran puts a nuke gadget together ad-hoc, so to speak.

Does any educated Iranian not know his history? I understand that most Americans don’t, but Iranians know the hard lesson Xerxes learned at Salamis. A Greek Queen, Artemisia, (also an admiral) warned the Persian King, but was ignored. The battle was fought – and one can argue that it was a tactical draw – but Persia had to do better than that.

In terms of deep strategy it looks like Iran is contriving to entice attack and control the timing – why? As Mullin seems to suspect, attacking Iran will result in not only mass murder, but also in stalemate, which is defeat for Empire.