Henry Spencer wrote:

Exactly. Which means that if you're the Maximum Leader of Flanneristan,
and you expect that reversing your "reclaim those lost provinces even if
the US objects" policy would lead to your being deposed and executed, then
deterrence is useless against you. Going head-to-head with the US,
despite the risk of starting a nuclear war, is your smartest move. It
might work, and the alternative is certain death.

Changing that "might" to "probably won't" would be a big, big improvement.


But this also means my lickspittle toadies must take my orders and
launch the missiles; it's more likely that one of them will simply
depose me rather than get killed.
When it looked like Nixon was maybe loosing it and might want to start
WW III rather than get impeached, the big boys at the Pentagon decided
that any odd orders coming from The White House were going to be
politely ignored.
What spooks me about Iran is that it borders the former Soviet Union.
How is Moscow going to react if they see us starting to approach them
from the south? We'd be a little concerned if the Russians started large
scale military actions in Central America.
The Iranians can't do much to retaliate against us other than terrorist
actions (although everyone's so hyped up about their nuclear program
that they seem to forget chemical and biological warfare, which the
Iranians probably can do pretty well, and which will make some very
effective terrorist weapons), but the Russians are a whole other ball of
wax, and the last thing you want to do is give them the impression that
you're backing them into a corner where _they_ have nothing to lose if
WW III starts.
We are playing for some very high stakes here with very little
forethought about where this could all lead if things go wrong.
And the history of wars has a lot of examples where things go very wrong
in very unexpected ways, particularly for the country that initiates the
war with the first overt act. Pearl Harbor and Operation Barbarossa both
come to mind.



I could almost picture North Korea being whacko enough do do something
like this, but not Iran.


I actually am inclined to agree with this... today. The current Iranian
government probably *can* be deterred.

However, that wasn't always the case. In particular, even though he was
theoretically the US's buddy, the Shah was a dangerous man, who wanted to
re-establish the Persian Empire and wasn't above taking some big chances
to do it. Despite the odious nature of the regime that replaced him, I'm
not sorry to see him gone. However, there are more like him around, and
ten years from now, one of them might be in charge again.


If the oil companies have their way there almost certainly will be;
thats how he got in there in the first place.
At least by holding elections, the Iranians are taking a step in the
direction we want them to go; and in the recent local elections a lot of
the religious zealots got tossed out, which indicates that things may
well be moving toward a more moderate country, so the last thing we
should do is attack them and give the ayatollahs a perfect excuse to say
"See! We told you so!"... so that's no doubt exactly what we'll do.
We'll take a Islamic republic and turn it into a radicalized Islamic
republic.
And if that keeps happening, sooner or later the whole Mideast rises,
throws out our corrupt little friendly governments, and pulls the plug
on the west's oil supply.





which leaves us with Crazy Islam standing in the line-up of the usual
suspects.


Right beside Crazy Imperialist -- both the Shah and Saddam Hussein being
recent examples of would-be Mideast Hitlers whose motives had little or
nothing to do with Islam.


That's why we should have kept him around. Iraq and Iran being at each
other's throat was a very good balancing force in the area. I think all
we done in Iraq is given Iran a real opportunity to grab around 1/3 of
the country as soon as we leave.
Given the choice between social chaos and suicide bombers or the
"kindly" Iranians to help them fight the Sunnis, the Shia majority of
Iraq is not going to have a hard time making up its mind about what to do.
And once they get all that oil revenue from south-eastern Iraq, you can
start kissing other countries goodbye, starting with Kuwait.
Like I mentioned in a posting several months back, that invasion of Iraq
is going to be the one big mistake from which all the other problems are
going to emanate.
That's where it all starts going to pieces.

Pat