Thisssssssssssssssss could be trouble.

[Omeed]

  If we nuke Iran...what are we going to do about all of that oil sitting under Iran which will suddenly become inaccessible?  What will we do when 1/10 of the worlds supply of oil becomes unavailable for years, if not decades?

 

 

Salaam. I can't say a whole lot on this topic. Levenworth doesn't sound like a fun place to live. However, Iran doesn't have a whole lot of oil. Their big natural resource is liquid natural gas, and China has a nice contract to get a pretty big chunk of that. Khoda hafez.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Salaam.  I can't say a whole lot on this topic.  Levenworth doesn't sound like a fun place to  live.  However, Iran doesn't have a whole lot of oil.  Their big natural resource is liquid natural gas, and China has a nice contract to get a pretty big chunk of that.  Khoda hafez.

 

Not sure what your criteria for 'a lot' is, but like Balta said, Iran has 10% of the world's known oil. Seems kind of like a lot to me.

 

This is from DOE:

 

Iran is OPEC's second largest oil producer and holds 10 percent of the world's proven oil reserves. It also has the world's second largest natural gas reserves (after Russia).

 

Iran's economy relies heavily on oil export revenues - around 80-90 percent of total export earnings and 40-50 percent of the government budget.

[sox4lifeinPA]

ok, what's with the omeed guy? Price check on aisle 3??

[Omeed]

Not sure what your criteria for 'a lot' is, but like Balta said, Iran has 10% of the world's known oil.  Seems kind of like a lot to me.

 

This is from DOE:

 

 

After a quick bit of research, you are correct; myself, incorrect. But, that research also showed the liquid natural gas potential of that country is much higher than petroleum. However, potential and Iran don't mix well. Khoda hafez.

[FlaSoxxJim]

After a quick bit of research, you are correct; myself, incorrect.  But, that research also showed the liquid natural gas potential of that country is much higher than petroleum.  However, potential and Iran don't mix well.  Khoda hafez.

 

Unless you count potential for problems, that is.

[Steve Bartman's my idol]

Exactly -- Finkelstein's parents survived the Holocaust & he to say that he is pissed about the bastardization of the plight of the Holocaust (using it as a hammer to pound at any critic of Israeli policy) is quite an understatement.  Not to mention that he is a well respected academic scholar with backed up research.  But who needs to refute that when you can just say "Nazi!"

 

It is hilarious that SBMI proclaims that a race of people are inferior, subhuman and all evil -- yet has the balls and cognitive dissonance to call "me" a racist.

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I NEVER said that the so-called "palestinians" are inferior, subhuman and evil (MAYBE my brother did!). Reading is a skill, Lowercase, learn it.

 

I don't (and never did) say that the current Mideast situation has anything to do with Nazi Germany, although there are parallels...the Arab (Muslim) countries want to see the Jews eradicated, just like the Nazis did, THAT'S IT! (BTW...my father survived the Holocaust too, and went on to fight for Israel's independence in 1948!).

 

Once again, I reiterate (for those of you with comprehension difficulties (Lowercase)), Israel's struggles with the "palis" are DEFENSIVE!!! IF the "palis" had never attacked Israel,and never called for Jihad against Israel, and "pali" terrorists didn't start killing innocent Israelis, THERE WOULD BE NO CONFLICT.

[Steve Bartman's my idol]

As much fun as this thread looks, what it amounts to for me is Iran keeps publically stating that Israel should not be in existance, and at the sametime is very close to developing the weapons that could achieve the very goal they have had since 1948.  Just last week the Irani President instead of working towards peace, said that if Europeans really cared about the Jews, they would make an Israel in Europe instead, while ignoring the facts that basically all of the Muslim countries of the middle east have historically refused to take in the Palestinian refugees, and countries like Jordan have refused to take a section of land to make an independant Palestinian state out of.

 

Israel might not have the best record to stand on, but they have NEVER stated that their ultimate goal is the genocide of its neighbors.  They have been repeatedly invaded and attacked by other sovergien nations, and live in a perpetual state of war with groups like Hamas who refuse to negotiate a peace that includes a Jewish exsistance.  Its hard to justify war, but when your very exsistance is at stake, I can totally understand it.  When (not if) this happens, it will be interesting to see how the middle east handles this.

 

I also saw the line about Iran justifying the need for nukes with defense against invasion, and just wanted to point out that the arms race isn't a new objective for Iran.  They have been actively pursuing atomic weapons for at least 30 years now.  Israel already destroyed one nearly complete nuclear facility, back in the early 80s if memory serves me correctly.  Also if memory serves me correctly Iran didn't have any immenent invasion excuse then either.  Simply what we have now is Iran being able to fit their propaganda to serve the agenda they have had since at least the middle 70's.  Nothing has changed here, Iran has always wanted the ability to blow Israel off of the map, they just have a rational now for posessing that ability.

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Right on!

 

There is finally someone who understands the situation, (other than me and "Nuke")!

 

[Steve Bartman's my idol]

If there is one thing that unites the Muslims of the world, it is ridding Palestine of the Jews.  I have no doubt that even if Iran didn't attack Israel outwardly, they would have no problem with Hamas or the like "finding" a nuke somehow.  Plus if you believe what the Koran saids, and the Imams have preached, it is their DUTY to rid the Jews from there.  Death is a good thing in this case, as it means you are in paradise and you have pleased Allah.  You have to take off your death is bad, Christian blinders and put yourself in Islams shoes.  Even if the Irani President is full of s*** when he talks about destroying Israel, it only takes one underling to leak this to a desparate Palestinian group and bye-bye Holy Land, with the reward of eternal paradise.

 

A nuclear Iran is a worst case scenario IMO.

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[southsider2k5]

Iran's President claims he was misunderstood the other day when he reiterated his comments about Israel being "wiped off of the map". He also reiterated that the holocaust was just a myth.

 

Also I must have missed the part where Iran offered to take in the Palestinian refugees, because if he thinks Europe should take in the Jews, he must feel like Muslims should help out their own brothers in need right?

 

Once again, this man cannot posess nuclear materials. The rest of the world would not be safe.

 

ATHENS, Greece - The Iranian president's widely condemned remarks about Israel and the Holocaust were "misunderstood" by Western governments, Iran's interior minister said Friday. Speaking on the sidelines of an Athens conference on immigration, Mostafa Pur Mohammadi told The Associated Press: "Actually the case has been misunderstood. (President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) did not mean to raise this matter.

 

"He wanted to say that if certain people have created troubles for the Jewish community they should bear the expenses, and it is not others who should pay for that."

 

Ahmadinejad's comments Wednesday drew quick condemnations from Israel, the United States and Europe, which warned he is hurting Iran's position in talks aimed at resolving suspicions about his regime's nuclear program.

 

During a tour of southeastern Iran, Ahmadinejad said that if Europeans insist the Holocaust occurred, then they are responsible and should pay the price.

 

"Today, they have created a myth in the name of Holocaust and consider it to be above God, religion and the prophets," Ahmadinejad told thousands of people in Zahedan. "If you committed this big crime, then why should the oppressed Palestinian nation pay the price?"

 

"This is our proposal: If you committed the crime, then give a part of your own land in Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to them so that the Jews can establish their country," he said in remarks carried live by state television.

 

In October, he provoked an international outcry by calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

 

European Union leaders meeting in Brussels, Belgium, warned in a draft statement Friday Ahmadinejad's remarks could be grounds for sanctions against Iran.

 

"These comments are wholly unacceptable and have no place in civilized political debate," the draft statement said.

 

Inside Iran, moderates have called on the Islamic cleric-led regime to rein in the president. His election in June sealed the long decline of Iran's reform movement, which had largely dropped the harsh anti- Israeli and anti-U.S. rhetoric of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and sought to build international ties.

 

Nations across the world have condemned Ahmadinejad's remarks. The White House said his words "only underscore why it is so important that the international community continue to work together to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons."

 

Israel's Foreign Ministry said the comments illustrated "the mind-set of the ruling clique in Tehran and indicate clearly the extremist policy goals of the regime."

 

Benita Ferrero-Waldner, EU external relations commissioner, called Ahmadinejad's views "absolutely irresponsible." Denying the Holocaust _ in which 6 million Jews died during World War II at Nazi hands _ is a crime in several European nations.

 

China, which maintains good relations with both Iran and Israel, said such remarks could undermine world stability.

 

"We are not in favor of any remarks detrimental to stability and peace," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Thursday. "Israel is a sovereign state."

 

Moscow did not directly criticize Ahmadinejad but condemned any attempts to deny the Holocaust and said it was necessary to restate Moscow's "principled position."

 

"Speculation on these themes runs contrary to the principles of the U.N. Charter and the opinion of the world community," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

 

Arab governments appeared reluctant to condemn Ahmadinejad. In Saudi Arabia, government-controlled newspapers picked up the remarks from international news agencies but did not comment on them.

[Steve Bartman's my idol]

Lest you get carried away with today's good news from Iraq, consider what's happening next door in Iran. The wild pronouncements of the new Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have gotten sporadic press ever since he called for Israel to be wiped off the map. He subsequently amended himself to say that Israel should simply be extirpated from the Middle East map and moved to some German or Austrian province. Perhaps near the site of an old extermination camp?

 

 

Except that there were no such camps, indeed no Holocaust at all, says Ahmadinejad. Nothing but "myth," a "legend" that was "fabricated . . . under the name 'Massacre of the Jews.' " This brought the usual reaction from European and American officials, who, with Churchillian rage and power, called these statements unacceptable. That something serious might accrue to Iran for this — say, expulsion from the United Nations for violating its most basic principle by advocating the outright eradication of a member state — is, of course, out of the question.

 

 

To be sure, Holocaust denial and calls for Israel's destruction are commonplace in the Middle East. They can be seen every day on Hezbollah TV, in Syrian media, in Egyptian editorials appearing in semiofficial newspapers. But none of these aspiring mass murderers are on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons that could do in one afternoon what it took Hitler six years to do: destroy an entire Jewish civilization and extinguish 6 million souls.

 

 

Everyone knows where Iran's nuclear weapons will be aimed. Everyone knows they will be put on Shahab rockets, which have been modified so that they can reach Israel. And everyone knows that if the button is ever pushed, it will be the end of Israel.

 

 

But it gets worse. The president of a country about to go nuclear is a confirmed believer in the coming apocalypse. Like Judaism and Christianity, Shiite Islam has its own version of the messianic return — the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam. The more devout believers in Iran pray at the Jamkaran mosque, which houses a well from which, some believe, he will emerge.

 

 

When Ahmadinejad unexpectedly won the presidential elections, he immediately gave $17 million of government funds to the shrine. Last month Ahmadinejad said publicly that the main mission of the Islamic Revolution is to pave the way for the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam.

 

 

And as in some versions of fundamentalist Christianity, the second coming will be accompanied by the usual trials and tribulations, death and destruction. Iranian journalist Hossein Bastani reported Ahmadinejad saying in official meetings that the hidden imam will reappear in two years.

 

 

So a Holocaust-denying, virulently anti-Semitic, aspiring genocidist, on the verge of acquiring weapons of the apocalypse, believes that the end is not only near but nearer than the next American presidential election. (Pity the Democrats. They cannot catch a break.) This kind of man would have, to put it gently, less inhibition about starting Armageddon than a normal person. Indeed, with millennial bliss pending, he would have positive incentive to, as they say in Jewish eschatology, hasten the end.

 

 

To be sure, there are such madmen among the other monotheisms. The Temple Mount Faithful in Israel would like the al-Aqsa mosque on Jerusalem's Temple Mount destroyed to make way for the third Jewish Temple and the messianic era. The difference with Iran, however, is that there are all of about 50 of these nuts in Israel, and none of them is president.

 

 

The closest we've come to a messianically inclined leader in America was a secretary of the interior who 24 years ago, when asked about his stewardship of the environment, told Congress: "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns; whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations." But James Watt's domain was the forest, and his weapon of choice was the chainsaw. He was not in charge of nuclear weapons to be placed on missiles that are paraded through the streets with, literally, Israel's name on them.

 

 

(They are adorned with banners reading "Israel must be wiped off the map.") It gets worse. After his U.N. speech in September, Ahmadinejad was caught on videotape telling a cleric that during the speech an aura, a halo, appeared around his head right on the podium of the General Assembly. "I felt the atmosphere suddenly change. And for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. . . . It seemed as if a hand was holding them there, and it opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic Republic."

 

 

Negotiations to deny this certifiable lunatic genocidal weapons have been going nowhere. Everyone knows they will go nowhere. And no one will do anything about it.

 

JewishWorldReview.com

[Balta1701]

Negotiations to deny this certifiable lunatic genocidal weapons have been going nowhere. Everyone knows they will go nowhere. And no one will do anything about it.

I don't know if the problem is as much no one being willing to do anything about it as it is no one being able to do anything about it even if they were willing.

[Steve Bartman's my idol]

I don't know if the problem is as much no one being willing to do anything about it as it is no one being able to do anything about it even if they were willing.

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I think Israel can do something about it, IF the Bush Administration lets the Israelis take their "kid gloves off"!

[Balta1701]

I think Israel can do something about it, IF the Bush Administration lets the Israelis take their "kid gloves off"!

What exactly can the Israeli's do? Launch airstrikes against Iranian nuclear targets? Unlike Iraq, Iran's nuclear program is widely spread out and often in fortified locations, obviously to protect against exactly the sort of attack that the Israelis launched on Iraq in the 80's. It would take several days of bombing to pull off any real damage. Furthermore, the Israeli jets cannot reach Iran and return on normal fuel tanks - the Iraqi government would have to give the Israelis permission to refuel inflight over Iraqi territory, something that will only happen if the U.S. forces the Iraqis to allow it (which would obviously serve as an anti-American rallying point in Iraq.)

 

Furthermore, despite previous successes of the Mossad, it's still an open question whether or not people actually know the full extent of any Iranian nuclear program...they could very well have sites that no one currently knows about.

 

And finally...Iran's military is not pathetic and weak, like Iraq's was before we invaded. They have the capability to launch strikes on Israel in response, possibly including Chemical attacks. Iran doesn't have to get its hands on a bomb to kill millions of Israelis.

[southsideirish71]

What exactly can the Israeli's do?  Launch airstrikes against Iranian nuclear targets?  Unlike Iraq, Iran's nuclear program is widely spread out and often in fortified locations, obviously to protect against exactly the sort of attack that the Israelis launched on Iraq in the 80's.  It would take several days of bombing to pull off any real damage.  Furthermore, the Israeli jets cannot reach Iran and return on normal fuel tanks - the Iraqi government would have to give the Israelis permission to refuel inflight over Iraqi territory, something that will only happen if the U.S. forces the Iraqis to allow it (which would obviously serve as an anti-American rallying point in Iraq.)

 

Furthermore, despite previous successes of the Mossad, it's still an open question whether or not people actually know the full extent of any Iranian nuclear program...they could very well have sites that no one currently knows about.

 

And finally...Iran's military is not pathetic and weak, like Iraq's was before we invaded.  They have the capability to launch strikes on Israel in response, possibly including Chemical attacks.  Iran doesn't have to get its hands on a bomb to kill millions of Israelis.

 

 

They have the extended version of the F-15E which has the range to fly and bomb Iran and come back.

 

If a missle hits Israel with a chemical weapon, Tehran will reach the 10,000 degrees in a split second. I figure a nice airburst 1500 feet above the city would be the response for the chemical weapon.

[Steve Bartman's my idol]

What exactly can the Israeli's do?  Launch airstrikes against Iranian nuclear targets?  Unlike Iraq, Iran's nuclear program is widely spread out and often in fortified locations, obviously to protect against exactly the sort of attack that the Israelis launched on Iraq in the 80's.  It would take several days of bombing to pull off any real damage.  Furthermore, the Israeli jets cannot reach Iran and return on normal fuel tanks - the Iraqi government would have to give the Israelis permission to refuel inflight over Iraqi territory, something that will only happen if the U.S. forces the Iraqis to allow it (which would obviously serve as an anti-American rallying point in Iraq.)

 

Furthermore, despite previous successes of the Mossad, it's still an open question whether or not people actually know the full extent of any Iranian nuclear program...they could very well have sites that no one currently knows about.

 

And finally...Iran's military is not pathetic and weak, like Iraq's was before we invaded.  They have the capability to launch strikes on Israel in response, possibly including Chemical attacks.  Iran doesn't have to get its hands on a bomb to kill millions of Israelis.

 

I can't dispute anything you said.

 

However, I believe that Israel's military is FAR superior to that of Iran, and that Israel could take out Iran without much difficulty. (Just my opinion.)

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