generalspeaking

Taking All Measures

The scenarios are endless and they are distinctly alarming. American President Barack Obama will be visiting Israel, The Palestinian Territories and Jordan on an unusual but long-anticipated trip that will finally see him in Israel, consulting with the new government. It has been ventured that though he would like his administration to be the one that finally is able to break the dead-lock between Israel and the PA on peace and sovereign side-by-side states, he doesn't plan, at this juncture to approach the topic with any degree of deep commitment.

There will be discussions of Iran, and the threat that the Republic poses to the region, and particularly toward Israel, with its belligerent messaging and threats, and its steady trend toward nuclear warheads. President Obama has asserted his intention of delivering to Israel the solid message of himself and his Cabinet colleagues strongly in support of the State of Israel, no less so than his predecessors, despite the optics that seem to deliver another message.

The United States would much prefer to think and to behave as though they believe the threat emanating from the Islamic Republic of Iran, though dire, remains yet a long way off.  There is time to respond. And respond the United States will do, he insists, since their repeated 'red line' of Iran producing nuclear arms is sincere. Israeli leaders have yet to be convinced. The timeline they respond to does not quite reflect the American one, and never has.

The UN-mandated, purportedly revenue-stifling sanctions that have been imposed by their member-states have dome some damage to the Iranian economy, but the Republic keeps chugging along, refining uranium and perfecting its ballistic missile delivery systems, in friendly scientific and technological tandem with North Korea. Tehran has now launched a domestically built destroyer on the Caspian Sea.

President Ahmadinejad has engaged in his usual rhetoric, describing the guided missile destroyer Jamaran-2's deployment as a tactic meant to bolster peace and friendship in the region. One can imagine the Arab League leaping as one to their feet in enthusiastic congratulations over the announcement. The 1,400-ton destroyer has a helicopter landing pad, is equipped with surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles along with anti-aircraft batteries.

The United States has the luxury of distance, Israel has no cover to protect its tiny footprint in the Middle East from violent extirpation, which is precisely what Iran has promised time and again. And faced little chastising repudiation within the United Nations, the world institute dedicated to peace among nations and the upholding of human rights.

The old standoff throughout the Cold War between the two nuclear-armed powerful nations of the USSR and the United States depended on the recognized concept of mutual assured destruction. Neither one nor the other had any wish to mount a war with the weapons that would guarantee mass destruction. Cool heads always prevailed, despite times when a finger hovered too close to that famous red button. It's hard to say who was more prudent then, Khrushchev or Kennedy.

That was then. This is now. Now, there is an Islamist Shia regime whose narrow religious ideology seeks to hasten an end-of-days cataclysm with the arrival of the Hidden Imam, bringing with him the destruction of all those who fail to surrender their faith to Islam. An event the fanatically theocratic regime of Iran is anxious to hasten, and should the firing of nuclear missiles turn the tide, then so be it. Iran has boasted that it can afford to lose more people than Israel can.

The United States has much to concern itself with. It remains the world's single super-power, with China breathing hot behind. China doesn't mind one bit seeing the U.S. burdened with fear of the unexpected, which is what results from China's dysfunctional proxy North Korea threatening to fire nuclear-tipped missiles at the United States and South Korea with their steadily perfecting Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.

The U.S. has the advanced technology and the billions it takes to install anti-missile silos to intercept incoming missiles to protect its geography and its people from North Korean missiles, should they eventuate. It had signed treaties with eastern Europe to do the same to protect them from missiles fired from Iran, which Russia had strenuously and stridently objected to. In the throes of beefing up their anti-missile interceptors to meet the North Korean threat, the European anti-IBM missiles have been dropped.

Israel, therefore, does not enjoy that mode of protection from that source. It will depend hugely on its Iron Dome system and the allied technology that it employs to help protect its populated geography from increasingly sophisticated rockets in the hands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, courtesy of Iran. Hezbollah too, courtesy of the same source, along with weapons from Syria, poses a like threat to Israel. A three-pronged attack, from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas would keep the IDF very busy putting out fires.

Whether the Islamist militias would confine themselves to conventional weapons, leaving the firing of nuclear weapons to Iran is another question. There is the additional question of chemical weapons now in the hands of Hezbollah, courtesy of Syria. The truth of the matter is, Iran is playing a coy and murderously clever game of suspense and terror. Conventional warfare is a thing of the past; withholding nuclear arms may be joining the past.

Labels: Conflict, Defence, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Islamism, Israel, Munitions, Nuclear Technology, Security, Syria, United States

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, March 19, 2013