Iran, is there anything they can do to provoke us?

Question

Iran has been at war with the West for decades: Western-owned oil fields nationalized, the hostage crisis, Beirut, threatening nukes + missiles, a fatwa on Salman Rushdie, threatening Israel, training Iraqis & providing IEDs to them to kill my countrymen, repeatedly [for decades] screaming "death to America, death to Israel"... and more.

Today, they've snagged English marines that will no doubt be "negotiated" [translate appeased] away.

Iran is something of a super-sized penitentiary. They have power, power of the fist & boot, to the extent that we knuckle under to their bombastic foreign policy by rewarding them with alms. John Bolton, the last of Bush's admin worth his salt, has it right: regime change is a required step to diminish this Iranian threat.

Unfortunately, Bush has burned out his "democracy" message on a bunch of primitive hoodlums, where he should have merely put down the threat that was Sadam & co.

We are in a hell of a mess these days; it requires more than retooling tactics. It requires razing the dead-end altruistic / pragmatist [non-]guide-post philosophy that has been steering us off of a very dark & steep cliff. We need an egoist foreign policy if we are to survive. http://www.aynrandbookstore2.com/prodinfo.asp?number=HS25B

Answer 1

I think that Iran's leaders have gone just about as far as they can. Iran is in a heap of trouble.....

Iran is dealing with two issues. First, Iran has captured 15 British sailors. Second, Iran has refused to cooperate with the U.N. regarding cessation of uranium enrichment.

Military confrontation may be on the horizon.
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=3961
In addition to the British naval vessels at the Diego Garcia atoll in the Indian ocean, there is a multi-national force in the Persian Gulf. The British HMS Cornwall aircraft carrier strike group, the American aircraft carrier strike group Bremerton-based aircraft carrier CVN-74 John C. Stennis, the American aircraft carrier strike group USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the French nuclear carrier Charles de Gaulle and its task force are all in close appoximation in the Persian Gulf. The USS Nimitz may also be in the Persian Gulf as it was scheduled for its WESTPAC07 deployment to replace the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/navy/batgru-68.htm

More details about military options can be found here:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iran-strikes.htm

Iran has elicited "confessions" from the 15 British sailors they captured and may put them on trial for espionage. The penalty for espionage in Iran is death.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article1563877.ece
“If it is proven that they deliberately entered Iranian territory, they will be charged with espionage. If that is proven, they can expect a very serious penalty since according to Iranian law, espionage is one of the most serious offences.” Espionage carries a death sentence.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6493391.stm
Iran's detention of 15 Royal Navy personnel is "unjustified and wrong", Prime Minister Tony Blair has said. UK officials are waiting to be granted access to the HMS Cornwall staff, who were seized on Friday, and have not been told where the group are held.

"It simply is not true that they went into Iranian territorial waters and I hope the Iranian government understands how fundamental an issue this is for us," Mr Blair said.

"We have certainly sent the message back to them very clearly indeed. They should not be under any doubt at all about how seriously we regard this act, which is unjustified and wrong."

On March 23, 2007, U.S. and British officials said a boarding party from the frigate HMS Cornwall was seized about during a routine inspection of a merchant ship inside Iraqi territorial waters near the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway.

The seizure of two Royal Navy inflatable boats took place just outside the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, a 125-mile channel dividing Iraq from Iran. Its name means Arab Coastline in Arabic, and Iranians call it Arvandrud - Persian for Arvand River. A 1975 treaty recognized the middle of the waterway as the border.

Iranians send arms to Iraqi extremists, including sophisticated roadside bombs. This week, two commanders of an Iraqi Shiite militia told The Associated Press in Baghdad that hundreds of Iraqi Shiites had crossed into Iran for training by the elite Quds force, a branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guard thought to have trained Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

Regarding enrichment of uranium, Iranian President Mahmaoud Ahmadinejad abruptly cancelled his appearance before the U.N. security council and in his stead, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki Iran spoke. He indicated that Iran was willing to continue negotiations but without the precondition that uranium enrichment must be halted.

Mottaki said, "the world has two options to proceed on the nuclear issue: continued negotiations or confrontation. Choosing the path of confrontation ... will have its own consequences. "
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070325/D8O3E7J00.html

The U.N. security council unanimously voted to expand sanctions on March 24, 2007.

The new resolution 1747 calls on Iran to comply fully with all previous UN resolutions and join negotiations to reach agreement so as to restore international confidence in the peaceful nature of its nuclear program. Full transparency and cooperation with the IAEA are required. Suspension of Iran’s banned nuclear activities will elicit the parallel suspension of sanctions. The package of incentives offered Tehran last year for its cooperation remains on the table.

The full text of the draft of resolution 1747 appears at this website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6455853.stm

Iranians send arms to Iraqi extremists, including sophisticated roadside bombs. This week, two commanders of an Iraqi Shiite militia told The Associated Press in Baghdad that hundreds of Iraqi Shiites had crossed into Iran for training by the elite Quds force, a branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guard thought to have trained Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

Answer 2

You're right. The government of Iran is gaining power in the region, and it is hostile to democracy and Western interests. But what would be your solution? War on Iran? More deaths, more hatred, more victories for Islamic fundamentalism? And who started the whole mess by overthrowing the democratically elected Mossadeq and replacing him with a fanatical dictator? Could it be Britain and America?

As you sow, so shall you reap.

Answer 3

bob thinks its time to abandon all that iraq and all that terrorist chasing and oil getting bullshit or what ever they doing and just ******* bang iraq. iran spits in the un's face and acts like they gonna do something, bob dont knwo why britian didnt attack them already, they captured them sailors. bob says its time to just let the bombs and the soldiers drop.

Answer 4

Thanks to the Iranian president, the whole giving of grace and diplomacy thing is out the door now it's time for action. He wants for his people to be killed for no reason just like Saddam.

Answer 5

Well if Bush had not screwed up so bad in Iraq, we could justify it. (Nuking them)

Answer 6

We sure are in a pickle