reply to post by antar
First strike here in the USA? Wait what? Alright, if I may inject my points of temperance onto this, so as not to go too far in the direction of fear
and misinformation:
Firstly, the only country really openly in opposition to the United States directly right now is Iran. They have absolutely zero capacity to land
anything resembling a missile here in the states. After all you are talking about a country that has tried to pass off the F-5E Tiger II as no less
than three different "cutting edge" fighters in the last few years.
While Iran wants nuclear weapons, and delivery systems they are still years away from that goal. The true danger of Iran comes not from their
technology, but from the staggering number of irregular partisans they can throw at an invading nation. A ground invasion is pretty much out of the
question as it would turn the entire country into a giant Stalingrad-style meat grinder.
However, we have options should we absolutely need to take down Iran, and no they do not include nuclear strike. The militants in power in that
country are not nearly as popular as they want us to believe they are. Mr. Ahmadinejad may not be president after the next election. (Yes by the way,
Iran has those and does abide by them) We simply could engineer his downfall far easier than we could invade the country. Remember also that the
Iranian people are still very much remembering the horrors of war from the Iran-Iraq war 20 years ago. This is not something the average
man-on-the-street in Iran wants to see again.
On top of this, I would highly doubt that Russia will do more than make a lot of noise if push does come to shove against Iran. Russia and Iran are
not formal allies with a mutual defense pact of any kind. Russia is under absolutely no treaty obligation to lift a finger to help Iran at all. On
top of this Putin would have to only be threatened with financial sanctions to retreat into his shell like a Russian nesting doll. The Russian
Federation at this point cannot sustain a war longer than a few months at most. As we learned in Georgia, even their best troops are making do with
patchwork materials and for all of their vaunted battle prowess, their command structure was shown to be a bumbling mixture of Soviet and Western
tactics.
After all of this, while Russia still wishes to be taken seriously as at least a Euro-Asian power, they have become economically dependent upon the
European Union, United States and China. These are the three powers that have shown to have the strongest ties to eachother and the greatest
incentive to keep large-scale war from breaking out.
Finally and most importantly, the Cold War has pounded the lesson into the world at large that nobody will win the next World War. Mutual assured
destruction still applies to the nuclear big boys, and atomic oblivion waits those that would try to bring about limited nuclear strike such as Iran.
In my opinion, Iran and Russia know all of this. They talk big, but notice how they always seem to stop right before they take an action they
couldn't get away with. In the end, all of the players have too much to loose to make a war worthwhile for any of them.
