The Iran Nuclear Issue: Where will it lead?

Ok, I want to create this thread so we can have a chat about the Iranian nuclear issue.

No doubt you are all aware of what is happening with this dilemma and no doubt you may all be sick to death of hearing about it!

But I am creating this thread and I am putting all media and news reports, predictions aside for a moment, because it is clear we can't really rely on them to tell us anything worthwhile.

Media has made predictions of an Israeli military strike since 2005 at least 3 or 4 times for every year, obviously all of them bunk claims and reports.

So forget them for the time being. I wanted to talk about this issue purely from a first glance perspective, as if this is the first time we have even heard about it, pushing the last 6 years of saber rattling, war threats and propaganda poison out of our minds.

What do we see? Well, I can tell you what I see, and this is what I wanted to talk about

The Iranian Nuclear issue, and where it is leading to?:

It is blatantly obvious diplomatic efforts to curb the Iranians uranium enrichment have failed, despite China recently calling for more time on the issue and the time for sanctions is not yet.

Well, the Iranians have proved year in year out that ceasing their enrichment simply is NEVER going to happen. World powers can whinge and whine, talk and negotiate for years to come... Their enrichment will never cease. It is their right and they are rightly sticking by it.

And that is an open and shut case.

So where does that leave us? World powers are now really beginning to try and push for hard "crippling sanctions" against Iran. That is now happening.
Will sanctions work? Will they be so effective as to cripple the regime?

Probably not. China will pretty much veto and sanctions with their trade.

I only see two paths that this issue is leading too.

PATH 1: Iran continues to enrich uranium, sanctions fail, and the world and particularly Israel will have to give up and learn to live with a nuclear Iran.

(Put your % chance of that happening)

PATH 2: Iran continue to enrich uranium, diplomatic efforts fail, sanctions fail, Israel launches a massive military campaign on Iran.

I do not believe a revolution will occur in Iran that will be so effective as to topple the regime, it is possible of course but I do not believe it will happen.

So what time frame do you expect to see? How much longer will this issue drag out? another 6 years? 5 years? 1 year? next week?

What's going to occur? Will the world give up and simply live with and accept a nuclear Iran, or will there be a massive war over all this? And when do you expect to see it come to a head?

I apologize this was a bit of a ranting post, but I see this conflict coming. It doesn't matter when it's coming, it is just simply coming.

What do you all think about this?





[edit on 21-1-2010 by Nomad451]

reply to post by Nomad451


It actually wasn't so much a ranting thread opening.

I see a lot of what happens concerning Iran , by whats happening in the US

political arena. Obama just recieved a Gut punch from Mass. , I think he's

on a downward spiral , and he's not going to do too much now that could

backfire on him again. Obama is like all politicans, he likes being the King,

and he's gonna want to be king after 2112. Expect more speeches and

more sanctions, but US troops will not be in conflict with Iran.

Erudite and well thought-out conversation starter. Nice.

China won't allow sanctions. Their economy depends on Iran too much, and I think they're also realising that a Middle East dominated by friendly Iran would be preferable to them than a Middle East dominated by the US. The same may go for Russia when push comes to shove.

Will Israel launch a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities? I don't know. Ultimately Israel will do what Israel feels it needs to do to protect itself, as with Iran - with or without help from the West.

The best hope for us all is that the Iranian regime - which I believe is fundamentally rational, but will use dirty tricks when it deems appropriate - will open itself up to internal criticism and self analysis as a response to ongoing protests. That may lead to a more conciliatory tone towards Israel, the USA and GB, which I believe will pay dividends.

But that doesn't seem to be the way things are going, unfortunately.

The good news is that according to most estimates Iran is a good 5 years away from nuclear capability anyway, so I don't suppose anything will happen in the next 12 months.

We as Americans are spread pretty thin and things are already tense. I have no doubt if one single person just pushes us a little bit to much we as a nation are just going to explode at them. Were becoming fed up with everything and other people see that maybe were not as strong as they thought we were but were getting sick and tired of other people tip towing over the lines to see how far they can get with us, were down right now and with every passing day becoming more annoyed...they need to quit, nothing good can come of this.....

Aside from the fact that Iran has been "a year away from nukes" for the past 10 years or so, either way Iran is going to get attacked, It's not about Iran having nukes and it is. And what I mean by that is it's about Iran "playing the game" and they won't, it just so happens they have nuke facilities and these give the West an excuse to do what they want to do regardless of Iran's capabilities. The west wants control of the entire region for some reason, money and power for the elites plays a major role in it but something tells me there is something that goes deeper than either of those two reasons.

The west wants and will get control of that region one way or another and sadly the weak minded religious extremists from all sides are just pawns being distracted in a faux holy war for something much bigger than any of us will probably ever realize in time to do anything to stop or try to stop it.

reply to post by C0le


It seems to me that the West already has pretty tight control over the Middle East, all of the following governments are pro-American and have very tight economic and military ties to the USA:

Saudi Arabia
Jordan
Egypt
Iraq
UAE
Israel
Kuwait

This is a result of WWII and the outcome of the Cold War.

Note as well that most of the above have a disgruntled minorities that would like to see their governments fall, which is something I believe Iran will seek to turn in their favour. That said, they have learnt over the last 30 years that extremists are difficult to keep under control so it's a dangerous tactic.

This is the status-quo that the USA and pro-USA governments want to maintain and that Iran is challenging. Changing it is in a lot of peoples' interests, as mentioned above watch China and Russia in all this.

The answer is both simple and complicated it seems. Iran will follow North Koreas lead in how to get what they want (a bomb) while stalling the international community with counter demands and appearing (from time to time) to give a little. Sanctions have not worked on NK and will not work with Iran. Russia and China will see to it that real sanctions are not put in place so forget about that.

America is really spread thin and cannot do anything by force with Iran for a long time. The real interesting question here is Israel. Rumored to be on the verge of an attack for years but nothing from them. America visits every few months with Israel and keeps them at bay with aid etc...

Would Israel actually take on Iran directly is the real question. I think Israel will not overtly attack Iran instead concentrate on killing their scientists and ruining equipment with Americas help. It will dealy but not get rid of the issue. Israel talks tough to Iran and Iran talks tough to Israel but Iran will get their bomb and the world will live with it just like we live with North Korea. Iran is crumbling from within (with some help from Israel/America no doubt) but they will continue their march to the bomb and unless the people actually do revolt in mass there is nothing we can do about it.

reply to post by C0le


Precisely my thoughts. In 2005, Iran "Would be able to build the bomb by the end of 2006".

In 2006... "Iran will have a nuclear capability by 2007, 2008"

In 2008... "Iran is now one year away from building the bomb"

In 2009... "Iran has been working on a nuclear trigger, and is a year away from bomb building capabilities"

2010.... Present propaganda.

So indeed, behind closed doors it isn't even an issue of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon... Not really.

They know Iran aren't exactly pursuing a nuclear bomb in a hurry, if indeed that is what they are doing.

It is about the fact Iran has their enrichment facilities, (which they are only enriching uranium to a low grade,) and they will continually use this fact to paint Iran as a big scary evil nuclear armed bogey man that could bring NUCLEAR TERROR to us all...

And I believe they will ramp it all up, spin it, inject it with the same lies and propaganda that they did with Saddam in Iraq and eventually attack.

USA wants control of the middle east for some reason indeed. The obvious reason would be oil I'm guessing. It certainly isn't about "terrorists" and "nuclear armed terrorist".. even though there are indeed small terror factions out there. But they aren't the issue for TPTB, terrorists are a smoke screen for their real agenda in the Middle-East.