An interesting thing happened on the way to the forum.
I was doing some late night reading and came across this article from the Times of London stating, in ominous words, that Iran was moving missiles into launch position and targeting Israel’s Dimona power plant.
I bookmarked the link in del.icio.us and went on my way. Soon, Friend Feed picked up my bookmark, as it picks up most of my social content, and published it to my community of followers. This was the ensuing conversation.
It’s interesting to see the wide array of perspectives reflected on this story. Some think that there will be a nuclear showdown between the U.S. and Iran, but wish it was several years away. Others think that it’s likely “something” will happen, including the potential capturing of Osama bin Laden somewhere in the October timeframe. Still others wished to debate the merits of a McCain or Obama administration in dealing with this kind of threat.
It’s good that conversation can actually transpire civilly. Certainly, red flags have been raised by this article including the point that the Times of London is owned by News Corp, the same company that inflicted Fox News on the American viewing public. In addition, there doesn’t seem to be any outside evidence verifying the claim of an imminent nuclear showdown.
Chloe, can you hack into the CIA’s satellite network?
This news isn’t very surprising since Iran has been a sworn enemy of Israel for decades. What really bothers me is that after the billions of dollars wasted and hundreds of thousands of lives lost, we have installed a government in Iraq that has much closer ties to Iran than it had before our invasion. We are literally helping our enemy fight its battles against us and our ally.
It’s not surprising after Israel’s recent show of force that Iran should respond with a similar move.
Israel’s policy of strategic ambiguity about its nuclear weapons is only sane diplomacy, but we know, and the Iranians know, that Israel will not forbear to make a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear program.
I would be interested to hear from the Jewish population of Iran– largest in the Middle East outside of Israel.
Do they regard Israel as their true home? Some of the Iranian Jews have emigrated there and won high office in government.
Israel’s silence and Syria’s reticence about exactly what was bombed when Israel attacked facilities in the eastern Syria desert September 6, 2007 led me to conclude that Syria may indeed have had something to hide, especially when it proceeded to dismantle the site.
Whether or not the attack was premature, Israel demonstrated “its determination to snuff out even a nascent nuclear project in a neighboring state.”
I can easily imagine the U.S. using Israel as a proxy to accomplish its ends in Iran, as it did during the hostage crisis which led to the Iran-Contra affair, when Israel actually shipped weapons to a moderate faction in Iran.