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Showdown with Iran

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Not including its allies. Does Iran have anything capable of attacking the US state-side?

Do they have ICBMs or anything the like that could truly threaten small-town USA?
Depends on whether you count Israel as part of the good ol' USA ;) But Serious answer, not as far as I know. Even if they did, rocket defense shields would pluck them out of the air in no time. Iran's defense in case of war would be bombing US military stationed in the middle east and Israel.
 
Depends on whether you count Israel as part of the good ol' USA ;) But Serious answer, not as far as I know. Even if they did, rocket defense shields would pluck them out of the air in no time. Iran's defense in case of war would be bombing US military stationed in the middle east and Israel.

that's not near the mall is it?

then idc, ya let's go to war
 
that's not near the mall is it?

then idc, ya let's go to war

Kind of the point I'm getting at. Even in 2011, the U.S.A. proper is still isolated from a lot of the shit going on.

Why should Jack and Bertha Smalltown care about whats going on half-way across the globe when their life in backwoods Appalachia won't be directly effected by it.
 

shuri

Banned
Arent those missiles shields completely useless? I remember reading something a couple of years back they worked like 1/5 times..
 

liger05

Member
Iran should look to get Nukes. Israel has them and for that reason alone if I was the leader of Iran I would be looking to get them.
 

[Nintex]

Member
Arent those missiles shields completely useless? I remember reading something a couple of years back they worked like 1/5 times..

The missile shield works as in, they'll fire a missile and it'll be shot down somewhere in Eastern - Southern Europe/Russia instead of Western - Northern Europe/UK/US.
 
ahmadinejad.jpg
 

alphaNoid

Banned
If we go to war with Iran, The United States would simply implode. We WILL revolt, there's no fucking way, there's just no fucking way.

No we won't, everyone will keep going to work and living first world conditions. The US is nowhere remotely, point percentage near any kind of revolt or something
KuGsj.gif


GAF really shows its age in some of these threads.

Iran should look to get Nukes. Israel has them and for that reason alone if I was the leader of Iran I would be looking to get them.
Stupidest thing I've read on the internet all year.
 
Arent those missiles shields completely useless? I remember reading something a couple of years back they worked like 1/5 times..

Depends what sort of ICBM is used. Missile Shield could probably hit cruise missiles like SCUD rockets, but they're useless against modern ICBMs. Iran doesn't have any access to ICBMs that could hit Europe, anyway. It's the story for the media, in reality the ABM is aiming Russia.
 
Fuck sanctions. When the hell have they ever hurt anyone besides the general population? It's the best way to collapse the economy, create destitution, and motivate more people to become extreme and radical in their views, as well as to create a deep-set hatred for the US (and rightly so).

How about this- we stop trying to predict what the fuck a country MIGHT do. We've been shit at in the past. Why do we have a right to punish any country we want on the basis of 'pre-emption'? We don't. No, Iraq is not going to nuke tel aviv, so stop using that as a scenario to justify all your bullshit. The country would be flattened the next day, there's no reason to believe thats something they'd want. Think about it for 10 seconds. Also, noone gives a fuck about how some of you are 'uneasy' about Iran, which justifies action in your mind. Man the fuck up, you're not getting nuled anytime soon, and certainly not by Iran, so don't go ahead advocating imposing measures which have massive negative consequences on millions of people to quell your irrational, fantasy fears.
 
If we go to war with Iran, The United States would simply implode. We WILL revolt, there's no fucking way, there's just no fucking way.

Keep dreaming. Who's gonna 'revolt'? There may be mass protests, etc, like the Iraq war (we can see how effective that was) then people will get bored after seeing how useless it is. Meanwhile, you'll get just as many people supporting the war, backed by FoxNews and the GOP, who will keep reminding us that now is not the time, we need to support our troops, and anyone who doesn't is a traitor. Iran has been demonized enough that most people won't loose sleep over it.
 
Keep dreaming. Who's gonna 'revolt'? There may be mass protests, etc, like the Iraq war (we can see how effective that was) then people will get bored after seeing how useless it is. Meanwhile, you'll get just as many people supporting the war, backed by FoxNews and the GOP, who will keep reminding us that now is not the time, we need to support our troops, and anyone who doesn't is a traitor. Iran has been demonized enough that most people won't loose sleep over it.

just out of curiosity, what part of the world do you currently live in?
 

Dyno

Member
Great OP.

Attacking Iran is one of those WWIII scenarios. The entire region will pick their side and get aggressive. China and Russia might be drawn into it if oil is threatened. Given the fragile global economy it's also possible that the conflict could basically bankrupt the world.

For these reasons it probably won't happen but if caution is tossed to the wind the results could very easily become catastrophic.
 
just out of curiosity, what part of the world do you currently live in?

Currently in Canada, but lived in, have residence, and travel often to the US. Dual-citizenship, back and forth a lot. Also lived in the Middle-East and travel often there, which is why I know enough to know the views of that region that most people on this continent have is based on utter ignorance, lack of any understanding of it's complexities, and based on propaganda than anything approaching reality.
 

MikeTyson

Banned
Great OP.

Attacking Iran is one of those WWIII scenarios. The entire region will pick their side and get aggressive. China and Russia might be drawn into it if oil is threatened. Given the fragile global economy it's also possible that the conflict could basically bankrupt the world.

For these reasons it probably won't happen but if caution is tossed to the wind the results could very easily become catastrophic.

Yeah? And Germany will conquer Europe again. Hell they're now, not even raising a gun and staying in their borders with no nukes or insane military bases everywhere.
 

Dyno

Member
Yeah? And Germany will conquer Europe again. Hell they're now, not even raising a gun and staying in their borders with no nukes or insane military bases everywhere.

I don't know how this is relevant to the topic. That said, Germany is running scared as fuck right now. They have lent mad bank to these countries that have no way of paying back. They are overextended and have gone down a road they can't turn back. If the Euro gets downgraded or a country like Italy opts to default then they're gonna get burned nearly as bad as bankrupsy.

Anyway back to Iran.
 

Snaku

Banned
I don't know how this is relevant to the topic. That said, Germany is running scared as fuck right now. They have lent mad bank to these countries that have no way of paying back. They are overextended and have gone down a road they can't turn back. If the Euro gets downgraded or a country like Italy opts to default then they're gonna get burned nearly as bad as bankrupsy.

So they're in the same boat that China's in? Frankly, I'd rather be the debtee in that situation. If said debtor country goes bankrupt, who's to argue that all of their land and resources aren't rightfully the legal property of the debtee? Who needs a World War when you can expand through foreclosure?
 

LordCanti

Member
"June 3, 1989 — Ayatollah Khomeini dies and is replaced by then president Ali Khamenei."

Mind blown. I had no idea these were two different people.

Thanks for the breakdown OP.
 

KingK

Member
i think even the hardest indoctrinated right wingers don't think a war is a good idea, only the big players with something to gain do

That is simply not true. I'm a college student, and a couple weeks ago I argued with about 12 other college students about Iran in one of my classes. I was the only person in the class arguing against war, the rest all seemed eager to blow them up. They are all convinced that Iran is getting nuclear weapons with the explicit purpose of using them on US soil.
 
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1215/Exclusive-Iran-hijacked-US-drone-says-Iranian-engineer/(page)/1
Christian Science Monitor said:
Iran guided the CIA's "lost" stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military, according to an Iranian engineer now working on the captured drone's systems inside Iran.

Iranian electronic warfare specialists were able to cut off communications links of the American bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel, says the engineer, who works for one of many Iranian military and civilian teams currently trying to unravel the drone’s stealth and intelligence secrets, and who could not be named for his safety.


Using knowledge gleaned from previous downed American drones and a technique proudly claimed by Iranian commanders in September, the Iranian specialists then reconfigured the drone's GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in Afghanistan.
"The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the Iranian engineer told the Monitor, giving the most detailed description yet published of Iran's "electronic ambush" of the highly classified US drone. "By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain."

The “spoofing” technique that the Iranians used – which took into account precise landing altitudes, as well as latitudinal and longitudinal data – made the drone “land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center, says the engineer.


The revelations about Iran's apparent electronic prowess come as the US, Israel, and some European nations appear to be engaged in an ever-widening covert war with Iran, which has seen assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, explosions at Iran's missile and industrial facilities, and the Stuxnet computer virus that set back Iran’s nuclear program.

Now this engineer’s account of how Iran took over one of America’s most sophisticated drones suggests Tehran has found a way to hit back. The techniques were developed from reverse-engineering several less sophisticated American drones captured or shot down in recent years, the engineer says, and by taking advantage of weak, easily manipulated GPS signals, which calculate location and speed from multiple satellites.
Western military experts and a number of published papers on GPS spoofing indicate that the scenario described by the Iranian engineer is plausible.

"Even modern combat-grade GPS [is] very susceptible” to manipulation, says former US Navy electronic warfare specialist Robert Densmore, adding that it is “certainly possible” to recalibrate the GPS on a drone so that it flies on a different course. “I wouldn't say it's easy, but the technology is there.”


In 2009, Iran-backed Shiite militants in Iraq were found to have downloaded live, unencrypted video streams from American Predator drones with inexpensive, off-the-shelf software. But Iran’s apparent ability now to actually take control of a drone is far more significant.

Iran asserted its ability to do this in September, as pressure mounted over its nuclear program.

Gen. Moharam Gholizadeh, the deputy for electronic warfare at the air defense headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), described to Fars News how Iran could alter the path of a GPS-guided missile – a tactic more easily applied to a slower-moving drone.

US officials skeptical of Iran’s capabilities blame a malfunction, but so far can't explain how Iran acquired the drone intact. One American analyst ridiculed Iran’s capability, telling Defense News that the loss was “like dropping a Ferrari into an ox-cart technology culture.”

Yet Iran’s claims to the contrary resonate more in light of new details about how it brought down the drone – and other markers that signal growing electronic expertise.

A former senior Iranian official who asked not to be named said: "There are a lot of human resources in Iran.... Iran is not like Pakistan."

“Technologically, our distance from the Americans, the Zionists, and other advanced countries is not so far to make the downing of this plane seem like a dream for us … but it could be amazing for others,” deputy IRGC commander Gen. Hossein Salami said this week.

According to a European intelligence source, Iran shocked Western intelligence agencies in a previously unreported incident that took place sometime in the past two years, when it managed to “blind” a CIA spy satellite by “aiming a laser burst quite accurately.”

More recently, Iran was able to hack Google security certificates, says the engineer. In September, the Google accounts of 300,000 Iranians were made accessible by hackers. The targeted company said "circumstantial evidence" pointed to a "state-driven attack" coming from Iran, meant to snoop on users.

Cracking the protected GPS coordinates on the Sentinel drone was no more difficult, asserts the engineer.

US knew of GPS systems' vulnerability

Use of drones has become more risky as adversaries like Iran hone countermeasures. The US military has reportedly been aware of vulnerabilities with pirating unencrypted drone data streams since the Bosnia campaign in the mid-1990s.

Top US officials said in 2009 that they were working to encrypt all drone data streams in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan – after finding militant laptops loaded with days' worth of data in Iraq – and acknowledged that they were "subject to listening and exploitation."

Perhaps as easily exploited are the GPS navigational systems upon which so much of the modern military depends.

"GPS signals are weak and can be easily outpunched [overridden] by poorly controlled signals from television towers, devices such as laptops and MP3 players, or even mobile satellite services," Andrew Dempster, a professor from the University of New South Wales School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems, told a March conference on GPS vulnerability in Australia.
"This is not only a significant hazard for military, industrial, and civilian transport and communication systems, but criminals have worked out how they can jam GPS," he says.


The US military has sought for years to fortify or find alternatives to the GPS system of satellites, which are used for both military and civilian purposes. In 2003, a “Vulnerability Assessment Team” at Los Alamos National Laboratory published research explaining how weak GPS signals were easily overwhelmed with a stronger local signal.

“A more pernicious attack involves feeding the GPS receiver fake GPS signals so that it believes it is located somewhere in space and time that it is not,” reads the Los Alamos report. “In a sophisticated spoofing attack, the adversary would send a false signal reporting the moving target’s true position and then gradually walk the target to a false position.”

The vulnerability remains unresolved, and a paper presented at a Chicago communications security conference in October laid out parameters for successful spoofing of both civilian and military GPS units to allow a "seamless takeover" of drones or other targets.
To “better cope with hostile electronic attacks,” the US Air Force in late September awarded two $47 million contracts to develop a "navigation warfare" system to replace GPS on aircraft and missiles, according to the Defense Update website.

Official US data on GPS describes "the ongoing GPS modernization program" for the Air Force, which "will enhance the jam resistance of the military GPS service, making it more robust."

Why the drone's underbelly was damaged

Iran's drone-watching project began in 2007, says the Iranian engineer, and then was stepped up and became public in 2009 – the same year that the RQ-170 was first deployed in Afghanistan with what were then state-of-the-art surveillance systems.

In January, Iran said it had shot down two conventional (nonstealth) drones, and in July, Iran showed Russian experts several US drones – including one that had been watching over the underground uranium enrichment facility at Fordo, near the holy city of Qom.

In capturing the stealth drone this month at Kashmar, 140 miles inside northeast Iran, the Islamic Republic appears to have learned from two years of close observation.

Iran displayed the drone on state-run TV last week, with a dent in the left wing and the undercarriage and landing gear hidden by anti-American banners.

The Iranian engineer explains why: "If you look at the location where we made it land and the bird's home base, they both have [almost] the same altitude," says the Iranian engineer. "There was a problem [of a few meters] with the exact altitude so the bird's underbelly was damaged in landing; that's why it was covered in the broadcast footage."

Prior to the disappearance of the stealth drone earlier this month, Iran’s electronic warfare capabilities were largely unknown – and often dismissed.

"We all feel drunk [with happiness] now," says the Iranian engineer. "Have you ever had a new laptop? Imagine that excitement multiplied many-fold." When the Revolutionary Guard first recovered the drone, they were aware it might be rigged to self-destruct, but they "were so excited they could not stay away."

* Scott Peterson, the Monitor's Middle East correspondent, wrote this story with an Iranian journalist who publishes under the pen name Payam Faramarzi and cannot be further identified for security reasons.

Uh, dont underestimate Persians?
 
Before Saddam used the chemical weapons against the Iranians, Iran was going to spread its 'revolution' throughout the middle east.

China and Russia will always put pressure on the West for any kind of fomenting they do.
 
So Michelle Bachmann tells flat out lies about Iran
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW9-RRRD14I
Now imagine if Ron Paul had not been at the debate. An egregious falsehood, with dangerous implications for the parameters of debate on Iran, would have gone totally uncontested and been allowed to stand as fact. That. is. scary.
This is the second time this insane woman has repeated her false claims about Iran threatening to use nukes against the US.
CNN Fact Check said:
The statements:
"We have an IAEA report that just recently came out that said, literally, Iran is within just months of being able to obtain that weapon." -- Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minnesota
"There is no U.N. report that said that. It's totally wrong what you just said. That is not true. They produced the information that led you to believe that, but they have no evidence." -- Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas

]The facts: The IAEA Board of Governors released a 14-page report on November 8 that concluded that it had "serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program. After assessing carefully and critically the extensive information available to it, the agency finds the information to be, overall, credible. The information indicates that Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device. The information also indicates that prior to the end of 2003, these activities took place under a structured program, and that some activities may still be ongoing."
The verdict: False. The IAEA report does not say that Iran is within months of being able to obtain a nuclear weapon. So Bachmann is wrong. But the report does cite "credible" information that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons, so Paul's blanket denial that "they have no evidence" may also be wrong, depending on whether he is referring to evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon or evidence that such a weapon could be ready within months.
 

jaxword

Member
People have such short memories. TEN YEARS AGO, the Bush administration didn't hide their enthusiasm for attacking Iran. Remember the Axis of evil?

This just shows that Obama is just continuing a lot of the policies the Bush administration started.

The cycle never ends.

It never does.

h9UWZ.jpg
 

thefro

Member
People have such short memories. TEN YEARS AGO, the Bush administration didn't hide their enthusiasm for attacking Iran. Remember the Axis of evil?

This just shows that Obama is just continuing a lot of the policies the Bush administration started.

Who says they want to directly attack Iran? The only people who want to bomb them are the Republican presidential candidates (sans Ron Paul).
 

That entire article is based on an Iranian source, sorry if I don't believe everything in it.

It even says that Iran boasted of this in september and you think the US didn't take that into account? And since 2003 they've know about this?

I have no doubt Iran is not pakistain but lets not pretend the US doesn't know that.

I still maintain that something is weird about this whole thing. The US just seems to unconcerned to really think this was any major coup by Iran.


Who says they want to directly attack Iran? The only people who want to bomb them are the Republican presidential candidates (sans Ron Paul).
Anybody who doesn't want Iran to get a nuke and won't say that a military option is off the table. According to them.
 
Just as a side note, (and I plan to edit it) the Reagan administration supplied Saddam Hussein with materials he undoubtedly used to supplement his WMD program, which was being used against Iranians.

THE US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq needed to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.

Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene.

Classified US Defense Department documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas.

The Senate committee's reports on 'US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq', undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis -- the micro-organism that causes anthrax -- were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning.

One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986.

The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US.

The Senate report also makes clear that: 'The United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programs.'

This assistance, according to the report, included 'chemical warfare-agent precursors, chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment'.
(Sunday, September 8, 2002 by the Sunday Herald (Scotland))

I also plan to edit in the following timeline

October, 1983. The Reagan Administration begins secretly allowing Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt to transfer United States weapons, including Howitzers, Huey helicopters, and bombs to Iraq. These shipments violated the Arms Export Control Act.
(Bush's Secret Mission. The New Yorker Magazine. November 2, 1992)

November 1983. George Schultz, the Secretary of State, is given intelligence reports showing that Iraqi troops are daily using chemical weapons against the Iranians.
(Washingtonpost.com. December 30, 2002)

December 20, 1983. Donald Rumsfeld , then a civilian and now Defense Secretary, meets with Saddam Hussein to assure him of US friendship and materials support.

July, 1984. CIA begins giving Iraq intelligence.
(Bob Woodward. CIA Aiding Iraq in Persian Gulf War. Washington Post. 15 December, 1986)

January 14, 1984. State Department memo acknowledges United States shipment of "dual-use" export hardware and technology. Dual use items are civilian items such as heavy trucks, armored ambulances and communications gear as well as industrial technology that can have a military application.

March, 1986. The United States with Great Britain block all Security Council resolutions condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons, and on March 21 the US becomes the only country refusing to sign a Security Council statement condemning Iraq's use of these weapons.
 
Just as a side note, (and I plan to edit it) the Reagan administration supplied Saddam Hussein with materials he undoubtedly used to supplement his WMD program, which was being used against Iranians.


(Sunday, September 8, 2002 by the Sunday Herald (Scotland))

I also plan to edit in the following timeline

And this means what now?
 
You'd prefer this not be mentioned.

No bring up things 20 years ago. I only care about who now is controling US policy . But if were talking about countries interfearing in other countries wars. I'm sure I could find somethings about hezbollah and what kind of support they get.
 
No bring up things 20 years ago. I only care about who now is controling US policy . But if were talking about countries interfearing in other countries wars. I'm sure I could find somethings about hezbollah and what kind of support they get.

well yeah, it's convenient for people like you to throw 60 years of history in the dustbin. Others, like myself, disagree. Anyway, the US penalizing Iran for aiding Hezbollah and Hamas is in the timeline. if you think missiles, IEDs and automatic weapons are the equivalent of anthrax and bubonic plague, that's your business
 
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