Iran...again...

[Recoil]

Militarily, yes. I fully agree with moose that in conventional warfare we'd handle them right quick. It's what we would do afterwards that would kill us. This is analogous to both Iraq and Afghanistan, where we rocked worlds in conventional conflict but our failure to learn from our looong history of unconventional conflicts bit us in the ass (again) when the fight turned unconventional. And when the higher-ups forgot why we went there and decided to stick around in the meanwhile...

But again, a military win isn't a complete win.  We can win militarily and still lose.  Look at Vietnam.  Even the Vietnamese officers alive today admit we had them whipped, but they won anyway.  And as social politics undermined the war effort and contributed greatly to our defeat--not to mention sent us into a liberal slide we've never recovered from--so would be the case in a war with Iran.  We could spank their military, rout their government, we'd still lose the war...And the vestigial signs of our former freedom that we have left would be eliminated for "national security" or some such bullshit liberalism.

[Moose]

But again, a military win isn't a complete win.  We can win militarily and still lose.  Look at Vietnam.  Even the Vietnamese officers alive today admit we had them whipped, but they won anyway.  And as social politics undermined the war effort and contributed greatly to our defeat--not to mention sent us into a liberal slide we've never recovered from--so would be the case in a war with Iran.  We could spank their military, rout their government, we'd still lose the war...And the vestigial signs of our former freedom that we have left would be eliminated for "national security" or some such bullshit liberalism.

That's what we're all saying.

[Moose]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIO-4v8qpYc&feature=player_embedded

[Moose]

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Britain_Germany_UAE_airports_refused_fuel_to_Iran_planes_999.html

Airports in Britain, Germany and the United Arab Emirates have refused to refuel Iranian passenger planes since Washington imposed unilateral sanctions on Tehran last week, ISNA news agency said Monday.
IRNA, the official state news agency, said in a separate report that Kuwaiti airports have also turned down fuel for Iranian planes.

"Since last week, after the passing of the unilateral law by America and the sanctions against Iran, airports in England, Germany, the UAE have refused to give fuel to Iranian planes," ISNA quoted Mehdi Aliyari, secretary of the Iranian Airlines Union, as saying.

The decision by the airports in these countries comes at a time when a large number of expatriate Iranians, especially those in Europe, travel to and from Iran for summer holidays.

Aliyari said their refusal has so far impacted Iran Air, the national carrier, and a leading private airline, Mahan Air, as both operate several flights to Europe.

Heshmatollah Falahat-Pisheh, a lawmaker and member of Iranian parliament's committee on foreign policy and national security, warned of retaliatory action by Tehran, especially towards the United Arab Emirates.

"Despite US claims that the sanctions are smart and aimed at preventing nuclear and missile development, we see these sanctions targeting Iran's development ... and seeking to hurt ... Iranians," he told ISNA.

"We should definitely do the same thing to the Emirates, Britain and Germany whose planes need to be refuelled in Iran."

Hitting out at the UAE he said: "UAE's cooperation with US should be noted ... if Iran's development or security are harmed, then no countries in the region can have sustainable security."

A UAE civil aviation spokesman, contacted by AFP, said he "had no information" about the reports that Iranian planes had been refused fuel.

And in Germany, the transport ministry said in a statement that neither US nor United Nations sanctions covered the refuelling of Iranian passenger planes, without a specific reaction to the Iranian reports.

Last Thursday, US President Barack Obama signed into law the toughest ever US sanctions on Iran, which he said would strike at Tehran's capacity to finance its nuclear programme and deepen its isolation.

The measures, on top of new UN and European sanctions, aim to choke off Iran's access to imports of refined petroleum products like gasoline and jet fuel, and to curb its access to the international banking system.

"With these sanctions -- along with others -- we are striking at the heart of the Iranian government's ability to fund and develop its nuclear programmes," Obama said before signing the sanctions into law.

"There should be no doubt: the United States and the international community are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."

World powers led by Washington suspect Tehran is making nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian atomic programme. Iran says its nuclear programme is purely for peaceful purposes.

On June 9, the UN Security Council imposed a fourth set of sanctions against Iran, which was followed by unilateral punitive measures by the European Union and later by the United States.

Iran could lodge a complaint to the United Nations and the International Civil Aviation Organisation over the action of these airports, lawmaker Kazem Jalali was quoted as saying by the English-language Iran News.

On Monday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once again dismissed the sanctions imposed on Iran.

"The sanctions that they have imposed do not strike a blow at Iran ... They have imposed these sanctions to defend themselves and they know they cannot do anything," the hardliner said.

All four sets of UN sanctions have been imposed on Iran under the presidency of Ahmadinejad who has defiantly pursued Tehran's nuclear programme.

[snowy]

Without abandoning A-Stan, Iraq and Pakistan efforts, I don't think we have the financial, mechanical or human resources to fight another war.

I think in a "US Military Pre-9/11" hypothetical war, we'd cream them.

However, we're getting to be a lot like Alexander the Great in terms of over streching our conflicts.

We have lost so many of our troops, and had to release so many to civilian life. Sure, some would answer the call, but I don't know how many would come running to another endless war.

Apart from Iranian tanks and bombs landing off the coast of DC, I'm not sure many vets would be marching down to reenlist with their heads held high.

Perhaps it is my bias, but some of the least patriotic and morally ambigious people I've come across in my life have been vets from the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. And most of them have said they got that way from these two wars.

-snowy

[Recoil]

I agree with your assessment, snowy.  While all of us at work are pleased with the job security, none of us are pleased that we're still in this damned war and we sure don't want a new one.

[Moose]

The gloves are off...
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/07/06/2010-07-06_iran_launches_crackdown_on_western_hairstyles_culture_ministry_bans_mullet_ponyt.html

ETA:
New link posted, I had the wrong link copied.

[snowy]

In a country that is on public record that it has executed girls as young as 16 for Crimes Against Chasity this is news?

-snowy

PS

For some extra fun facts, Amnesty International believes some of the girls were raped by older men and then executed for "disgracing their family's honor." Men in Iran don't have to worry so much about the rape thing, being that a woman's testimony is worth 1/3rd that of a man's in court.

Way to go organized religion, way to go...

[Moose]

In a country that is on public record that it has executed girls as young as 16 for Crimes Against Chasity this is news?

I posted it as a joke, bud. Hence the "gloves are off" comment. But otherwise, I think we're all on the same page here.

Back on topic though; It'll be interesting to see how this new sanction, which is apparantly having a major impact on Iran and its people, comes back around to us

[snowy]

Yeah, sorry.

Those nutjobs hust get my goat some days.

That and I'm having a rough week.

-snowy

[Moose]

Yeah, sorry.

Those nutjobs hust get my goat some days.

That and I'm having a rough week.

-snowy

No problem man. I was just making sure no one assumed I posted that as news.

[Moose]

Oh, hey look what the sanctions did to Iran...

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/smugglers-for-the-state.html

The grizzled Iranian skipper strides barefoot along his wooden ship’s bulwarks, taking inventory of his cargo. There are crates of blankets and canned pineapple slices, Chinese tires, even a stack of water-purification machines waiting to be loaded, all bound for the Iranian port of Bandar Genaveh, roughly 500 miles away near the north end of the Gulf. His dhow is hauling other goods, too, but they’re best kept out of sight, whether they’re taxed or forbidden under Iranian law or banned under U.N. sanctions. The skipper doesn’t worry either way. “We can take almost anything to Iran,” he says with a grin. Cell phones and other electronics are his most profitable contraband these days, he adds. What happens if the Revolutionary Guards catch him? “They charge a ‘fee,’ ” he says—about $3,000 or $4,000—but they won’t confiscate his goods. They just want their cut.

He’s hardly an isolated case: dozens of wooden ships like his are bobbing in Dubai Creek’s waters, just across the Gulf from Iran. Thanks to the dwindling traffic of big container ships from Dubai to the Islamic Republic, business is booming for the Iranian skipper and a whole fleet of smugglers like him—as well as for the group that dominates Iran’s black market: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The latest U.N. sanctions were designed to punish the Revolutionary Guards for running Tehran’s covert nuclear program. But the trouble with sanctions is that they squeeze out legitimate businesses and leave the field wide open for the IRGC, which has spent decades mastering the art of sanctions-busting. “You’re using pinpoint sanctions against the very entity that’s best positioned to evade those sanctions,” says Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. An Iranian businessman in Dubai, asking not to be named because of the subject’s sensitivity, puts it succinctly: “You’re enriching the people the sanctions are trying to target.”

The size of Iran’s smuggling industry has been estimated at $12 billion a year, and the IRGC is believed to control much, if not all, of it. The charge is impossible to confirm, of course, but only the Revolutionary Guards have the resources to run such a massive operation—and the influence to keep it from being shut down. Analysts say the organization has the structure of a mafia network, with dozens of seemingly legitimate front businesses that mask illicit enterprises or serve as money laundries. “[They’re] extremely creative [with] front organizations, which they’ll open and shut regularly,” says Levitt. The IRGC’s business operations began more than 20 years ago, at the end of the Iran-Iraq War. Fearful of potential unrest among newly unemployed young men flooding back from the front lines, then president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani approved a plan for the IRGC to open companies and bid on government contracts.

The IRGC’s involvement in smuggling began about the same time, when Rafsanjani established free-trade areas in Kish and Qeshm, two islands across the Gulf from Dubai. On paper, the islands’ duty-free goods were tightly controlled; to thwart profiteers, a national ID was required for each purchase. But the IRGC gamed the system using a list of its members’ ID numbers to import scarce household appliances and resell them on the black market. The IRGC had its own private jetties, recalls Mohsen Sazegara, one of the group’s founders, who now lives in exile in Virginia: “I saw the Qeshm one personally. The Customs officer wouldn’t dare go near them. All the years [when] importing household goods—like radios, TVs, refrigerators—was prohibited, the shops in [Tehran’s] Jomhouri Street were stocked full. [Shop owners] would say that travelers had brought the items in from duty-free, but in reality the Revolutionary Guards were bringing it all in from Qeshm.”

Traffic only expanded from there. In 2002 Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karrubi revealed the existence of illegal ports in southern Iran. One of his aides later estimated that more than half the country’s black-market trade passedthrough some 60 “invisible jetties,” as they came to be known. He also claimed that 25 gates at Tehran’s airport were handled by the Guards, outside of Customs’ control. “They have their hands in everything,” says Sazegara. “There were Kurds who helped them smuggle things from Iraq. They even used to buy Saddam’s oil during the days of sanctions.” (The New York Times reported last week that tanker trucks are hauling huge quantities of oil into Iran from Iraqi Kurdistan.)

The IRGC’s smuggling infuriates legitimate traders, who say they’re being punished while the sanctions’ real targets easily sidestep the obstacles. “Sanctions have affected us in a profound way,” says shipping-company owner Morteza Masoumzadeh,the deputy president of the Iranian Business Council in Dubai. “In the past two years we’ve lost almost 70 percent of our commercial business.” He estimates that nearly 400 legitimate Iranian businesses have closed down in Dubai since Washington imposed unilateral sanctions in 2007.

German businessman John Schneider-Merck, 70, is likewise frustrated. He’s done business in Iran for 30 years, and his company still makes upward of $20 million a year there, but he fears it may not last much longer. One of his regular exports to Iran was a synthetic rubber O-ring used in Mercedes and Volvo cars. But it could also be used in military rockets so now it’s listed as a dual-use item, and the German government demands an end-user certificate for every one he sells. “How can I ask some bazaari in Tehran for an end-user certificate?” he asks. “Even toilet paper can be classified as dual-use if it’s headed for the Army.”

That’s an exaggeration,but not by much. And as Schneider-Merck points out, shady IRGC companies can easily fake the paperwork they need. One Iranian in Dubai, who asked for anonymity because he ships Xboxes and other supposedly banned goods to Iran, pulls out a cargo manifest listing a woman in Iran as his official importer. She lives in a small coastal town, he says with a chuckle, “and before her we used another lady for about six months.”

As Western firms pull out in disgust, even the IRGC’s legitimate companies are benefiting. Royal Dutch Shell and Spain’s Repsol withdrew from negotiations to develop the giant South Pars gas field in May, after nearly a decade of talks. The Iranian government then handed $21 billion worth of development contracts to a consortium of local firms, including the Guards’ construction wing.

Iran’s neighbors are worried that the standoff could ultimately spin out of control. In response to the latest U.N. sanctions, which call for the boarding and inspection of ships in the Gulf, the IRGC’s naval chief threatened to block its mouth, the Strait of Hormuz. “The Persian Gulf is the center and the most sensitive place in the world,” Adm. Ali Fadavi warned. “And we can, at any time, and as much as we want, squeeze this strait.” There’s one consolation: that would probably hurt Iran even worse than it would the United States.