Known Knowns About Threat From Iran's Nuclear Enrichment and The Feasability of Attacking the Iranian Facilities

Lets make a two lists of our known knowns

Pro attack as promoted by mainstream press

1. Iran knows how to enrich uranium to a low level Low Enriched Uranium (LEU)

2. Iran has missiles that can deliver a payload a moderate distance

3. Iran is now known to have data that could help them make a nuclear payload for those weapons

4. Iran has enough low-grade enriched uranium to make a weapon.  (Revealed months ago by IAEA sources)

5. Iran had a faulty election, one can even say a cooked election where 40 million votes were 'counted' in two hours

6, Iran could build secret facility

7. Middle Eastern Allies (especially Saudi Arabia) secretly want us to attack Iran.   Really? Just like they wanted us to attack Iraq?  The best outcome in Iraq was always to turn the country over to strong Iranian Shiite allies, and Saudi Arabia was just jumping around holding it's crotch for us to do that, we were told in the run up to the invasion.  You would have thought that Americans would have seen through that claim easily.  But maybe this time it's true.

8.  Iran seeking nuclear weapons is spurring a Middle Eastern nuclear arms race.

For putting the brakes on any attack on Iran:

1. Iran could not make its Low Enrich Uranium (LEU) into Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) without throwing out the IAEA inspectors (who would be able to identify the further enrichment) and working for a year on that enrichment.   You could ask yourself, if the US and Israel wouldn't be able to get an aerial attack done during that time-frame, what good are they as world powers.

2. Defense and intelligence sources assessing the idea of such an aerial attack on Iran believe the most likely end would be a collapse of society in the Keystone Middle Eastern nation, necessitating a full scale invasion of the country for regime change.  Some sources say that regime change would cost a quarter of a million (250,000) military lives from the invading parties.  Expect at least as many civilian deaths in the nation of Iran as in Iraq is my guess on that count. 

3. Hidden nuclear facilities?  We just found one under a mountain!  They can't hide them.

4. Iran has already agreed to send LEU outside their borders for further enrichment they need for isotopes, etc.

5. Iran has already agreed to having inspectors monitor the newly discovered facility.

6. David Albright has been thoroughly discredited by at least one colleague with serious creds who actually did what he claims with the UN weapons inspection teams in Iraq.  Albright is used by the New York Times because he will spout what the neocons want him to spout.  Even mentioning Albright's name usually signals that an article is just a little more that speculative on Iran and it's capabilities and intentions.

7. Yes, it was a bad election.  We don't invade nations just for bad elections or even for coups as we have seen in Honduras, recently.  We apparently do invade nations for oil and for Israel which is the biggest state recipient  of the benefits of our invasion and occupation of Iraq, though they sent no troops, for the operation that helped bring our nation to the brink of insolvency.  The only terrorism that Saddam can be shown to have promoted was by sending money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers who struck back because of the occupation and the theft of their land by Israel.

8. Even Foreign Policy admits a nuclear attack on Israel by Iran would kill many Palestinians and Arabs, with whom most Iranians are at least allied by faith.

9. Even more importantly, Iran knows that bombing Israel would engender a counter nuclear attack that would end the lives of it's leaders and a large portion of it's population which would actually be sent back to the iron age at the least.   It's inconceivable that Iran has any intention of using a nuclear weapon if they make it.  More likely they want deterrence power against military or other threats from Israel or conventional or nuclear threats from other parts of the world. 

10. Iran is spurring a Middle East nuclear arms race?   Huh?  Pro-Israel people can say that with a straight face???? The uncontrolled and unacknowledged nuclear weapons the Jewish state has were the starting shot for that contest.  The tensions ratcheted up by the destruction of the Iraq counterpoint to Iran's Shia regime were a further spur. And then there's Pakistan.  Where do we stop invading?

We put the above lists from an earlier post here.    We felt for some people having the list alone would make a better way for them to examine it.

tags: iran  nuclear threat  israel  military attack  nuclear enrichment  leu  heu  known knowns  arial  

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