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No matter
what anyone says, Iran is not a threat to the U.S. and not even close to
being a threat to the U.S. The forces of the U.S. are so extensive and so overwhelming
on so many dimensions that for Iran to attack the U.S. would be sheer
madness. The Iranians know this. The U.S. knows this. Israel knows this.
We know
for a fact that Iran was unable to defeat Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War
(1980-1988).
Anyone with
access to the internet can easily determine that Iran doesn’t stand a
chance in a war with the U.S. Anyone who says or thinks that Iran is a threat
to the U.S. that should be taken seriously is talking nonsense.
The
Iranians cannot want war and do not want war with the U.S. There are
absolutely no signs that the Iranians want or intend a war against the U.S.
In fact, they have already absorbed a number of aggressive acts from Israel
and the U.S. without any kind of retaliation.
If war
breaks out, it won’t be Iran that has brought it on. It will be the
U.S. The firing of the first shots or the triggering incident in such
hostilities is beside the point.
The
Iranians do not threaten any aggression against the U.S. They are not
building up forces to attack the U.S. This is impossible for them. The
distance between Tehran and New York is 6,121 miles. Tehran has no missiles
that can traverse this distance. Its air force is outmoded. It has no bombers
worthy of the name. It has some F-5 fighter aircraft. Their range is 870
miles. Iran has no fleet of ships that can cross oceans.
Iran has
no reason for attacking the U.S. It has nothing to gain and everything to
lose. It has no national interest at stake.
By the
same token, the U.S. has no justifiable reason for attacking Iran because
Iran is not doing anything that can remotely be construed as aggression
against the U.S. Of course, the U.S. can always create an incident to
convince gullible Americans that the U.S. must attack Iran.
If war
breaks out between Iran and the U.S., the blame will lie squarely on one
side, and that side is the U.S. The U.S. is pressuring and threatening Iran.
The public
statements by the U.S. on Israel do not unambiguously suggest that the U.S.
is reining in Israel as it should. For Obama to say that he wants a
diplomatic solution is all well and good, but the fact is that he is not
acting diplomatically by serving up one threat after another and tightening
the screws on Iran. For Obama to say that he is moving in lockstep with Israel
can be taken to mean that he is in control or that Israel is in control or
that whatever Israel does meets with U.S. approval. Obama’s language is
too ambiguous to be reassuring.
It is not
even clear from Obama’s public statements that he even knows what he
wants from Iran. He has said that he wants their assurance that they will not
build a nuclear weapon. They’ve already said this many times, and the
IAEA inspectors have access to Iran internally in order to verify it.
According to a Wikipedia article, the Supreme Leader of Iran issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons: "Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued a fatwa
saying the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons was forbidden
under Islam. The fatwa was cited in an official statement by the Iranian
government at an August 2005 meeting of the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) in Vienna."
The U.S.
has a trumped up reason to attack Iran, which is that Iran might
develop and produce a nuclear weapon at some point in the future. Even if it
did, it still would not be a threat to the U.S. because the U.S. can
retaliate with such overwhelming force. The U.S. has 10,600 nuclear warheads
and bombs, with 7,982 deployed and 2,700 stockpiled. See here.
The U.S.
Air Force operates 5,573 aircraft. A list of active U.S. Navy vessels takes up many pages. There are 285 ship battle forces. Further details are available here. The annual military budget of the U.S. is 100
times that of Iran. I have not taken the time to get the most accurate and up
to date numbers that I could.
Any
realistic comparison between Iran and the U.S. forces is going to reveal that
Iran’s conventional armed forces would be utterly destroyed by the U.S.
forces in a matter of days, weeks, or a few months. The notion of a fair
fight would have to be extinguished from our vocabulary in such a match up.
If the U.S. attacks Iran for any reason whatever, including the pretense that
Iran has started a war against the U.S., it will be murder, pure and simple.
The power of the U.S. is so overwhelming compared to Iran that Iran can be
reduced to rubble without Iran doing any significant damage to the U.S.
forces who might attack her.
Every
statement that Iran makes about the use of force is a statement about
retaliation against aggression from the U.S. Their threats are statements
about how they might defend themselves. If one compares the strength and
military experience of the two sides, it is crystal clear that Iran’s
threats lack credibility. Whatever harms she might impose are minuscule
compared to what the U.S. will do to Iran in a military campaign.
All the talk
from those who keep harping on the "military option" or keeping all
"options" on the table, which includes making war against Iran, is
cruel and heartless talk. It is cold and hateful talk. It disguises the
brutality of a U.S. attack. It makes it sound as if the U.S. is being
reasonable and that it is being forced into exercising an option against its
will. The reality is that the U.S. is applying all the force to Iran and
already punishing her.
The
"military option" is aggression against a people that has done
nothing to America and shown no intention to begin aggressing against
America. It is the same as the aggression against Iraq in 2003. It is the
same as Germany’s aggression against Poland in 1939.
Whoever in
the U.S. government may decide to exercise the "military option"
against Iran will be a war criminal, just as surely as George Bush, Dick
Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are war criminals. (This, by the way, does not
mean that I wish to see them executed or even imprisoned. But I would like to
see them tried and convicted. I’d like to see them disgraced. I’d
like to see them lose their pensions and perquisites. I’d like to see
what they did aired in public.) As for Obama, his impeachment should be on
the table because of a number of his actions, including the assassination of
Anwar al-Awlaki and the bombing of Libya. Should Obama bomb Iran, then he
will have cemented his disgrace in U.S. history.
What is
this country that is being talked about when the "military option"
is being mentioned as a serious option? It is easy to find photos of Iran and
its people, such as here. Here are some other views of Iran: They might help
to counteract the abstract nature of the "military option" and the
murder that it contemplates.
Michael S. Rozeff
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