Originally posted by sithsaber408
Answering the three questions at the end of your post:

1.) Pretty big. Enough that they are on record saying that they want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Next step:get nukes. Seems clear cut to me.

I doubt it. If only rhetoric and grandstanding had a history of actual follow through. Iran is far from a nice place, but its leaders are not crazy maniacs who would invite certain world retaliation by "getting nukes and then vaping Israel." If I am not mistaken, such rhetoric occasionally cropped up back in the cold war era, which Communists going on about wiping out the scourge of Capitalism. And they had Nukes. Yet Capitalism is still here, and most Communism is gone, in part due to the cost of trying to maintain nuclear arsenals. And Iran is no Soviet Union.

And hell, N. Korea has actually got the the stage of detonating a nuclear device - if anything it shows the massive, massive gap between "having weapon grade material" and the actual ability to use it effectively as a weapon. Iran has a long way to go before they get quality nuclear weapons (considering they are still at the "we are only developing this for power purposes"😉

Likewise the area occupied by Israel is of religious significance to Islam as a whole - I question how willing apparently religious people would be to unleash relatively uncontrollable destructive forces upon such land.

Also, they fund and supply insurgents in Iraq and Hezzbolah terrorists. Nukes for them are a no-no.

Far more possible - but remember. Iraq is fairly close to Iranian borders. I question how great the desire will be for Iran to risk having dirty bombs exploding on its doorstep. And remember - Iran has aspirations for Iraq, or so we are told. It is a big step going from conventional weapons and bombs in the hands of insurgents in order for them to create chaos and weaken Coalition/Iraqi control to giving them something that will have pretty profound and long lasting effects. And are you saying you still see the insurgency going by the time Iran has enough weapons grade material (in theory, since we don't have any proof they are making it beyond "this is Iran - of course they are trying to build nukes"😉 to be handing it out like candy to Iraqi rebels? Hmmm - if that is the case it would seem Bush's troop surge will have to have failed in the near future.

And what about Russia - after all - haven't they actually admitted in the past they have lost nuclear material? Isn't their security lax? Isn't there a recognised large criminal sector that has links to arms dealing? To be honest it seems to me the threat of nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists is far more dangerous from existing sources in Russia then some unknown future with a nuclear Iran becoming the nuclear sugar daddy for terrorists the world over.

War Plan for Dummies

Iran Fires Nukes at Israel

Israel Fires back and calls Its allies

The U.S and Great Britain fire at Iran

Iran calls its Allies

Its Allies shoot at Great Britain and U.S.A

We all die

So... when did Iran gain Allies capable of shooting at the US and Great Britain? Syria, is there something you aren't telling us?

And how many Nukes are you figuring Iran into actually possessing here? It is still years (I'd say at least five, but more officials sources seem to indicate longer) before Iran would be anywhere near having a reliable, conventional nuclear weapon anywhere near the quality of those held by other nations. And then - how many Nukes can Iran actually support?

Ye but in this scenario Russia's been contaminated with radioactive material by the attacks on Iran whats it got to lose.

Well - that is just odd. "In this scenario" - is the world meant to base its policy on this scenario where for some strange reason Russia is contaminated by attacks on Iran and it says "hey, while attacking Iran they contaminated us! Let's assure our destruction by spraying off nukes willy nilly, in the process killing everyone else as well!"

At which point the reanimated corpse of Stalin comes in and says "That is a great plan comrade! It is a good thing we have let our nuclear stockpile deteriorate so significantly!"

Iran would be muslim martyr's in their own eye's.You get rewards for that in heaven.

It is a shame not all Muslims think like that. Not most in fact.

But when Iran start fuelling Israel gets information from sleeper agents (Israel is liked amongst the West so it would be warned if Iran was fuelling by most Western countires).This information encourages Israel to starty fuelling its missiles, When Iran fires they will take time to reach Israel.At about a 1/4 of the way on Irans missiles journey Israel will fire along with most of the West.This could casue fallout headed to Russia who with nothing to lose fire at the West. No-one survives.

I think you have been reading to much Cold War fiction.

Originally posted by Bardock42
That was serious though.

I don't think Iran would be much of a thread for us (Germany...actually also the US)

We shouldn't just randomly bomb a country because we fear they might randomly bomb a country...not seeing the hypocrisy? No? Only one here?

And Iran should have every ****ing right to use nuclear energy by peaceful means.

I agree with that. As far as I am concerned "preemptive war" has been shown pretty much for what it is over the last couple of years.

Funny, back around the beginning of Iraq that was a really popular phrase "preemptive strikes" amongst the pro-war lobby. It seems to have mostly died out now though.