Iran, not Israel, faces an existential threat

[buckskin scout]

Iran, not Israel, faces an existential threat, according to a top US analyst who is considered one of the world’s leading scholars on the Iranian nuclear issue.

In a research paper published last week, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said that, in preparation for a nuclear Iran, Israel has been working in recent years to extend the range of its missiles, and that it now poses a real threat to all of the Islamic Republic’s major population centers.

http://www.timesofis...tential-threat/

[Ashotep]

I hope Israel has better since than to try.

I wish nuclear weapons the the technology to make them would disappear.

[buckskin scout]

I hope Israel has better since than to try.

I wish nuclear weapons the the technology to make them would disappear.

I do too on both accounts. But Israel is notorious for provocations and no doubt this "rumour of Iranian aggression" is yet another such propagandist ploy.

Someday, Israel may poke the wrong caged tiger some day. And perhaps that caged tiger will be the US and its support.

[Dark_Grey]

Is it wrong that when I read the article all I saw was "blah, blah, blah, paid for with US tax dollars blah, blah, blah"?

We are sending them way too much cash...

[buckskin scout]

Is it wrong that when I read the article all I saw was "blah, blah, blah, paid for with US tax dollars blah, blah, blah"?

We are sending them way too much cash...

They receive 3 billion a year from the United States, 8 million per a day.

[buckskin scout]

@ 3:40 of this video

[Dark_Grey]

They receive 3 billion a year from the United States, 8 million per a day.

Middle of a horrible recession and 8 million dollars per day is going to support Israel's conquest. Just when I thought I'd seen it all, America...

[Coffey]

@ 3:40 of this video

I have to explain this to so many idiots. People never provide evidence of Iran ever saying that. Yet they say they did all the time. Really annoys me.

Edited May 6, 2013 by Coffey

[Ashotep]

They receive 3 billion a year from the United States, 8 million per a day.

That is a ridiculous amount considering our national debt. Are we trying to buy their loyalty. Edited May 6, 2013 by Hilander

[buckskin scout]

I have to explain this to so many idiots. People never provide evidence of Iran ever saying that. Yet they say they did all the time. Really annoys me.

What is even more annoying if for your efforts, you are accused of being a "anti-semite", a kneejerk blanket statement that media cornfed masses will resort to.

[DarkHunter]

3 billion dollars a year, or 8 million a day, or however else you want to put it is basically nothing in terms of government spending. $802 billion spent in medicare and medicaid, $768 billion spent in social security, $670 billion spent in defense, $615 billion spent in discretionary spending, $461 billion spent in other mandatory spending, and $223 billion spent in net interest. In terms of government spending $3 billion is nothing, if you want to cut government spending there are far easier and better things to cut first.

To put this into a bit more perspective Afghanistan gets about $12.9 billion, Israel gets $3 billion, Iraq gets $2.1 billion, Pakistan gets $1.7 billion, Egypt gets about $1.5 billion, Haiti about $1.3 billion, Kenya about $1 billion, Jordan gets $0.85 billion, South Africa gets $0.76 billion Philippines get $0.61 billion and that is just the top 10 countries who get the most aid from the US. Personally I would start cutting the funding to some of the countries that view America in a less favorable light long before cutting the funding to Israel or other friendlier countries if our debt situation is so bad that we can no longer give our current amount of foreign aid.

[Dark_Grey]

To put this into a bit more perspective Afghanistan gets about $12.9 billion, Israel gets $3 billion, Iraq gets $2.1 billion, Pakistan gets $1.7 billion, Egypt gets about $1.5 billion, Haiti about $1.3 billion, Kenya about $1 billion, Jordan gets $0.85 billion, South Africa gets $0.76 billion Philippines get $0.61 billion and that is just the top 10 countries who get the most aid from the US. Personally I would start cutting the funding to some of the countries that view America in a less favorable light long before cutting the funding to Israel or other friendlier countries if our debt situation is so bad that we can no longer give our current amount of foreign aid.

Sources for that info?

[Erikl]

What a laugh. Israel has about 8 million people residing in it, and the majority of them residing a 70km long coastline (roughly the Tel-Aviv and Haifa metropolitan areas). It's entire area, is 22,072 km2.

It would only take 1 nuclear bomb to critically wound it both economically and socially; it would take about 4 nukes to eradicate most of it's population.

Iran's leaders have made statements more than hinting that they acknowledge this fact.

Iran is about 80 million people, that's 10 times bigger, and 1,648,195 km² in area. It's population density is 48/km, compare that to Israel's 359/km². That's almost ten times less densely populated than Israel is.

It would take a huge amount of nuclear weapons to kill the majority of the population of Iran - at least several dozens. It would be virtually impossible to render most of Iran inhabitable unless hundreds of nukes would be fired on it.

Size matters. Considering it's size, in both population and area, Israel theoretically, if it had no meaningful military force, could be occupied within several hours be an invading army, maximum 24 hours. You wouldn't need a large army to accomplish that, also. Just several hundreds of tanks, several tens of airplanes, and perhaps 4-5 warships.

Iran is huge - any conventional assault will have to include thousands of tanks, hundreds of thousands of soldiers, hundreds of airplanes, tens of warships, long lines of supplies and an advanced network of communications. Considering modern Iran's size, it is comparable to historical ancient empires, which took years to occupy. It's as big as most of Western Europe, minus Spain. That took a modern military some two years to occupy (in WW2, occupation of Westeren Europe except the UK took the Germans almost two years).

So Iran is almost immune to conventional military assault, unless attacked by a superpower (US or Russia) and could even sustain a massive nuclear attack.

Israel is obviously not.

This entire thread contradicts basic logic.

[Coffey]

What a laugh. Israel has about 8 million people residing in it, and the majority of them residing a 70km long coastline (roughly the Tel-Aviv and Haifa metropolitan areas). It's entire area, is 22,072 km2.

It would only take 1 nuclear bomb to critically wound it both economically and socially; it would take about 4 nukes to eradicate most of it's population.

Iran's leaders have made statements more than hinting that they acknowledge this fact.

Iran is about 80 million people, that's 10 times bigger, and 1,648,195 km² in area. It's population density is 48/km, compare that to Israel's 359/km². That's almost ten times less densely populated than Israel is.

It would take a huge amount of nuclear weapons to kill the majority of the population of Iran - at least several dozens. It would be virtually impossible to render most of Iran inhabitable unless hundreds of nukes would be fired on it.

Size matters. Considering it's size, in both population and area, Israel theoretically, if it had no meaningful military force, could be occupied within several hours be an invading army, maximum 24 hours. You wouldn't need a large army to accomplish that, also. Just several hundreds of tanks, several tens of airplanes, and perhaps 4-5 warships.

Iran is huge - any conventional assault will have to include thousands of tanks, hundreds of thousands of soldiers, hundreds of airplanes, tens of warships, long lines of supplies and an advanced network of communications. Considering modern Iran's size, it is comparable to historical ancient empires, which took years to occupy. It's as big as most of Western Europe, minus Spain. That took a modern military some two years to occupy (in WW2, occupation of Westeren Europe except the UK took the Germans almost two years).

So Iran is almost immune to conventional military assault, unless attacked by a superpower (US or Russia) and could even sustain a massive nuclear attack.

Israel is obviously not.

This entire thread contradicts basic logic.

1 Nuke would easily wipe out Iran.... The Fallout would do the job. Do you not understand the power of a full scale nuclear strike?!

What is even more annoying if for your efforts, you are accused of being a "anti-semite", a kneejerk blanket statement that media cornfed masses will resort to.

Yeah that does my head in. The only religion to use such a pathetic tactic to shut people up when they criticize it.

[Erikl]

1 Nuke would easily wipe out Iran.... The Fallout would do the job. Do you not understand the power of a full scale nuclear strike?!

Do you? One nuke of about 22 kiloton would hardly destroy more than 4-5 km² . Considering fallout and such, perhaps as much as 20 km² would be directly effected. Iran is more than 1 million km² ! That would mean you'll need hundreds if not thousands of nukes to destroy most of it, unless ofcourse you use apocalyptic mega H-Bombs of about 10 megaton, which then the destruction radius increases to 25 km² and taking into account fallouts, then perhaps as much as 100km². However, I doubt Israel, if it has the nuclear arsenal talked about by all sorts of sources, have such bombs. I doubt anyone besides the US or Russia ever developed such massive bombs, and I doubt that if they did during the hey-days of the Cold War, that they still have them.

How many people would die from one nuke? let's say about half a million. Now, considering Iran has a population of about 80 million people, and Israel has 8 million, which country would be more crippled by just one nuke?

Edited May 6, 2013 by Erikl

[DarkHunter]

Sources for that info?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_aid

I know Wikipedia is not the best or most reliable source of information, but all its numbers can be confirmed by individuality checking each nations aid from the US with a quick Google search, with the exception of Afghanistan which seems to have conflicting back up information and that seems to be mostly from what different people or groups consider aid going to Afghanistan but it seems most websites are putting the yearly amount of aid at $5 billion, with a few going it seems as low as about $2.5 billion and others as high as $12 to $16 billion.

1 Nuke would easily wipe out Iran.... The Fallout would do the job. Do you not understand the power of a full scale nuclear strike?!

If you honestly think 1 nuclear weapon can destroy Iran you are just delusional about how powerful a nuclear weapon is and how they are designed. First the most powerful nuclear weapons only have blast radius of about 10 km, unless thermonuclear weapons are used, but even then the blast radius of the largest thermonuclear weapon ever used was 58 km but due to its size and weight it is not a viable weapon to be used so the blast radius of thermonuclear weapons that are actually viable weapons is about a blast radius of 35 km. So even if Israel would use a thermonuclear device on Iran the amount it would need to destroy Iran is just a ridiculously large amount of thermonuclear weapons.

Second your understanding of fallout from nuclear and thermonuclear devices is just plain wrong. While the first two atomic bombs used where not that clean in terms of fallout each successive generation of nuclear weapons became far cleaner in terms of fallout. They where made to reduce fallout for a very simple reason, the more fallout a nuclear weapon creates, the less powerful the blast of the nuclear device was because that is less of the nuclear material that is radioactive being used to create the blast. With current nuclear weapons even though they do create radioactive fallout the amounts they create are far less then the ones used in WW2. As for thermonuclear weapons they create even less fallout then nuclear weapons because the main fuel for the thermonuclear weapon is not radioactive, actually the only radioactive part of a thermonuclear weapon is the nuclear device that is used to start the fusion process and that only requires a nuclear device about the side of a tactical nuclear weapon so the radioactive fallout they produce is even less then that of current nuclear weapons. The only type of nuclear weapon that produces enough fallout that you seem to be predicting from a nuclear strike is a neutron bomb.

[Coffey]

http://en.wikipedia....tes_foreign_aid

I know Wikipedia is not the best or most reliable source of information, but all its numbers can be confirmed by individuality checking each nations aid from the US with a quick Google search, with the exception of Afghanistan which seems to have conflicting back up information and that seems to be mostly from what different people or groups consider aid going to Afghanistan but it seems most websites are putting the yearly amount of aid at $5 billion, with a few going it seems as low as about $2.5 billion and others as high as $12 to $16 billion.

If you honestly think 1 nuclear weapon can destroy Iran you are just delusional about how powerful a nuclear weapon is and how they are designed. First the most powerful nuclear weapons only have blast radius of about 10 km, unless thermonuclear weapons are used, but even then the blast radius of the largest thermonuclear weapon ever used was 58 km but due to its size and weight it is not a viable weapon to be used so the blast radius of thermonuclear weapons that are actually viable weapons is about a blast radius of 35 km. So even if Israel would use a thermonuclear device on Iran the amount it would need to destroy Iran is just a ridiculously large amount of thermonuclear weapons.

Second your understanding of fallout from nuclear and thermonuclear devices is just plain wrong. While the first two atomic bombs used where not that clean in terms of fallout each successive generation of nuclear weapons became far cleaner in terms of fallout. They where made to reduce fallout for a very simple reason, the more fallout a nuclear weapon creates, the less powerful the blast of the nuclear device was because that is less of the nuclear material that is radioactive being used to create the blast. With current nuclear weapons even though they do create radioactive fallout the amounts they create are far less then the ones used in WW2. As for thermonuclear weapons they create even less fallout then nuclear weapons because the main fuel for the thermonuclear weapon is not radioactive, actually the only radioactive part of a thermonuclear weapon is the nuclear device that is used to start the fusion process and that only requires a nuclear device about the side of a tactical nuclear weapon so the radioactive fallout they produce is even less then that of current nuclear weapons. The only type of nuclear weapon that produces enough fallout that you seem to be predicting from a nuclear strike is a neutron bomb.

I researched what you said and you are right, my bad.

I always thought the bigger the nuke the more fallout. lol

[DarkHunter]

I researched what you said and you are right, my bad.

I always thought the bigger the nuke the more fallout. lol

For some reason a lot of people seem to think that bigger nuclear weapons mean more fallout, unless someone knows a bit about physics it would seem to make sense that a bigger nuclear weapon would create more fallout and it doesn't help how Hollywood uses nuclear weapons either.

From rereading my post it seems that I was a bit more aggressive then what I normally aim for, I think finals week is starting to get to me a bit.

[Coffey]

For some reason a lot of people seem to think that bigger nuclear weapons mean more fallout, unless someone knows a bit about physics it would seem to make sense that a bigger nuclear weapon would create more fallout and it doesn't help how Hollywood uses nuclear weapons either.

From rereading my post it seems that I was a bit more aggressive then what I normally aim for, I think finals week is starting to get to me a bit.

I know a bit about physics, but not that area of physics. Yes Hollywood is famous for doing that with many things. lol

It's cool no harm done. Good luck with your finals.

[Erikl]

Actually, DH was almost right, if I may, I know he was enforcing my argument, but still, thermonuclear bombs, or Hydrogen bombs (H-Bombs), do use radioactive material to accomplish nuclear fusion, and that is tritium, which is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. A thermonuclear bomb fused together deuterium and tritium (both isotopes of hydrogen), using nuclear fission reaction (either split of plutonium or uranium atoms) to reach the needed temperatures to start nuclear fusion reactions. So actually, each thermonuclear bomb, or H-Bomb, include an atomic bomb inside it, as a trigger.

Just a bit more info on my behalf.

[DarkHunter]

I thought the main fuel for thermonuclear weapons was solid lithium deuteride and that tritium was used in the initial nuclear weapon that is used to start the fusion process.

[Erikl]

I thought the main fuel for thermonuclear weapons was solid lithium deuteride and that tritium was used in the initial nuclear weapon that is used to start the fusion process.

Lithium deuteride is used as it is easier to handle and shape than a gas mixture of deuterium and tritium, however, the lithium deuteride itself doesn't undergoes fusion. Instead, when bombarded by neutrons originating from the fission device exploded, it produces tritium, which then undergoes fusion with the deuterium present in the mixture. So still, the thermonuclear fuel is, tritium and deuterium.

[buckskin scout]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnyZUfopJLY

[Yamato]

What a laugh. Israel has about 8 million people residing in it, and the majority of them residing a 70km long coastline (roughly the Tel-Aviv and Haifa metropolitan areas). It's entire area, is 22,072 km2.

Well maybe they shouldn't be living there then. Jews don't need Israel. Jews aren't defined by Israel. Jews aren't confined by Israel. Jews aren't lessened in any way for hating Israel.

Israel apparently needs Jews though, per the Zionist brainwash.

Come to America where fear mongering isn't a daily habit of life. Of course we have the occasional Zionist ranting and raging about all manner of stupid or fake little problems half the world away from their lives and livelihood, but that's America. So good over here, we need to make up our problems over there.