The Case Against Iran

A commenter on an earlier post questions whether the Mullahs really mean to kill off the Israelis. Here’s the evidence.

1. The Mullahs treat 34 million Iranians as subhuman

That’s Iranian women – mothers, wives, sisters and daughters – who they execute for “Crimes Against Chastity”. This documentary is a dramatized account of the Mullahs’ hanging of a kid for allegedly having sex prior to marriage.

Several Iranians interviewed thought the hanging wrong because the girl was framed and at 16 should not have been executed.

Apparently the Mullahs don’t execute people aged under 18, but in this case the 52 year old who’d abused the girl, and the judge who tried the case both lied about her age. The program ends with a declaration of progress – two girls, one aged 13 and one 17 just had had their death sentences commuted – to life imprisonment!

Of course the age of the victim is irrelevant – the execution of any person (they hang homosexuals too) for exercising a sexual choice is a crime against humanity. It’s particularly heinous because it’s an attack by the physically stronger men on the women that bear and raise their children.

If the Mullahs can do this, they’ll use nukes as soon as they have them.

2. Iranian males are desensitized to brutality

Under the Mullahs, all executions are conducted in town squares using a crane to hang the victim in front of a large audience.

This method of execution is horrible.

Instead of a fall through a trapdoor and immediate death by broken neck, the victim slowly strangles – lighter people take much longer than heavier. Their hands and feet are tied, so they’ll wriggle and twist in a desperate but futile attempt to avoid asphyxiation. They can’t cry out because they can’t breath. After their airway is fully crushed, they’ll take about 5 minutes to die. Sometime during this process they’ll lose control of their bowels and bladders.

While all this is going on, the crane operator swings the jib of his crane, so all of the audience get good views of the agonized, defiled, dripping, struggling, dying victim.

This is desensitization:

…a method to reduce or eliminate an organism’s negative reaction to a substance or stimulus.

The Iranian spectators are being conditioned to disregard the most basic human instincts: pity, empathy, and protection of the weak. So conditioned, they’ll cheer the slaughter of every Israeli man, woman and child.

3. The Mullahs have said they’ll destroy Israel

The Mullahs are much clearer about their plan to kill Jews than Hitler was before WW2 – here’s his most explicit speech from January 30th, 1939:

“Europe cannot find peace until the Jewish question has been solved…

In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet and have usually been ridiculed for it. … Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshivization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”

Note his threat is conditional (“if the…Jewish financiers”) and passive (“the result will be”). In spite of that qualified & passive threat he went on to kill 6 million Jews

By contrast, the Iranian leadership has said plainly that Iran intends to wipe Israel off the map, and is busily acquiring the means to do so.

These three reasons are why the IDF will attack Iran, and why the US is honor bound to help – not just as an ally but as the last, best hope for humanity.

UPDATE Sept 1: Fixed typos and gave up on Blogger’s image posting.

All The President’s Betrayers

The President delegates – a very effective style that Reagan used. But it only works if the manager has a keen sense of the moral qualities of his subordinates, and emerging detail of the Wilson/Plame affair shows the President trusting flawed people. He may still be doing that.

Here’s the latest story (my ellipsis) on who blew the cover of CIA desk-jockey Plame – I’d caution it isn’t confirmed:

…the Bush official who first disclosed Ms. Plame’s identity was none other than former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.According to a new book …Mr. Armitage was Mr. Novak’s primary source for his now famous column of July 14, 2003, that first publicly revealed Ms. Plame’s CIA pedigree.

In other words, the leaker wasn’t Karl Rove or Scooter Libby or anyone else in the White House who has been accused of running a conspiracy against Ms. Plame as revenge for her husband Joe Wilson’s false accusations against the White House’s case for war with Iraq.

Mr. Armitage…was part of Colin Powell’s team at State and well known as an internal Administration opponent of the “neo-cons” who supported the ouster of Saddam Hussein. The book alleges that Mr. Armitage knew as early as October 2003 that he was Mr. Novak’s prime source, yet he kept quiet about it even as his colleagues in the Administration were dragged through years of criminal investigation and media accusations as the possible leaker.

Mr. Armitage never did tell the White House or his boss, the President, that he was the leaker. Instead, in October 2003 he told Mr. Powell, who told the State Department general counsel, who in turn told the Justice Department but gave the White House Counsel only the sketchiest overview of what he’d learned and didn’t mention Mr. Armitage’s name. So while Mr. Fitzgerald (the Special Prosecutor) presumably knew when he began his probe two months later that Mr. Armitage was Mr. Novak’s source, the President himself was apparently kept in the dark…

At a minimum, there appears to be a serious question of disloyalty here. By keeping silent, Messrs. Powell and Armitage let the President take political heat for the case, while also letting Mr. Rove, Mr. Libby and other White House officials twist in the wind for more than two years. We also know that it was the folks in Mr. Powell’s shop–including his former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson and intelligence officer Carl Ford Jr.–who did so much to trash John Bolton’s nomination to be Ambassador to the U.N. in 2005.

If this is true, Powell is a dishonest and disloyal creature – and since leaving the administration he’s confirmed that:

In 35 years of service as a soldier, Colin Powell earned a reputation as the quintessential disciplined warrior. As secretary of state in President Bush’s first term, Powell was widely seen as a disciplined, moderate — and loyal — voice for the administration. Now out of government service, Powell is airing openly his disappointments and frustration on everything from the invasion of Iraq to the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

I’d never have trusted Powell – his speech, phrasing, and body language are way too controlled and yet he presents himself as a simple soldier.

And I have the same feelings of instinctive distrust towards Powell’s successor, Ms Rice.

The New Israel

As Israelis come to terms with the reality that Iran and the Palestinians seek their complete destruction, their nation will change dramatically. This post suggests how, and a subsequent post suggests how the new nation will defeat its 8 major enemies.

Israelis are now seeking new leadership to defeat the existential threat. The IDF is using its occupation of Southern Lebanon (granted by the incompetent UN) to deconstruct Hizbollah’s defenses and weapons, and to design and test the tactics, weapons and training needed to clean it out.

Less obvious changes are happening.

A Move To Offense

Faced with extinction, with no reliable allies (if the Dems get control), with a tiny land area, and all diplomatic options played out, Israel must take the fight to the enemy.

As in its past wars, it’ll use surprise in timing, weapons and tactics, so expect a period of apparently sincere Israeli diplomacy.

Abandonment of Palestinian Statehood

Expect the West Bank and Gaza to be progressively converted to sealed buffer zones policed by heavily armored internal security troops with their own air assets.

Dirty Tricks

Expect lots of these.

Israel has a Corruption Perception Index of 6.3 – better than Italy, but low for a democracy. That’s because it includes 1 million Arabs, who likely share Iraq’s CPI of 2.2. Correcting for that gives a non-Arab Israeli CPI of 7.1 – a high trust culture similar to Spain and Japan.

As the World Cup demonstrated, high trust cultures are at a disadvantage when competing with low trust culture in a rules-based framework – because in low trust societies, cheating is applauded. Pallywood and the recently exposed deceptions of the Western news agencies are classic low trust behavior.

So expect Israel to adopt a low trust war-fighting stance – rigged news photos and reports, deniable military operations, the taking of hostages, and disregard for the Geneva Conventions.

Third Strike

We survived the Cold War because of second strike – both sides were able to destroy their enemy after receiving a full first strike.

But Israel has more than one enemy. It faces not just Iran, but also its nuclear-armed supporter Russia and maybe – based on recent behavior – France. Neither of these is likely to nuke Israel directly, but either could neutralize its second-strike force with satellite tracking, ASW, and hunter-killer subs.

These indirect enemies are much larger and richer than Israel, but both are highly centralized and would suffer enormously from the destruction of their capital cities. The capability to do this to such indirect combatants can be termed third strike.

An Israeli third strike capability could use Jericho 3 IRBMs – each can deliver an 0.4 Megaton warhead on Moscow or Paris.

Weapons Self Sufficiency

It’s possible the US denied Israel weapons and/or spares in the recent conflict to force it to comply with the Franco/US UN resolution – we know for sure that State is investigating Israel’s use of weapons used routinely by US forces.

A nation facing destruction can’t afford this second-guessing, so going forward expect Israel to deploy only weapons it sources itself. That could be a problem when it comes to replace its F15Is and F16Is in 10 years, but by then either Israel or its enemies will be gone.

For this reason, I think it unlikely that Israel will deploy the THEL short-range missile defense. Plus of course it’s defensive.

Energy Independence

So far as I can make out, Israel’s energy comes from imported coal and oil. Since the coming wars are likely to make oil a scarce commodity and risk the loss of ports, expect a crash program to build nuclear power plants.

Scared Russians

The Russian struggle to protect Iran’s nukes has become desperate.

As previously noted, the US can destroy the Iranian nuclear program with no collateral damage and no risk to American lives with a few dozen Trident missiles tipped with non-nuclear bunker busters.

Building and fitting the warheads will cost under $100 million. Fellow-travelers in Congress have tried to block the work, so it’ll be being run as a Black program.

The Russians are scared (my ellipsis and emphasis):

…in…Fairbanks, Rumsfeld met with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Ivanov. They discussed the situation in the Middle East and in Afghanistan as well as Russian concern about an announced U.S. plan to remove nuclear warheads from some Trident long-range missiles aboard submarines and replace them with conventional warheads for potential use on short notice against terrorist targets.

“I would like to stress this point: These are preliminary (U.S.) plans and for sure these plans raise Russian concern,” Ivanov said during a joint news conference with Rumsfeld… “There can be different solutions” to the problem, such as using cruise missiles in that role, he added.

I bet that made SecDef chortle – Russia wants the US only to use weapons they can shoot down! The Tor M1 system Ivanov is installing in Iran right now has this capability (my emphasis):

Kill probabilities for later versions are quoted as:
0.92-0.95 against aircraft
0.80-0.96 against helicopters
0.60-0.90 against cruise missiles (with an effective range of around…3 miles
0.70-0.90 against precision munitions (LGBs, glide bombs, etc.)
0.90 against UAVs

I hope the Tridents are ready soon – if the Dems control congress after November, the Israelis will have to do the job themselves. With nukes.

Sharia Law

On August 19, Muslims marched from from London’s Edgware Road station, where one year earlier their co-religionists committed mass murder. The marchers demanded sharia law, and now a brave woman tells us exactly what that is.

This story is via LGF, and involves two sources that I’d not trust to tell the time – the BBC and Guardian – proving that flowers can grow in ordure.

The woman producer of a BBC documentary on the Mullah’s killing of a kid tells how she traveled to Iran and collected video and interviews. She risked the torture, rape and murder Iranian cops inflict on western women.

Her story is here, and includes these details of sharia law:

Under sharia law, the age of criminal responsibility
for a girl is nine (for boys it is 15). A girl of nine can be tried and sentenced in the same way as a man of 40.

According to sharia law, execution for sex outside marriage should be by stoning, but shortly after the revolution, the Iranian authorities took to hanging people from cranes no matter what the crime.

In Britain, the standard of proof needed for conviction is “beyond reasonable doubt”. In sharia law it is “the knowledge of the judge”.

Blair’s government has refused to criminalize the organization that demands this barbarism, so its supporters can march through London at their pleasure. But hopefully I’ll encounter them on my next visit.

The Eight Enemies Of Israel

Israelis are realists, and will act on a rational calculation of those seeking their nation’s destruction. Here’s my guess of their conclusions – tomorrow I’ll suggest how it may destroy or undermine these enemies.

This list is ranked by the level of the threat to Israel’s existence, with the most serious first.

Enemy 1: Oil

Without the billions of dollars oil brings into the treasuries of Israel’s enemies, they wouldn’t be able to build nukes, buy fancy weapons, or sustain significant populations.

Enemy 2: Russia

Without Russia, Israel would be safe. Russia (and its Soviet predecessor) has armed Israel’s enemies since the 1970s, and supplied them with intelligence and satellite intell since 1973. It’s said to have nukes targeting Israel.

It supplied Iran, Syria and Hizbollah with an enormous modern arsenal, including its best anti-tank missiles.

Russia is blocking UN sanctions to stop the Mullahs building their bomb, and defending the bomb manufacturing facilities with state-of-the-art air defenses, which may be good enough to take down Israel’s second-strike cruse missiles.

Enemy 3: Iran

Most would put Iran top of this list, but without oil dollars and Russian weapons Iran would be just another MidEast dump.

Enemy 4: Syria

Syria is the enemy next door, armed to the teeth with Russian weapons paid for by Iranian oil dollars. It’s the master of Hizbollah, providing it with all of its weapons and logistics, plus support bases outside of Lebanon.

Syria has three brigades of surface-to-surface missiles, capable of hitting any target in Israel and likely tipped with highly toxic Sarin, VX gas, mustard gas, anthrax, botulinum toxin, and Ricin. It’s said to have agreed to hide Iranian nuclear materials in the (unlikely) event of UN sanctions.

Enemy 5: The Western MSM

The Western MSM distorts its news coverage to limit Israel’s ability to defend itself. The MSM uses selective reporting, forgery, staging and simple dishonesty. A few thousand individuals, some local Muslims but most based in Western cities – notably London, Paris and New York – are responsible for the distortion. Their most recent success was to shut down Israel’s campaign in Lebanon.

Enemy 6: The UN

In all of Israel’s wars, the UN forced it to cease operations before its forces had won decisive victories, so guaranteeing future wars. UN “peacekeepers” stepped out the way when Israel’s enemies were ready to mount invasions and were complicit in terror attacks on Israel. In the Lebanese conflict, the UN published daily details of Israeli troop movements – but not those of Hizbollah.

Enemy 7: The US State Department and British Foreign Office

Both institutions are “Arabist”, and in the recent conflict supplied state-of-the-art equipment to Hizbollah, and investigated Israel’s’ use of cluster bombs. Politicians notionally control both organizations, but this provides a humorous primer on how state employees control their political masters.

Enemy 8: Pakistan

The head of Pakistan’s nuke program gave the Mullahs the means to wipe out Israel. The Pakistani government did not sanction him, and is probably providing technical support for the Iranian centrifuge program.

The Brit Media, Victory, and Defeat

This is not the Brit Media’s finest hour – it’s crowing, incorrectly, that Israel just lost a war and hasn’t noticed a defeat of the British Army.

Here’s the start of the Brit defeat:

23 August. The first British camp to be handed to the Iraqis was looted almost bare within days of the Army’s departure. Most items that could be removed were taken, including air conditioning units, water filtration systems, chairs, bedding and kitchen utensils.

The transfer last month was widely heralded as a signal that Iraq would soon be ready to run itself.

When the commander of British forces in south-east Iraq, Brig James Everard, discussed the matter with the province’s governor he was told that the camp had “largely gone”.

British officers privately say they blame the governor for much of the looting and believe some of the air conditioning units are now in his private office.

Rather than shelling the crap out of this governor’s “private office”, the Brits kept running (my emphasis):

26 August. Thousands of jubilant Iraqis looted the British military base in Amarah yesterday, only a day after the Army pulled out of the camp. Everything from doors and window frames to corrugated roofing and metal pipes was pillaged from Camp Abu Naji, previously Britain’s only permanent base in Maysan province.

Hundreds gathered around the local offices of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shia cleric whose followers had fired 281 mortar rounds and rockets at the camp, to offer their congratulations. A loudspeaker repeatedly broadcast the triumphant message: “This is the first Iraqi city that has kicked out the occupiers.”

A memorial to the 22 British soldiers killed in Maysan since the invasion of March 2003 had already been removed and is to be re-erected at the British military camp in Basra airport.

This is not to mock the brave men who fought and the 22 who died to free these wretches, but to note that leaving the enemy in possession of the battlefield is termed “defeat” and so their sacrifices were for nothing. So it’s urgent the Brits learn what went wrong and fix it.

But rather than report this disaster, the London Times indulged in this gloating fantasy:

Israeli army morale shattered

The Israeli public are struggling to accept that the country’s security might now depend on whether a French-led United Nations peacekeeping force proves able to disarm Hezbollah.

The Times makes much of the public infighting going on in Israel. But the reporters are presumably kids who don’t know Israelis always have brutal self-examinations after their wars. In 1973 these led to Golda Meir’s resignation, and in 1982 400,000 Israelis rallied to protest the war. That’s what makes the IDF so effective. Unlike the Brits, Israelis know public institutions decay over time, and their weaknesses are only revealed in the pitiless light of the battlefield.

Plus, the Israelis didn’t lose – after killing 25% of Hizbollah’s battlefield strength they stopped fighting because a UN resolution told them to.

And The Times missed Annan’s confirmation that UN forces – French led or otherwise – won’t disarm Hizbollah.

If it’s capable of building a better fact base, The London Times should examine the real disaster that’s happened to its own nation’s army.

Stopping Israel Buying US Weapons

Strangely, the State Department is working to minimize US leverage on Israel.

State is investigating Israel for using US-supplied weapons in combat:

The State Department is investigating whether Israel misused US-made cluster bombs in civilian areas of Lebanon.

The United Nations said unexploded cluster bombs, which are anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area litter bombed-out homes, gardens and highways in south Lebanon.

“We are definitely looking into these allegations, and we’ll see where they lead,” State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said Friday. The inquiry will determine whether the munitions were used, and if so how, Gallegos said.

Israel said it was forced to hit civilian targets in Lebanon because Hezbollah fighters were using villages as a base for rocket-launchers aimed toward Israel.

The State Department has adopted two nonsensical positions. The first is to ignore Hizbollah, which uses the Muslim tactic of concealing itself among civilians. Does State really expect users of US weapons to sit back under massive rocket attack?

The second is that the US routinely uses cluster bombs itself – in Kosovo and most recently in Afghanistan – so why is Israel special?

All weapons procurement agencies – including the DoD – are reluctant to use foreign suppliers because they might cut off supplies in the middle of a war – as Belgium did to the Brits in the Gulf War. They only use foreigners when they can’t build the system locally and if the supplier is highly trusted.

Israel’s Rafael is capable of building any modern munition, so Israel will now switch to domestic production.

So no more plane loads of weapons will be needed in the next war, and the US leverage on Israel will be zero. That’s probably a good thing if Hillary is in the White House, but I doubt it’s the result State wants.

Deal Breaker

A deal is a deal – break one part, and you break the whole. The UN thinks it can renege on its part of the Lebanese ceasefire while holding Israel to its part. But it actually leaves Israel free to do what it wants and, to avoid future disappointment, Olmert should gently point this out.

Here’s the essential part of the UN resolution that led Israel to stop chewing up Hizbollah (my emphasis):

Calls for Israel and Lebanon to support a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution based on the following principles and elements:

— full respect for the Blue Line (Israeli border) by both parties,

— security arrangements to prevent the resumption of hostilities, including the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL as authorized in paragraph 11, deployed in this area,

— full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of July 27, 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state…

But now, here’s AP, Voice Of The UN (my emphasis):

But 13 days after Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire, questions remained about how to enforce the vague truce and prevent the area from exploding again. It was unclear how the United Nations would meet Israel’s demand to prevent Hezbollah from rearming.

As we can see, it’s not Israel’s demand, but the Security Council’s – AP wants to paint Hizbollah’s disarmament as a new Israeli condition, rather than the core of the deal. It’s shilling for this man:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan stressed Friday it was not the peacekeepers’ task to strip the guerrillas of their weapons, saying that was an issue for Lebanon’s government and “cannot be done by force.””The troops are not going there to disarm Hezbollah. Let’s be clear about that,” he said.

So if the Lebanese Army doesn’t disarm Hizbollah – which it can’t – the UN Resolution falls.

Fools and rogues commonly try to break their parts of deals, and I’ve found the only remedy is to formally record the deal as broken.

Olmert should warn the world that failure to disarm Hizbollah is a deal breaker.

Israelis: Better Slaves Than Dead?

In deciding whether to fight, Israelis have to determine their likely fate if their nation is “wiped off the map”. Based on historical precedent, they’re better off fighting to the last man, woman and child.

Iran and Hizbollah are committed to destroy Israel, but to avoid that fate, Israel may have to kill hundreds of millions of Muslim men, women, and kids. So how bad would it be for Israelis if their state was absorbed into a Caliphate?

Scenario

About 6.4 million people live in Israel, and of these 16% are Muslims. So the remaining 84% would be at risk under Muslim occupation – that’s about 5.4 million.

An Iranian/Syrian attack would likely start with salvos of rockets delivering nuclear, biological & chemical (NBC) warheads. They’d might use Russian equipment to jam the Israeli missile defense system, or just sheer volume to overwhelm the finite number of Israeli BMD interceptors. (For this to work , a tacit ally of Iran or Syria – Russia or even France – would have to neutralize Israel’s second strike capability).

Then, as in all previous wars, Muslim armies would invade Israel from neighboring territories.

Initial Casualties

Iranians would use small warheads on West Jerusalem and its suburbs, to avoid damage to the Muslim centers. But they’d use the biggest they had on Tel Aviv and Haifa, plus all military and industrial targets. About 700,000 people live in the 2 cities, and adding in infrastructure and military targets gets the exposed population to about 1.5 million. The death rate would depend on the weapon types – I’m assuming 50%, giving 750,000 deaths in this first strike.

Land/Air Battle

Then Muslim armies would attack the shocked and disorganized IDF across the Lebanese, Syrian, and maybe Jordanian and Egyptian frontiers. I’m guessing the IDF would have started with 500,000 troops but been cut back by the NBC attack to 300,000.

Israeli culture is based on a refusal to ever again walk to gas chambers without a fight, so I’d expect these forces to fight to the end, like the kids in the Warsaw Uprising. The last army that did that was the Japanese – they shot their wounded and committed suicide to avoid capture. So I’d expect the same % of captives as the Japanese had on Iwo Jima – 5% – leaving 285,000 IDF dead. But these survivors would soon be dead too, given the Islamic practice of decapitating captives. That’s 300,000 more dead.

Initial Occupation

At the point of its defeat, 1.05 million Israelis would be dead, and (using a 4 to 1 wounded to dead ratio) every one of the 4.35 million survivors would have burns from nukes, infections, or chemical poisoning.

With its infrastructure destroyed, including medical and evac capabilities, I’d expect 25% of these survivors – say 1.05 million – to die during the first week of occupation. That brings the total to this point that’s 2.1 million dead and 3.3 million wounded.

Evacuation

At this point, there’d be international pressure to evacuate survivors. But with infrastructure destroyed or contaminated, that would be very difficult. And in the light of the grudging evacuation of Jews from Europe before WW2, I guess that the UK and US would take at most 200,000. That leaves 3.1 million survivors in the new Palestine.

Resettlement

We can guess the fate of these survivors from the last time Muslims abused a subject minority – the Armenian Genocide committed by Turkey between 1914 and 1923:

While there is no clear consensus as to how many Armenians lost their lives during what is called the Armenian genocide and what followed, there is general agreement among Western scholars…that over a million Armenians may have perished between 1914 to 1923. The recent tendency seems to be, either presenting 1.2 million as a figure or even 1.5 million…

That’s from a population of about 2 million Armenians, giving a death rate at the 1.5 million estimate of 75%.

The Turks used low tech methods for the killings – long marches, starvation, mass executions, brutal rapes, and insanitary concentration camps. The victorious Muslims would surely do the same, since they believe their own refugee camps were imposed on them by the Israelis.

Killing 75% of the 3.1 million survivors brings the total Israeli deaths to 4.4 million, and leaves 800,000 non-Arab ex-Israelis in the new Palestine.

This Palestinian society would be technologically weak, so competent Jews would be an asset. However generations of indoctrination of Arab kids to kill Jews wouldn’t vanish immediately, so I’d expect pogroms to cut the number of survivors by at least half.

Bottom line, 400,000 Jews would survive in Palestine, 200,000 overseas, and almost 5 million would be dead. Judaism might survive in the US and UK, but without its holy places.

Israel will kill off the entire neighborhood to avoid such a second holocaust.