It seems to me that we're perhaps in a 'chicken an egg' situation now, or between a rock and a hard place.

We're all pretty much agreed that sanctions won't work with Iran

We're all pretty much agreed that military action would be incredibly risky and may no longer be viable

We're all pretty much agreed that the time when we could have used 'light' military action, in the form or bomber runs against the then less well protected nuclear sites and less well organized military passed us by in 2003 - when we expended our blood and treasure in Iraq instead

We’re all in complete agreement that a ground invasion is, was and always has been out of the question, and that when we refer to ‘War with Iran’ we mean at the most air-power and direct, precision raids/sabotage on the nuclear sites and high value targets only by Special Forces

We're all pretty much in agreement that the window of opportunity has gone and the Iranians can and will ignore us, and go on to develop nuclear weapons within a few years

So if we can't apply sanctions and we can no longer use military force, what do you foresee happening? I know I'm playing devils advocate here and people are getting a touch agitated, but really, can anybody see a possible alternative?

Problem: Iran is ignoring is and is definitely developing nuclear weapons

Solution number 1: Targeted sanctions and UN pressure won’t work

Solution number 2: Light precision military action no longer viable

Solution number 3: Heavy and prolonged military action never really was an option – even less so now

Probable outcome 2012: Iran is now a major Nuclear power with superpower ambitions

Solutions, ideas, alternatives anybody…?

Originally Posted by Steven_McLaughlin

Solutions, ideas, alternatives anybody…?

Realise that we (for whatever definition of 'we' you chose) don't actually run the entire world or even have a divine mandate to do so, therefore learn to live with it?

Give them a final warning to stop their weapons programme, if they don't... arrange a tragic "Nuclear accident" in one of their facilities.

Originally Posted by Steven_McLaughlin

It seems to me that we're perhaps in a 'chicken an egg' situation now, or between a rock and a hard place.

PLease explain why we would be justified in waging an unprovoked war on a sovereign nation that has not broken any international laws and is entitled to have a nuclear programme.

Originally Posted by Oil_Slick

Originally Posted by Steven_McLaughlin

It seems to me that we're perhaps in a 'chicken an egg' situation now, or between a rock and a hard place.

PLease explain why we would be justified in waging an unprovoked war on a sovereign nation that has not broken any international laws and is entitled to have a nuclear programme.

Because they speak funny??

Sanctions would work if companies agreed to them, but there is too much business for the petroleum companies and commerce in general to put enough sanctions down against them. If you take away UK / American comapnies ability to trade with Iran you impact on your government revenues received from corporates. Nuking them wont happen - that's WW3 stuff, and as you said they are too bloody big for conventional resources. Just leave the buggers alone and look at ways of circumnavigating the need to use their coutry for trade and then impose sanctions.

If there's going to be a military attack on Iran (which there won't), it'll be in less than twelve months. As soon as they weaponise a tiny amount of uranium, it's going in a briefcase in Tehran, not into a missile. Their insurance policy doesn't deliver itself on the end of a Shahab 3 into Tel Aviv, it's delivered by parcel force to central London/D.C/NY. I'd say that the West had already missed this boat, if they ever wanted to get on it. In a few years Iran will be a better friend of the west, and in a couple of decades this will all be ancient history. It doesn't do to have pariah states with nukes.

If there's any nation that we want to cultivate in the ME, it's Iran. Huge oil wealth, geopolitical victor of the war in Iraq and actually an educated middle class that is be sympathetic to Western values.

If we were to invade, we would be destroyed. They've had 6 years of watching Iraq and trying out new equipment through proxies in the South

My own feeling is that the Israelis will do something in a year or two, either with or without American backing. Bearing in mind their position and history, I just can’t see them allowing the weapons program to go ahead; the nuclear power program, yes, but the weapons one, no. I think they’ll just feel so incredibly menaced by it that they’ll do something, although what that ‘something’ is, God only knows. Of course, they’ll see bomber runs on strategic sites as a first priority, but in my opinion that’s just wishful thinking on their part; the time for that has passed and the sites are, according to all credible sources, in deep, super-hardened underground cavities – any bombs, even ‘daisy cutters’, will just skim the surface and bounce harmlessly off.

So where does that leave the whole damn mess?

Well I think that on this one we’re going to have to learn to live with a nuclear-armed Iran and sharpen up our diplomacy skills. I know it’s a bitter pill to swallow, but as other posters have pointed out – sometimes you just have to accept the world the way it is and it’d be a mistake to do otherwise. We’ve got no divine right to be the only ones with nuclear arms, and who knows, perhaps it’ll balance things out a little more in the world and will lead to us taking a fresh look at Palestine, Gaza etc. – because then we’d have to.

I think perhaps our best and most sensible hope is that the Iranian leadership themselves, once they get this power and accept its responsibilities, will rapidly realize just how much they’d have to lose by using it for war purposes, or to even hint at menacing Israel with it. Nobody would win in a huge conventional or an asymmetrical terrorist war in the Middle East, and in a nuclear confrontation we’d all lose – even the ‘winners’ and survivors, of whom there’d be a few. The Iranian youth have got to realize this too, so let’s hope that some of those protesters and less hard-line demonstrators find their way into political office one day, and then we can sit down and talk business with them – not threaten war.

I don’t believe we should have gone to war with Iraq and I feel the same way about Afghanistan – but to attack Iran would be merely to compound those two errors and open the floodgates to hell in our own backyards.

But as one of you chaps above points out: who the hell would ever listen to a bunch of old arrsers like us?

I believe and fear that their will be war with Iran.

Originally Posted by Steven_McLaughlin

Wibble

In 1999, Iran nearly invaded Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban, until the UN intervened.

When 9/11 happened, "In Iran, vast crowds turned out on the streets and held candlelit vigils for the victims. Sixty-thousand spectators respected a minute's silence at Tehran's football stadium."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/5377914.stm

When we decided to attack the Taliban, the Northern Alliance- who had been fighting them throughout the 1990s- was armed, paid and trained by Iran. The Iranians even had liaison officers there at the fall of Kabul. After we took Kabul, Iran and the US worked together- quietly- to establish an Afghan government and secure Afghanistan's western borders.

Pray do tell how an attack on Iran two years later- when Iran was offering wide-ranging talks towards a normalisation of relations, which was rejected by Bush- could have been justified on the world stage.