Friday, March 16, 2012

Targeting the Little Satan, or the Great Satan

So Iran is readying a nuclear test, and the entire Middle East is on tender hooks.  Everyone expects Iran to start lobbing nukes at Israel as soon as they roll off the assembly line.

I'm not sure that this makes sense.  After all, Israel is the "Little Satan".  There are other targets in the area that may be more interesting:
(AP) —  Iranian patrol boats and aircraft shadowed a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group as it transited the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday.

The passage ended a Gulf mission that displayed Western naval power amid heightened tensions with Tehran, which has threatened to choke off vital oil shipping lanes.
We are, after all, the Great Satan.  They've attacked us before.  The Revolutionary Guards are staffed with guys who would take a nuke on a one-way mission.  The current Administration is staffed with rookies, and the Iranians might be able to cause them to send two carrier groups.  I'd say "three", but that's just crazy talk.  Wait, what?

The push to get Iran to do something terminally irrational (now that USS Enterprise in its final tour of duty is almost on location just off the side of CVN-70 Lincoln and CVN-72 Vinson in the Arabian Sea, where the US will shortly have not one, not two, but three aircraft carriers) is now in its final stretch. As AP reported earlier, Iran has been now entirely cut off from the global financial system, as that anchor of international financial transactions, SWIFT, has just taken Iran off the grid. This leaves Iran with just three options for international trade: making gold into a fully convertible currency, barter, or exchanging Rials for Renminbi and other local currencies. As a reminder, virtually the entire non-parked naval fleet will be in the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf in the next 4-6 days, where 3 aircraft carriers and one big-deck amphibious warfare ship are just waiting for the order.

Taking out a carrier or two would put a real crimp in any American response to an attack on Israel.  It likely would have a certain popularity in much of the International Community, unafraid of our Apologizer In Chief.

But hey, probably nothing to see here.  I mean, we have all the Right People® in the Oval Office now.  They have a (D) after their name, so everything's fine.  Oh, wait ...

5 comments:

bluesun said...

Well, there goes my happy feeling.

Jake (formerly Riposte3) said...

Ah. This could explain why gas at my usual station just went up $0.05/gal despite the news story yesterday about how prices have peaked and should go down soon. Not that I trusted the MSM anyway.

Joy.

SiGraybeard said...

Like General Jerry Boykin said recently, there's a pretty good chance they already have at least one nuke. Not using it so far is simply getting their ducks in a row.

No sense having a premature detonation, as Jeff Dunham says.

It's not relevant if they made it: they could have gotten one from A.Q. Kahn, the Russkies or Kim Young Il in PRK. They have plenty of money to buy such with.

And if they have one, it could be anywhere. From deep underground in Iran to a tunnel under Sandy Eggo. Just in case the rookies do counter punch in some way.

Anonymous said...

Or hey - while our carrier groups are far off in the straight, would this not be a perfect time to, you know, slip a sub up near our east coast and light off a nuke? Even if they do not have SLICBM capabilities, crisping the sub crew while striking a blow against the Great Satan (TM) might be seen as an acceptable loss, no?

Matthew said...

*tenterhooks

Couldn't resist. =)