First of all, let's call a spade a spade: Iran, a poor country awash in natural gas, never had a legitimate purpose to nuclear technology. Fordow was never meant for "civilian" or "medical" purposes. You don't build a "civilian" facility under a mountain and you don't run a civilian nuclear reactor on HEU which is what the centrifuge cascade at Fordow was designed to produce. If Iran wanted civilian nuclear reactors it could have bought them from the Russians, South Koreans, or Japanese for fraction of what it would have cost them to develop a domestic nuclear industry and they could have bought LEU for less still.

Fordow was always about developing nuclear weapons. Agreed?

An enrichment facility is far more than just centrifuges. There's significant supporting infrastructure. The centrifuges themselves aren't that special. Iran only bought them from Siemens because, at the time, they lacked the domestic production capability (which they have since developed) and it was the easiest/cheapest path forward. If Iran was genuine about halting the development of nuclear weapons they would have decommissioned Fordow. However, they did not. They've kept it open and functional (how are those civilian nuclear reactors coming btw?) and they've done so because they want to maintain what's called "breakout" ability.

Should Iran decide to, they could domestically produce and install the necessary centrifuges in a couple of months and then have sufficient fissile material for their first warhead a month or so thereafter. Destroying Fordow and the surrounding infrastructure means that Iran would have to dig out, build, and equip a new facility (including all the attendant crap besides the centrifuges). I don't care how good their engineers are: digging into a mountain (if they want to go that route again) takes time.

Side note: thanks, Germany, for clearing the sale of those centrifuges in the first place. The BND damn-well knew what those centrifuges were going to be used for but the German government cleared the sale anyways. Nice.

You know, people tend to defend the JCPOA because they see it as an "Obama" policy and thus part of a proxy "Obama vs Trump, Democrat vs Republican" debate. I don't see it that way. I'm not here to piss in Obama's corn flakes or denigrate him in any way (notice this is the first time I've even brought up Obama's name). Was it a good deal? No. We should have demanded Iran decommission Fordow in its entirety (we actually did initially but they adamantly refused) and cease development of long-range missiles. But we didn't. It was a deal made in haste because Obama primarily wanted to focus on domestic issues. It wasn't the first bad deal made in haste and it won't be the last. I don't fault him for it. However that doesn't mean it isn't a mistake that shouldn't be corrected.

Also, let's talk about Iran's missile program: how on earth do you justify that? What is the "peaceful" purpose for them developing missiles specifically designed to hit Israel? How do you justify them actively sending rockets and other munitions to Hamas and quite literally having "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" be mainstream political slogans? How do you justify Iran shipping Scuds into Yemen to be launched at Saudi military and civilian targets?

Wait, you think Iran bought centrifuges from siemens? So you know nothing about what you are talking about. Siemens did not sell Iran centrifuges. You are showing a complete lack of understanding of this topic. You really need to learn more about this.

Sorry, but the centrifuges are the key part of the facility. The none centrifuge aspect has been completely changed due to not being used for Uranium anymore. You have any idea how much you need to change the facility to deal with other compounds instead of UF6? You understand all the piping and seals need to be changed? Basically you are rebuilding basically all the enrichment cascades.

So what are you saying takes decades to rebuild, because you don't believe it to be centrifuges. Are you saying it takes decades to build an underground facility? Why does Iran even need to build it underground. After you bomb Fordow, they could just build one above ground or are you just going to bomb them again? So you are saying we should just keep bombing Iran year after year?

If Fordow was that fucking critical, you should love the JCPOA. It got rid of 12,000 centrifuges and stopped any Uranium enrichment. And had 24/7 monitoring. That stops it just as much as fucking bombs. Sure they could kick out the inspectors and start making weapons, then you can talk about bombing it. But before the do that, why would you bomb it? Seriously, just answer me that question. Why would you bomb it when it is not even processing Uranium?

You're really underestimating a lot of Iran's capabilities. Their air arm isn't as incompetent as you would think. Most of their air force wouldn't pose a great threat if we had a true build up. But they have enough airframes to make two carrier strike groups have issues. The accuracy of their missile boats hasn't never really been a question, it's the fact that they're a swarm. They will make life difficult.

I'm glad you agree that a ground campaign would be folly. The whole thing would be folly.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

GreenPlease just wants a war. They're easy. Simple to win. Israel and SA will be happy. The EU will back it (even if reluctantly). Russia will be happy. China will be seriously economically wounded. Damn. It's a win-win-win-win. You will be damn tired of all the winning from war. Besides, it won't take but a week with all our air power and no one will even be at risk doing it. Fucking warmonger who likely has never put his life on the line in a war.

News update: fog and disquiet continues.

While not really news, the above 30 odd posts on war planning / execution in Iran and the merits and limits of the JCPOA probably exceeds the level of detail of anything presented to either the gang of eight today and quite possibly what the president has received in the WH situation room. As an aside, we should extend an invite for DJT so that he might contribute to the above war debate. Thanks for the professional debate gents. Much appreciated and much informative.

The Wapo did provide reporting on 3 distinct Iranian actions as triggering alarm:
1. threat against US diplomatic facilities in Baghdad and Ibril
2. Iran may be preparing to mount rocket or missile launchers on small ships in the gulf
3. directive from ayatollah to IRGC and reg. military units that we see them as a threat.
(1+2+3) = One big Whoop!

Also the administration is leaking the story line that Trump is pushing back on Bolton's and Pompeo's war drum beating.

We are still at odds with Europe as to threat. Not a peep out of other players, Israel, Russia, Saudi's. No word on tanker saboteurs.

My interpretation to this: No major war with no "months" long build up to execute Greenplease's air war. However, if in the night out in the gulf, there is a misinterpretation of the one side's actions be they hostile, innocent but threatening, defensive or just nothing but stretching sea legs, then the other side will respond in a hostile way and a skirmish and not war will ensue. It will end with DJT charging in on his horse to the rescue with his personal leadership and unique negotiating style. That this is all just war brinkmanship theatrics to force the ayatollah to pick up the phone and call the Donald. The world and all US voters will see his brilliance. The region will return to it's previous unsettled state. The winner in his eyes is him.

But then.... To quote DJT "We'll see." DHS might just have to give those monies back to DOD to fund a new war and don't you know, there goes the wall and the National Emergency prioritizing.

Geographical, I guess. Sparsely populated, vast distances, rivers full of waterfalls and rocks not good for long distance inland navigation maybe? Difficult terrain through jungle and dessert.

The reality of fighting Iran on any level is that two CSGs in the Gulf of Oman wouldn't be enough. We'd had to have had multiple Air Wing deployments to Saudi Arabia as build up for any confrontation unless we wanted to just go Leroy Jenkins. We would also have needed two CSGs in the MED to provide cover for Israel and a lot of extra sorties towards Iran. Then add in a Air Defense Deployments. The Iranian forces are nothing like the Iraqi ones we thumped.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Wow, such glowingly optimistic predictions are what got us bogged down in Iraq. A country orders of magnitude weaker than Iran.

Do you seriously think any conflict with Iran would be contained to "surgical bombing" of various strategic sites? First off, Bolton is on record calling for regime change in Iran. Bombing will not accomplish that. Secondly, Iran would probably respond, arguably rightly so, to any aggression on its territory by launching many scud type missiles against US ally targets in the region. That includes major cities and key oil fields.

This would be a blunder of monstrous proportions. Given Iran's rugged mountainous terrain, military manpower and, considering that bombs killing innocent people in Iran would probably quickly ally them with their fanatical gov't, a ground invasion would inevitably turn into a nightmare guerilla warfare scenario.

I can't believe this is even being considered. What happened to the cooler heads prevailing?

Fighting in/with Iran could run the gamut from a War with many Battles, to a solitary battle which may be a Skirmish to a Raid. Planning, defining objectives, identifying and marshaling forces, establishing timelines, pre-positioning arms and support is vital if we are going for full fledged war. I currently do not think planning efforts are on a Desert Storm level and that we are posturing (token enhancement of forces) only to be effectively reactive if provoked or attacked. Iran may see our effort as provoking a fight and they may be right. I still think other local actors may become the provocateurs.

Hostile actions are seldom clean and as planned, fog envelopes and plan B's often used when the initial plan falls away.

Nah, you're delusional. Wars are easy.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

News Update: Disquiet continues. Fog is lifting, somewhat.

Trump administration policy is maximum pressure on Iran to get a redo on the JCPOA. Recent sanction efforts moving on to include oil and gas and the designation of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Force as terrorist group got Iran's attention. Therein the current 3 specific intelligence alerts and maybe some mine placement by Iran proxies.

Trump and Pompeo have 12 hardball items for the Iranians to sit down and talk about. The Iranians aren't talking. With no clear diplomatic off ramp right now the logical next step in the max pressure policy will be an incident of hostility. Who initiates and who responds is a roll of the dice and may not be easily resolved.

Trump led chaos as regards to foreign policy with the potential for war down the road remains quite disquieting. If a script for hostile actions exists, none of the players are on the same page right now.

Trump is on record for telling his acting SecDef that he doesn't want war. How comforting is that?

Not very comforting at all when Bolton is looking under any rock to find the slightest excuse to go to war.

Exactly you have half the administration walking into a guns of august situation and the other half trying cause a Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Apparently the 'plan' is to send disjointed messages from within the Administration, ignore Congress, have the media discuss it to try to figure out what's going on, and then claim the Fake News is leaving Iran confused. Quite the military strategy!

You might think I was joking if you hadn't seen this morning's Tweet.

Today's news update:

Our FAA, through US diplomats in UAE and Kuwait, posted a warning to all commercial air carriers flying the gulf area that they risk miscalculation or misidentification from Iranian military as well as possible electronic interference. This can be viewed as somewhat rich given that some 30 years ago the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian commercial airliner with 290 people onboard. But then it also could be seen as laudable in that we have learned a lesson and would rather not see it happen again.

Gotta say, your analyis of the role Russia would play is the weakest thing that you have written (which is saying a lot). You are willfully ignoring a plethora of counter-arguments to any every point that you bring up. You emphasize the short-term advantage that Russia might gain from higher oil prices and ignore the massive long-term gain by being Iran's primary ally and the strategic benefits from every country in the world. You ignore the regional blow-back that would happen in a host of countries (conflicts in that area all have territorial and regional conseqences), which would all benefit Russia. Every single point you raise has a bias which can be refuted (Turkey isn't likely to follow suit at all, Russian policy has been to disconnect Turkey from NATO for ~50 years). Down the line you consistently misjudge, overstating threats and underplaying risks in a dozen different ways (on what planet do we realistically let Ukraine and Poland develop nuclear weapons, and the world accedes?). What is your agenda? Why are you so consistent in the relentless bias that you bring to this issue?

News Update:

Not exactly a completely quiet weekend. One missile launched and then landing inside the Baghdad Green Zone within 1 mile of our embassy. No casualties, no serious damage. Probably by one of the Shiite militia.

ExxonMobil begins evacuating employees from Basra fields.

Oh, and a presidential tweet, how sweet. "If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!"

Two cowards (you and Bonespurs) wanting a war, thinking they are easy. Sheer stupidity.

Oil is a global commodity. Drop global suppy, global price increases. Regardless of U.S. production.

Also, the U.S. has always exported oil. And we've always imported oil. You just mean that the exports exceeded the imports. We import and export simultaneously. Due to market demands for various types of oil and efficiencies of transport. And the location of specialized refining equipment.

The U.S. could be "oil independent" in terms of like a war, or a global embargo. But costs would skyrocket in that situation, in the U.S. and outside.

I admit to sharing the stupid gene with Trump. The cowardice trait was better left unspoken and viewed as a personal attack. For the record I think our current path towards Iran is a train wreck waiting to happen and that the train should not have left the station. All war is complex, ugly, violent, never goes as planned, most times avoidable, but sometimes not.

I am encouraged to believe that Trump is all about the bark with little to no appetite for bite. Still, he is erratic and therein concern for continued poor decision making is ever present.

I read GreenPlease like I read Big Kahuna - for entertainment purposes.

Ian Bremmer's take:

iran

tensions continue to escalate between the united states and iran, the most immediately dangerous of potential foreign policy crises globally. and there’s considerable confusion about what the us is actually trying to accomplish. or as trump tweeted (and i think this might be the first time i’ve actually quoted one), “with all the fake and made up news out there, iran can have no idea what is actually going on!” a good time to take a closer look.

the trump administration was reasonably well-aligned in their initial orientation towards iran. nobody was much happy with the existing iran nuclear deal; after all, it was president obama’s deal, so it was automatically bad (a la the transpacific partnership, the paris agreement, etc). plus, trump’s closest allies are the saudis, emiratis and israelis, all of whom consider iran enemy number 1; all were happy to support a harder line trump policy to press iran harder. and beyond that, iran was continuing to cause trouble for the united states in the region. while the obama administration hoped the deal would become a starting point for a rapprochement, the iranians weren’t inclined to oblige them. iran abided by the terms of the deal, but was further developing ballistic missile capacity (in breach of existing united nations security council resolutions) and expanding support for proxies across the region against american allies and interests.

that was the backdrop for president trump’s decision to pull the united states out of the iranian deal, unilaterally. there were some voices of restraint (including secretary of state mike pompeo, who wanted more time to see if he could get the europeans to push harder for a tougher deal). but generally, everyone inside the administration was on board with the decision. the problem was, none of the other signatories supported the move. so the united states reimposed sanctions that had been removed under the deal, forcing other countries to reduce their own trade and investment lest they fall afoul of us measures… but the deal itself held. everyone else maintained their support, including the iranians. iran’s strategy was to wait out trump’s term, in the hope that he’d lose and a new administration would revert to the status quo ante.

which meant that the policy wasn’t working. the trump administration had to lean in harder and make it impossible for the obama deal to stay in place. hence several rounds of tougher sanctions, above and beyond what was in place before the deal was signed (iranian oil export is now down below 500,000 barrels a day; the 2019 iranian budget presumes 1.5m); early us naval deployments to the persian gulf; removing all non-essential embassy/consulate personnel from iraq; and leaking a contingency plan that would bring 120,000 us troops into the region. the message is clear enough—the trump administration is really unhappy with iran. but… what’s the intended outcome? what are they trying to accomplish?

that depends on who you talk to. as the three principal players have different perspectives.

national security advisor john bolton wants a crisis. he hopes to use the pressure as a maximum containment strategy to cripple the iranian economy, increasing domestic opposition to the government, and making regime change more likely. that process would be supported by pushing the iranian government to escalating against the americans (either directly or through proxies), “forcing” the americans to engage in military intervention. for bolton, that’s a useful pretext to bombing key nuclear facilities that would set the iranian program back years or more… as well as making it clear it will happen again if they try to rebuild.

secretary of state mike pompeo wants the band back together. he doesn’t believe the united states can credibly induce the iranians towards a more constructive posture by themselves, and accordingly wants a tougher, common front to force better terms from iran from a position of strength. this was the focus of his diplomatic effort, principally with the europeans, before the us left the deal… but the europeans didn’t move much and trump got impatient. now he hopes he can force their hand—if the iranians themselves leave the deal out of international frustration and domestic pressure (they’ve already pledged to violate several provisions of it), pompeo hopes the europeans and other allies will be more supportive of broader american pressure against iran, and a multilateral coalition can come back together. and indeed, the europeans have been warning iran not to take steps to leave… even though they don’t really have anything to offer in return.

president trump wants a breakthrough on his terms. he wants to use american power to force the iranians into direct negotiations, and pull off a better agreement than obama did because the “or else” would be much more direct and damaging to iran than they had been before. trump believes that if he could engage directly with the iranian president—after all the tough measures his administration has put in place—it would be a coup, particularly because no american president has met with his iranian counterpart since the revolution in 1979. in other words, repeat trump’s north korea experience, but in a place where the united states has the most direct leverage (as opposed to with north korea, where the chinese are far more important). that’s why trump has now held out the prospect of engagement on several occasions, offering a white house phone number to call, inviting the swiss to act as a conduit, and saying he is sure iran “will want to talk soon.”

to be clear, actual intervention a la the iraq war isn’t on the table, headlines notwithstanding. there’s always contingency plans for everything, and the leak was just to make iran more concerned about american willingness to play hardball (a la bolton’s “5,000 troops to colombia” written on a legal pad so that the venezuelans could see them). but the market impact of such conflict in iran would be devastating—the closure of the strait of hormuz and a massive spike in oil prices, which would be hugely unpopular in the united states. as would the opening of a large scale military intervention. literally nobody in the administration is pushing for that.

meanwhile the iranian government is itself split. some iranian moderates are inclined to sit down with the trump administration, even if it’s just to talk about a prisoner exchange—negotiations could reduce tensions in the gulf and forestall a breakdown of the nuclear agreement. they want to find some way to preserve the deal, which the moderates ultimately have ownership of. but the hardliners refuse, and they were never fans of the deal to begin with. to the hardliners, trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear agreement vindicated their longstanding distrust of the united states—and they’re not about to endorse any subsequent agreements. so there’s less flexibility to respond the way president trump wants.

that means this is going to escalate further, with tensions increasing between the competing policy orientations of bolton, pompeo, and trump; as well as the internal divisions among the iranians. accidents are more likely in this environment, as well as inadvertent escalation when they occur (not least because it’s difficult to communicate effectively in response).

Inadvertent escalation as a result of accident because difficulty exists with effective communications. And that is not only comms with Iran, but also between members of our own team.

Diplomatic off ramp is a swiss 3 way phone call with Trump. Is the next bro'mance between Trump and Khomeni?

We have painted ourselves into this corner and the solution will be........?

And trump thinks that being unpredictable towards Iran is a good thing, which is wild. That is how you accidentally start a war, because Iran may overreact to everything, because they don't know what the US is doing.

I kinda think a bro'mance is a good idea, maybe? I mean the bro'mance between Kim and trump just tells everyone if you develop nuclear weapons, the US will not invade and treat you like an equal. That is a bad lesson to show Iran. So maybe treating them like an equal, without nuclear weapons, is a good idea?

News Update:
We are in the war of words phase.

Near as I can tell, the bro'mance is definitely not happening. Come back into the JCPOA and then we can talk being the current Iranian stance.

Mattis was in Oman and spoke on Monday: Iran's behavior must change. But also time for the diplomats to work their magic. Iran has petitioned the UN tor more involvement.

Congress was briefed and wouldn't you know, they came away with divided yet predictable partisan take aways.

Iran is now pressuring Europe and Russia as signatories to the JCPOA with their threat to back out further from the deal should Europe not come around and act in opposition to the US sanctions on oil and finance. 60 day notice given. Merkel, Macron and Putin talked.

The hostile pin prick drone attacks from Yemeni houthis into SA continue.