What Really Bugs Iran

[ellens]

What Really Bugs Iran...from Spengler on ATOL

"The only weapons on which Iran can rely are unguided missiles that require no electronic controls and simply shoot in the general direction of a target. At relatively short range and in very large number, these are very effective weapons against Israeli cities, for example.

After the Stuxnet humiliation, and with great uncertainty about the usability of more sophisticated weapons, Iran is likely to risk a demonstration of its power through Hezbollah. The more successful the cyber-war attack on Iran's nuclear capacities, therefore, the more dangerous becomes southern Lebanon."

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This is one of the stories that belong in the file titled, "Great Ironies of Modernization." The more sophisticated technology becomes, the more primitive the means of warfare become. Why is this so?

The period of the Cold War between the two great industrial superpowers produced the frightening situation known as MAD = Mutually Assured Destruction. Both sides had nuclear equipped long-range missiles, remote-controlled, that could traverse the circumference of the earth and end up on the other side in a fairly accurately controlled trajectory that would blowup a city like Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Each side had in the range of 15 to 20,000 of these missiles at the peak, before denuclearization began.

Russia was a backward country in most respects when it went communist, but it had an intelligentsia that was second to none in the world in its brilliance and devotion to excelling in science and other fields like classical music. That's why they could produce such high-level technology, before their brainpower (heavily Jewish) emigrated starting in the 1970's. By the peak of the Cold War, they were the equivalent of the US in technological prowess and manpower, which is why neither side could risk a direct confrontation with the other in an all-out war. Instead, they fought small guerilla wars and localized conflicts all over the third world, letting other primitive peoples take the casualties and collateral damage.

For those of us who followed these things, Jonah Savimbi in Angola, the immortalized Contras in Nicaragua, various tinpot figures in the Islamic world, were all the vehicles for American warfare against the Soviet Union with fairly primitive weapons in the hands of primitive people, while the nuclear-tipped missiles stood silent and decayed from obsolescence.

Iran wants to join the club of great powers in the world, now that the Soviet Union is gone, the EU has been emasculated, and America is growing tired. Problem is they don't have the brainpower the Soviet Union had, and emigration is allowed, and therefore quite massive. Gorbachev knew the Soviet Union could not compete with the US the minute he allowed the gates of emigration to open to Jews and others. Iran's Islamic thugs think Islam is enough and infidel brainpower isn't needed.

If Stuxnet was anywhere near as successful as we think, we are now back to the age of primitive warfare between proxies. Except in this case, the Israeli proxy is Israel itself. Israel has no proxies. If Hezbollah tries anything against Israel this time around, it will be its last war for them. Iran is going down and will soon lack enough exportable oil to fund Hezbollah's pointless activities, in any case. The best point in Spengler's essay is that without the trained brainpower, you can't trust your "advanced" military equipment these days. Who knows what malicious viruses lurk within the software? A missile fired from Central Iran may end up landing on ....Teheran! So, it's back to short-range Scud missiles and the cannon fodder of South Lebanon.

[Pastaneta]

Gorbachev knew the Soviet Union could not compete with the US the minute he allowed the gates of emigration to open to Jews and others.

Every Soviet leader knew that... Without the Jews, there was no Mig, only Mi...The moment the doors were opened, it was finished...

As to Islam, it has not invented anything in 1000 years... I guess the Mullahs didn't know that.

[ellens]

I think the Stuxnet fiasco may end up showing how backward and hopeless the Islamic world is. Iran views itself as the leader of that world (or a rival for leadership with Saudi Arabia) and if they can't figure out how to debug their IT networks and nuclear plants from a computer bug implanted either by Jews, Christians or secularists (depending on whom did it), it would prove that they are behind all 3.

Assuming that other things start to go haywire within Iran, like train and plane crashes and other similar infrastructure disasters, this is the sort of thing that can bring down a regime.

One can only hope.

[Michael]

Einstein once remarked that the Fourth World War would be fought with bows and arrows

[ellens]

It's not just that Iran will be forced to go back to more primitive means of warfare, but the long knives will come out and seem to have already, from what one reads on the news wires. Clearly there was a breakdown in security in the Iranian nuclear program, admitted by the Iranian gov't in one of their communications. What typically happens in Arab countries when security is breached due to internal betrayal is a major settling of accounts. That is, lots of people are jailed or murdered in order to clear out the nest of spies. This throws depts and divisions of the military and security services into turmoil, often for years, thus giving Israel more time to make another play.

This is one of the real hazards of paranoid, closed societies. The history of the Soviet Union shows that Stalin wreaked enormous damage on his own military by all the witch hunts and supposed counterespionage work he did during the 1930's, thus inviting external aggression by Hitler a few years later, on the assumption that his military was too weak to defend the country. They only managed to do so by colossal loss of life on the Soviet side, which was completely unnecessary had the Soviet military not been so weakened by the witch hunts.

Some people say, the Stuxnet will only delay Iran by a couple of years. Believe me, that's enough. This is a society on the brink of revolution (again) or internal collapse. Every few years that can be bought before they go nuclear, will guarantee that the regime will collapse without achieving that goal.

[Pastaneta]

You know Ellens, I can't figure out the Iranian mind... Obviously it is more evolved than the Arab one, but it seems 1400 years of Islam has addled their brain to the level of the Arabs...

[ellens]

You know Ellens, I can't figure out the Iranian mind... Obviously it is more evolved than the Arab one, but it seems 1400 years of Islam has addled their brain to the level of the Arabs...

This issue, Pastaneta, is an interesting one that I have thought about too. In spite of its glorious beginnings, Islam in the last 400 years, seems to be a real impediment to the development of an intellectual and sophisticated modern culture in virtually every place where it exists, EXCEPT in those countries where there was such a culture pre-existing before the people became Muslims. This may account for why Iran is able to reach a much higher level of development than any other Muslim state. They had a high civilization before the Islamic period, showing that they have a capacity that, let's say, other Muslims don't have. They have a few rather decent universities that have produced a small cadre of people who can build or maintain high technology of a certain level. No Arab country has reached that stage. Iraq was supposedly the most advanced, but the bloodletting and emigration of the past 20 years has gutted its educated class too.

Iran is therefore the most dangerous Muslim power, because it has a culture capable of producing analytic minds. The Arabs have not one decent technical university and have not produced a single item of technology themselves in 60 years. They use oil money to buy it off the shelf. That exposes them, though, to foreign sabotage. One can only imagine how riddled Saudi Arabia is with spies in the oil fields and in their military establishment. The Pentagon could probably shut down the entire Saudi airforce with the press of a hyperlink.

[rhapsody]

Khamenei Rap Song - Ahmadinejad come on, Yeah

[ellens]

Iran today is behaving very much like the Russians behaved during the Cold War. They are trying to establish a Persian Shiite Empire under the guise of the universal banner of Islam. The Russian adventure (Russian imperialism ending up masquerading as communist internationalism) ended up very badly, but they did have a good run of a few hundred years as a Eurasian global power.

Iran has nowhere near the resources or brainpower that the Russian Empire had, with a very large brain drain problem (that Russia did not have until recently) and an ideology - Persian-dominated Shiism - that runs headlong into a very powerful counterideology - secular individualism. All the oil wealth in the world would not make up for their deficits, and in any case, recent reports suggest that they will run out of exportable oil possibly within 10 years.

Iran right now is headed for self-immolation, but they may well try to drag down as many countries and ideological rivals as they can. The pragmatic elites in Iran, of which Moussavi might be one, have lost power to the deranged lunatics, which seems to be the trend everywhere in the Islamic world. Muslim polities seem to prefer fantasy-spouting demagogues over dull nation-builders like Lee Kwan Yew or the Chinese communists. Ahmadinejad is simply the latest in a line that started with Nasser, then went to Khaddafy, Arafat, Assad, Saddam Hussein, Sheik Yamani, and Khomeini. Throw in movement leaders like Nasrallah in Lebanon or Bin Laden, and you have a real collection of self-important nutcases who belong in an exhibit in Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. Not a rational, pragmatic, sane leader among them. Didn't Churchill remark once that every group of people gets the leadership it deserves?