Is War Coming to Iran?

delft said:

I've just looked at the wiki about the July crisis, but yesterday I started reading the thesis about the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by the Double Monarchy, written in Dutch about 1948 by the Reverent Dr. K.H.Siccama. That annexation was only six years earlier.
The situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina is now very different. Now Serbs have been ethnically cleansed form large areas thanks to NATO intervention. The situation is now what Vienna would have wanted then.

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During the July crisis many politicians were confident that no major war would happen and then WWI happened.
Bosnia Herzegovina was the logical geostrategic step for the Habsburg monarchy. Problem was that some Serb national patsies could be used to destabilize the situation for conquest of a greater Serbia that became Yugoslavia. You have to keep in mind that at least the Krajna Serbs in Croatia were very loyal to Habsburg because they were refugees settled as armed border guard peasants while Bosnia was split in between alignment to the new kingdom of Serbia in the South or the old Hungarian crown in the North. Habsburg self-evident had to annex both Bosnia and destroy the kingdom of Serbia. Problem was that the old alliance with Russia was broken and so on.
The Muslims lost a lot of their old settlement areas and the Serbs have a second place in losing with the Croats being somewhat the winner in this conflict. To really understand it someone has to visit Latin America and talk to the emigrated Croats there. At the expense of lots of bloodshed and ruined lives, the financial transaction and power issues were settled in this divided country with their age old grudges and lack of economic development. The problems were pinpointed at Serbia because they were the top dog in a system that never became a nation. But except for Slovenia, you can watch how much of that was really self-inflicted and how dependent the North's wealth was on tourism that the South rather lacked. Much of these fights were rather turf wars between organized crime clans who hijacked states rather than popular uprisings for a better system. This is the easiest pattern for an armed uprising that can radically alter a nation's alignment, important for geopolitics. It does little to alter systemic economic problems that get tackled by persistent peaceful movements which don't strive for total power and don't cause a complete reallignment into new camps that have to pay per friendship hour (dictators are among the most expensive escorts boys/girls you can buy).
The current course with strong geostrategic emphasis can create lots of instable situations due to turf wars, while a persistent change can not be imposed, but must come from within. Strange as it may seem, but the guys most likely to achieve democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan would be opposing the current occupation and nation-building. Best we can do, install a dictator and give the people enough rope to organize and topple him themselves according to some mutually agreed playbook and retire him and his entourage with a massive cash bonus.
None of this can be applied to Iran nor will any measure stop the nuclear programm. Pressure makes it clear that some capability to counter is needed and nuclear know-how is among the most potent troublemakers for such a counter.

Here is a slighty different take on the events thats lead to WWI.

Kurt said:

During the July crisis many politicians were confident that no major war would happen and then WWI happened.
Bosnia Herzegovina was the logical geostrategic step for the Habsburg monarchy. Problem was that some Serb national patsies could be used to destabilize the situation for conquest of a greater Serbia that became Yugoslavia. You have to keep in mind that at least the Krajna Serbs in Croatia were very loyal to Habsburg because they were refugees settled as armed border guard peasants while Bosnia was split in between alignment to the new kingdom of Serbia in the South or the old Hungarian crown in the North. Habsburg self-evident had to annex both Bosnia and destroy the kingdom of Serbia. Problem was that the old alliance with Russia was broken and so on.
The Muslims lost a lot of their old settlement areas and the Serbs have a second place in losing with the Croats being somewhat the winner in this conflict. To really understand it someone has to visit Latin America and talk to the emigrated Croats there. At the expense of lots of bloodshed and ruined lives, the financial transaction and power issues were settled in this divided country with their age old grudges and lack of economic development. The problems were pinpointed at Serbia because they were the top dog in a system that never became a nation. But except for Slovenia, you can watch how much of that was really self-inflicted and how dependent the North's wealth was on tourism that the South rather lacked. Much of these fights were rather turf wars between organized crime clans who hijacked states rather than popular uprisings for a better system. This is the easiest pattern for an armed uprising that can radically alter a nation's alignment, important for geopolitics. It does little to alter systemic economic problems that get tackled by persistent peaceful movements which don't strive for total power and don't cause a complete reallignment into new camps that have to pay per friendship hour (dictators are among the most expensive escorts boys/girls you can buy).
The current course with strong geostrategic emphasis can create lots of instable situations due to turf wars, while a persistent change can not be imposed, but must come from within. Strange as it may seem, but the guys most likely to achieve democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan would be opposing the current occupation and nation-building. Best we can do, install a dictator and give the people enough rope to organize and topple him themselves according to some mutually agreed playbook and retire him and his entourage with a massive cash bonus.
None of this can be applied to Iran nor will any measure stop the nuclear programm. Pressure makes it clear that some capability to counter is needed and nuclear know-how is among the most potent troublemakers for such a counter.

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First a correction. The Krajna was cut from Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1869 and added to Croatia while the remainder of B-H remained part of the Ottoman Empire but was administered from Vienna, until that remainder was annexed in 1909. The Krajna was ethnically cleansed using weapons provided by the US while a UN prohibition against this was in force.
What you say about Afghanistan is I think true and I see this happening already in Iraq.
I think wrt Iran the US is on a hiding to nothing. Whether they attack, let Israel attack or do nothing they will not have decisive influence. But democracy can be delayed by foreign interference, it is likely to come. But it will be with Iranian characteristics. Morsi, in this interview I got from NYT ( in the Middle East thread ) says something similar wrt Egypt.
Parliamentary democracy was introduced in Japan by the US and it is still not functioning. They didn't introduce it in South Korea, installed the dictator Syngman Rhee instead, but is was developed from the late '80's and seems to function as well as many others.

Franklin said:

Here is a slighty different take on the events thats lead to WWI.

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Very funny. Austria-Hungary would only be safe if it grew. So it annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina and looked for further growth just like a modern corporation. And that from an Austrian - in the economic sense - economist.

So why did the Serbian officers killed the King and Queen of Serbia in the palace in the first place? Was there a class war issues, was the ruling class back then didn't care for the conditions of the average citizens that made them so angry and cry for change? There was a change all across Europe as Feudalism was on it's last string before a more democratic form of government took over.

Equation said:

So why did the Serbian officers killed the King and Queen of Serbia in the palace in the first place? Was there a class war issues, was the ruling class back then didn't care for the conditions of the average citizens that made them so angry and cry for change? There was a change all across Europe as Feudalism was on it's last string before a more democratic form of government took over.

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My bad we are going off topic. The assassin was part of a club, the . As usual in such clubs, you impress others and the chicks by being part of extraordinary schemes that boost your nome de guerre. "The immature man wants to die for a noble cause, while the mature man wants to live for a humble reason" from "The catcher in the rye" by J.D. Salinger sums up the motivation pretty well. Austria-Hungaria needed a pretext to destroy the Serbian national state and all other new Balkan nations in order to maintain their odd multi-ethnic empire in a world of rising nationalism. You could say that their business model was running out and the only way to stabilize was expansion that threatened all break away attempts. You can boil down the whole problem to the Czech question. Hungary was capable enough to hold unto core regions and Austria had a supremacy in decisionmaking while the Czechs were the old economic center and paymaster of them all. The Hussites and the highlighted this persistent problem. Splitting the Empire into a federation of nations with agreeable financial and power exchanges could have turned it into a pre-cursor of a European union. They all stumbled across their old entrenched powerstructure dating from the times of the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation.

Going back to Iran, they are a multi-ethnic political entity and still stable as long as all agree about political participation and shared financial benefits.

There is no doubt Israel would like to take out Iran’s nuclear programme, no doubt the efficient and effective Israeli air force could probably even pull it off, the combination would be F16 Sufas flying low with top cover using F15 Baz fighters, both have the fuel capability

They did it to Iraq, they did it to Syria, they even travelled all the way to Tunisia back in the day to hit PLO training camps, if the Israeli air force gets the go ahead chances are they could do it

In fact during Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May 1999 there was intelligence that Israel might be trying to attack Pakistan’s Kahuta research facility’s via India or fly over Saudi airspace shadowing the Yemen/Oman border where radar coverage was low

Tensions in Pakistan were extremely high, when PAF C-130 was carrying the parts of the bomb it was escorted by 4 x F16s, they had orders, if the C-130 goes off course they were to down the aircraft no matter what

Nevertheless the test went ahead and was a success, true or not we will never know, maybe the memory’s of the crack Pakistani fighters pilots lives strong in the minds of the Israeli air force, when our pilots downed 10 Israeli aircraft without a loss of single of our own, one such pilot was Saiful Azam who has the unique honor of the only pilot in the world who downed four Israeli jets – and served in four airforces; Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq and Bangladeshi. He also hold world record of shooting-down three kinds of military aircrafts in two different air forces

Also Flt. Lt. A. Sattar Alvi became the first Pakistani pilot, flying a Syrian aircraft to shoot down an Israeli Mirage in air combat, and just a hand full of Israeli mirages wiped out entire air forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan

After the war the President of Israel, Ezer Weizman, who was also the Commander of the Israeli Air Force and the Minister of Defense of Israel, wrote in his autobiography that: "He was a formidable fellow and I was glad that he was Pakistani and not Egyptian” referring to Air Marshal Nur Khan of the Pakistan Air force

Anyhow back to Iran

"Saiful Azam who has the unique honor of the only pilot in the world who downed four Israeli jets – and served in four airforces; Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq and Bangladeshi. He also hold world record of shooting-down three kinds of military aircrafts in two different air forces"

So did he received the honor as an Ace fighter pilot? I know in the US if a fighter pilot shots down 5 enemy planes that qualify as an ace, what about Pakistan (just curious).

No Saiful Azam was not an ace, he fell just short of becoming one but that does not take away his superhuman achievements, flying in an inferior aircraft he used his extremely well gifted flying skills to take away the advantage of the Israeli jets to knock out 4 of them, he was decorated by multiple air forces and received the highest honors, he is a prime example of the caliber of pilots the Pakistan is fortunate to have and he is one of many the list is big

However the greatest fighter pilot of all time in Pakistan has to be Muhammad Mahmood Alam aka MM Alam and yes he is a fighter ace, he was the first and the only jet ace in one mission I believe, in 1965 he downed five Indian aircraft in less than a minute, the first four within 30 seconds, establishing a world record, and went on to knock 4 more out the sky’s in the duration of the war, in his honor we named the road in our busiest and metropolitan city Lahore, MM Alan Road

These type of pilots are a breed apart, who rise far above the rest when duty calls, they have the skill, rhythm, timing, the guts and most of all the will power to produce something spectacular in the midst of combat

During war in 1965 Chuck Yeager’s was sent to Pakistan as part of Americas defence rep, this is what he wrote in his autobiography

“YEAGER
“When we arrived in Pakistan in 1971, the political situation between the Pakistanis and Indians was really tense over Bangladesh, or East Pakistan, as it was known in those days, and Russia was backing India with tremendous amounts of new airplanes and tanks. The U.S. and China were backing the Pakistanis. My job was military advisor to the Pakistani air force, headed by Air Marshal Rahim Khan, who had been trained in Britain by the Royal Air Force, and was the first Pakistani pilot to exceed the speed of sound. He took me around to their different fighter groups and I met their pilots, who knew me and were really pleased that I was there. They had about five hundred airplanes, more than half of them Sabres and 104 Starfighters, a few B-57 bombers, and about a hundred Chinese MiG-19s. They were really good, aggressive dogfighters and proficient in gunnery and air combat tactics. I was damned impressed. Those guys just lived and breathed flying.
The Pakistanis whipped their [Indians'] asses in the sky, but it was the other way around in the ground war. The air war lasted two weeks and the Pakistanis scored a three-to-one kill ratio, knocking out 102 Russian-made Indian jets and losing thirty-four airplanes of their own. I’m certain about the figures because I went out several times a day in a chopper and counted the wrecks below. I counted wrecks on Pakistani soil, documented them by serial number, identified the components such as engines, rocket pods, and new equipment on newer planes like the Soviet SU-7 fighter-bomber and the MiG-21 J, their latest supersonic fighter. The Pakistani army would cart off these items for me, and when the war ended, it took two big American Air Force cargo lifters to carry all those parts back to the States for analysis by our intelligence division.
I didn’t get involved in the actual combat because that would’ve been too touchy, but I did fly around and pick up shot-down Indian pilots and take them back to prisoner-of-war camps for questioning. I interviewed them about the equipment they had been flying and the tactics their Soviet advisers taught them to use. I wore a uniform or flying suit all the time, and it was amusing when those Indians saw my name tag and asked, “Are you the Yeager who broke the sound barrier?” They couldn’t believe I was in Pakistan or understand what I was doing there. I told them, “I’m the American Defense Rep here. That’s what I’m doing.” The PAF remains the only foreign air force in the world to have received Chuck Yeager’s admiration – a recommendation which the PAF is proud of. (Source: PIADS)
(General (Retd.) Chuck Yeager (USAF) , Book: Yeager, the Autobiography).

While war is always a terrible thing and it will be very costly in terms of casualties and financially, but in terms of geopolitics, war with iran will probably serves China interest well in the long term, the us will preoccupied with middle east again and it may as well say goodbye to its "pivot to asia" for good.

War with iran will further wreck and weaken the us economy, to the point of not being able to afford to confront and challenge China, if i was Chinese leadership i will be hoping for israel to finally snap and bomb iran nuclear facilities.