Would it be wise to attack Iran if they dont stop their nuclear program?

I have trouble placing “wise” and “attack” in the same sentence.

Given certain circumstances, I might say “necessary”, but I don’t think those circumstances exist at the moment.

I think the window of opportunity to successfully stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons closed several years ago. We kept negotiating with them long enough that they have had time to decentralize their nuclear research facilities. I think Clinton had the best chance of slowing them down with airstrikes.

If we tried to shut it down now, we would have to occupy most of the country. I don’t think that is feasable without significant help from Russia or China. Niether of those to powers is likely to follow our lead on Iran.

Our current administration doesn’t have the stomach it takes. It’s not necessary right now, but that whole area is very fluid. If it were to become necessary, I doubt we would. Oil prices rise even if an oil futures speculator farts, and I’m sure a lot of hot gasses would be emitted if things got hot in the Gulf.

Thankfully you’ll never have to worry or find out the answer to that question… because there’s this little country in the middle east called Israel….. And they would bomb the ever loving shit out of Iran if they thought they were anywhere close to having the bomb.

Great point tedd! Israel would turn them into a glass parking lot if they do anything really stupid.

We can use bombast or brains. The two are not compatible. As we see in the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, brains outdo bombast every time. I think @cprevite captured my thought perfectly. The words “wise” and “attack” meaning preemptive attack do not belong together. Unless Iran does something with a bomb, or invades a neighbor, it is not in our best interest to attack them. Should they be foolish enough to overreach, we should build a coalition of 500,000 or more troops the way George H. W. Bush did before the First Gulf War.As @WestRiverrat notes, it would take a full-scale ground invasion to take out the nuclear capacity now. Anything short of that would be counterproductive.

If we had not spent all our money on the Iraq war we probably would have attacked Iraq by now.

We do not need another war, much less one with a country that has done us no harm.

I meant Iran. I think that if we had not already been so weakned from 2 wars, Iran and North Korea would not be so bold and overt as they are now.

@Judi I am sure that’s true. We may like to call their leaders crazy, but they are not stupid. Personally, if my critics can accurately suggest I am crazy, I prefer that to their being able to accurately say I am stupid. I think we were stupid to get ourselves into this bind.

@ETpro

Yes! Yes! Yes!

No, it wouldn’t be wise because the American military has had a pervasive presence in the Middle East for far too long now…..much longer than should have ever occurred in the first place. You can speculate forever on all the pro’s and con’s of Iraq and Afghanistan and our involvement there and still not justify much of it in many people’s minds.

What we’re doing now, embargoes against Iran and protecting the Persian Gulf, is probably the safest and maybe smartest deterrent. One would think that a carrier task force in the region (one of our carrier task forces, alone, has the potential to deliver enormous amounts of firepower against an enemy) would be enough of a message to an opposing country or force to at least be reasonable and want to cooperate.

Then again, it is Iran we are talking about and the United States hasn’t had a good relationship with this country through the years. Hopefully it won’t eventually lead to an invasion of Iran or an all out attack because the American military doesn’t have the men and material to support campaigns on two different fronts at any one time anymore and hasn’t had this capability for a long time now. And, we sure as hell don’t need to be embedded in the Middle East any more than we are now.

As someone mentioned earlier, Israel always has and always will be a consideration when contemplating what actions might occur in and around the Middle East. They are, militarily, probably the most powerful country in that region due to the vast military technology they have (alot of it coming from the United States) and the fact that they are very adept at warfighting and have been for decades. I think one of the things that prevent them from wiping out Iran altogether, on their own and whenever they want, is that they have an allied relationship with the United States and that they look to see what we’re doing first. I wouldn’t be surprised, either, if our government has told them to show restraint or we somehow keep a leash on them, so to speak, so they won’t annihalate whatever suits their purposes in that region.