User:Uncle Ben's Rice/IranianNuclearWeapons

Something lacks in the conversation about "The Cold War" between Iran and Israel turning hot, one in which America gets pulled into the fray. Rapid technological developments have resulted in new ways to fight war and reintroduced a few old ideas for general strategy: drones, hacking, chemical weapons, tactics of asymmetric warfare, false flags, and terrorism. The tactical usage of such weapons could be devastating, easily escalating this conflict into a very bloody and ugly political mess. Which leads one to ask: could this war evolve into this century's equivalent of World War I? These weapons have an equalizing power, one that levels the playing field for nations of unequal military budgets and technological developments competing against one another. The strategic power of these tactics are becoming apparent, now any commander or lone agent in the first 21st century war can use simple means to devastate their enemy.

Assuming a war did break out between Iran and Israel that drew America into the conflict, the combined might of Israel and America would utterly crush the Iranian forces, but at significant cost due to the Iranians ability to swarm against navel targets in the Persian Gulf. These costs could be even higher if the Israeli-American forces resort to a ground occupation in order to topple the current regime. Considering the tactics involved in asymmetrical warfare and striking military targets in urban areas, the causalities will be high on the Iranian side. However, given the new means of war, it is terrifying easy and inexpensive for the Iranians to retaliate and cause serious damage from their ability to strike America at thousands of locations on the American home-front at their choosing. What should concern U.S. military strategists is that some targets are more attractive to attack than others. In particular, there are dozens of locations in the United States were a single successful attack could easily cost hundreds of billions of dollars in damage and require the mass emigration of refugees displaced from each Iranian retaliation attack. The most insane fact about this national weakness is that the U.S. government subsidizes this gaping flaw in national security.

The purpose of this article is to argue that if the United States gets involved in Israel's war with Iran, what sort of military action would we expect to see in the homeland? Is it reasonable to suspect that there would be active combat on the American home-front? Yes, but this war on the home-front won't involve tanks patrolling American streets because Iranians have committed an Islamic Republic's "Red Dawn." Iran isn't the Soviet Union which had the capacity for fighting World War III with its equally advanced technology and the sheer numbers for global war. The Iranians can barely keep their economy functioning as sanctions cripple their citizens, fighting a conventional war is not something Iran can do with their stretched economic rationing. Besides, the Persian imperialists will be unable to get any forces past of the combined American might of eleven carrier fleets. So Iran's ability to fight war on the American home-front is severely limited to cyberspace with the occasional precise strike on the physical world.

The Iranians claimed that they hacked a spy drone, and this claim resulted with sustained doubt that Iran did this. These arguments against Iran's claim reasoned that this was a propaganda hoax by Iran have been disregarded as recent news came out regarding drones. Iran's original claims gain merit when Iran recently unveiled a new medium range drone. In addition to advancements in drone technology for themselves, Iran's technology has had a trickle down effect for their allies like Hezbollah. In addition, Iran has outsourced drone production to a Hamas controlled Gazan factory that constructs drones that was blown up in recent attacks in Gaza.

The proliferation of drones and drone technology out of a conflict about nuclear proliferation has been incredibly dramatic in increasing the risks for America getting involved in this Cold War between Iran and Israel, one in which America has given up prized technology to a nation that wishes us harm and another one that will manipulate our military alliance to their benefit. This drone proliferation has resulted in ever increasing numbers of drones planned for American skies. While this will take some time to develop, in the long term, Iranian loyalists or anti-state hackers could hijack and crash drones of various sizes into areas of high value. And is there a chance of a long range stealth drone reaching American shores? Given Nazis were almost able to do this a 6 engine jet bomber, the likelihood of Iran to develop a small, long range, radar evading drone that is capable of slipping a small bomb or other directed ordinance on a decisive target is possible.

Besides frequent attacks on servers and banks databases by "unknown groups out of the Middle East," the real short term danger is from Iranian drones is on the home-front. While it could be possible for Iranian hackers to try and hack into military grade drones in America if a war broke out tomorrow, but it would be a greater payoff when drones proliferate into the computer savvy hands of local and state police forces. The other and more probable threat results from the proliferation of ideas and technologies that are rapidly being developed by both sides. The notion that Iran didn't come up with the idea for small suicidal drones before American corporations did sounds foolish when said aloud, but is true. If there hasn't been any level of development in Iran for suicide drones, upon the news of Americans developing adaptive technology, the Iranians would begin such development.

The problem with this scenario is that these short range drones would require deployment in the United States. For this to be possible, this would require two things, first being porous borders and local terrorists assisting. Given the successes with increasing border patrol along either border has done in stopping the flow of drugs into the United States in her War on Drugs, and that Hezbollah is already extensively working with Mexican Drug Cartels, to assume that small drones cannot be slipped into the border would be wishful thinking. Second, this would require a large enough network of agents smuggling and operating in America. Given the recent scandal of a money laundering operations conducted through New York State alone one can assume there was once a massive network of money laundering schemes with portions that have now gone underground. The nature of such a scheme would mean many people involved in this operation did one thing: produce money. To produce a lump sum of cash and have it be untraceable to the agent of the spy network is easy in the world of modern banking. This gives a very small window to find Iranian agents since their work requires being little more than being an account at a bank or cash bundles deposited in banks by middlemen. Any one of these spies or agents of Iran equipped with an Iranian equivalent of one of these small suicide drones can cause serious havoc to America.

So Iranian drones in the American home-front is simply a matter of when. While striking at economic centers, taking over communication hubs and AT&T fortresses, blowing up buses, hacking new traffic control networks, and disrupting business for American banks is all fun and games, and can cause serious problems, but none of these options are a truly disastrous possibility in this war. If this war turns out to be the Great War of the 21st century, then the tactic that will change everything is targeting nuclear facilities. If the stated objective for this war is the matter of nuclear proliferation, then targeting such facilities in Iran is the objective, the consequences of such military strikes will cause areas of various sizes in Iran to become inhospitable from radioactive fallout. Is it unreasonable to think that the Iranians wouldn't attempt to strike back at any one of our nuclear facilities? To think the Iranians wouldn't go after such targets first is another example of wishful thinking. It is reasonable to assume that Iran would retaliate with military actions against American nuclear facilities as appropriately as they are able. The notion of Iran using drones to attack American nuclear facilities seems poetically appropriate given what American and Israel will do to their country by attacking their nuclear facilities.

While it might be possible to develop some sort of anti-drone Iron Dome in the future, the current Iron Dome missile defense system is too specific in design to be of any use to deal with more complex weaponry, such as long range stealth or backpack drones. While it might eventually be possible to build a missile defense shield against such targets, it is impossible to retrofit all nuclear facilities to resist a precisely delivered explosive or EMP blast. EMP weaponry is a growing reality, and its usage has already been discussed in the Israel-Iran conflict. Such technology wouldn't be difficult for Iranian scientists to make; what Iran likely hasn't developed is small EMP devices that can be attached to backpack drones or fit onto the payload of a long range drone, but again that is a matter of time. A relatively precise explosion or EMP blast at any one of these nuclear facilities could result in a chain of events that are similar to the consequences of Fukushima's nuclear meltdown.

Between the security risks imposed upon American civilians by these facilities, that it would cost billions upon billions of dollars to properly protected all these locations, and if one attack was able to disable a plant or several, then the resulting costs for a payout would be many more billions, if not trillions of dollars. Given that an eighty two year old nun was able to vandalize a secret nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee goes to show how exposed nuclear facilities are to the terrorism of decrepit nuns. Luckily, the Iranians only have commandos and suicide bombers, not anti-nuclear activists in their golden years.

In conclusion, the continued government subsidization of the nuclear industry is an appalling national security weakness in an age of belt tightening in all levels of government. In the name of national security, the continuing operation of these facilities is of the utmost danger to the security of our state—these plants must be shut down before it is too late. While there are market consequences for completely going off nuclear energy and transferring some subsidies to alternative energy sources, is the cost of inexpensive green energy as expensive as spending billions on defending dozens of these sites, and hundreds of billions to bailout the local civilians every time Iran gets lucky?