Asymmetric warfare in the nuclear age

[GliderGuider]

I was looking at this amazing piece of bravado on LBN, and wondering how any man could grow such enormous, foolish stones as to say things like this:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Friday that Israel could not harm Iran, even as it expanded its offensive into Lebanon to target the Iranian-backed Hizbullah, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

"Despite the barbaric and criminal nature of the occupiers of Jerusalem, the regime and its Western supporters do not even have the power to give Iran a nasty look," the agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying in Osku, in northwestern Iran.

Then I remebered I had thought exactly the same thing a couple of months ago, and posted it on GD. Here, for your delectation, is "Why's that man being such a idiot" redux":

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So Ahmedinajad is bluffing for all he's worth, and we all know he's holding a king high at most - he won't have his homegrown nuclear royal flush for years yet. Despite that, he acts totally unconcerned, and seems eager to "see you and raise you" at every turn. This gives rise to the usual thought, expressed with great regularity, "That man is one card short of a deck."

While reading the back-and-forth chain of escalation the last couple of days, however, a horrifying thought occurred to me. What if the reason he's bluffing so hard is he knows that if his bluff is called, he's actually covered? To torture the poker metaphor further, he has a pair of aces up his sleeve. Wondering what those aces might be led me to think back back to the news article that appeared briefly a few months ago, about Ukrainian nukes:

The Ukrainian defense ministry denied media reports Monday that Ukraine had sold 250 nuclear warheads to Iran, RIA Novosty reported.

The newspaper said that Ukraine had failed to return 250 warheads to Russia in the 1990s when the former Soviet republic declared itself a nuclear-free zone. The paper suggested the warheads could have been sold to a third country, including Iran.

And I suddenly realized, the aces Ahmedinajad is hiding could actually be Ukrainian warheads, already in place in a selection of American or Israeli cities, sitting in CONEX containers in warehouses. If that were true, he could twist the tiger's tail pretty much as hard as he wanted. When the US or Israel eventually calls him, he tips his hand and reveals one of the warheads without detonating it, and tells them to back the fuck off. MAD is then officially back on the table: touch us and you're toast. It's Dr. Strangelove's Doomsday Machine updated in the context of asymmetric nuclear warfare.

Then we get to see who the crazy ones really are. Would Bush or Olmert still bet against a hand like that? Would Ahmidinajad transmit the codes if he felt Bush was going to go anyway? Would one or the other side fold?

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Whaddya think? Paranoid enough for DU? It would explain a lot about why Iran felt it was safe to green-light Hezbollah and to now keep ratcheting up the tension. We could see a very interesting denouement in this play...

[SlipperySlope]

1. He has faith in religion, not in technology...

Ahmedinajad believes the hidden Imam is about to arise. Since God is on his side, he has no reason to fear Israel or the United States.

[GliderGuider]

4. I don't know about that

Even in the Middle East you don't get to head up a major nation like Iran if you're a complete whack job. He is certainly aware of the strategic power of nuclear weapons.

Many a war has been lost by underestimating your opponent.

[htuttle]

2. Your theory is predicated on Iran initiating the situation

We don't know the PRECISE nature of Iran's relationship to the current leadership of Hezbollah. Just because they have supported them financially, etc... doesn't necessarily mean they have complete day-to-day control over them.

Look at it this way: The United States has supported Israel a great deal, yet Israel does what Israel wants to do, for the most part. Their general strategic goals may be in line with what the leadership of the US considers it's own goals, as Hezbollah's generally are with Iran, but in neither case does it mean the sponsoring party has complete control over the 'sponsoree'. And once the 'balloon goes up' and action is taken, the sponsor is pretty much compelled to support the sponsoree, else their entire investment will likely be lost.

In other words, I don't buy it. The whole thing sounds like a Tom Clancy knock-off.

[Amonester]

3. I don't believe one word of that 'cuz if it was true....

the warheads would have blown up already. With all the suffering and dying Shia Muslims in Iraq, I don't believe it would have taken that much long.

I don't believe for one tenth of a second that s**t pile.

[pretzel4gore]

5. we're the audience

too much of what happens seems to invoke certain reactions here, in the west, where the people who can put blairbush in jail are. meanwhile, the iraq war is costing $8 billion a month, but noone mentions it in the bushmedia (the man on the moon program cost $30 billion in total) ...local radio today reported that isreal was attacking 'hezbollah' (aka lebanon!) the liars are intractable, they dominate the very air we breathe it seems. i believe nothing the pigmedia wants us to believe.