Regional war is ahead?

[proIsrael-nonIsraeli]

Originally Posted by CEDARLAND

Capsule Summary

A) It seems that a decision has already been made as for going to war In Bush's and Olmert's mind.

B) For those thinking that the outcome is guaranteed just like in 2003, this time the game has many many many players unlike Irak which was left on its own. Russia and China have to all to lose in this game and will fight back desperately.

The master plan for USA is to gain mastery of all mideast oil and it would be wrong to think that only Iran is standing in the way. Since Russian and Chinese interests are at stake, those betting on a technological gap are likely to be the losers.

Greetings to Salome

I'd like to comment on B.

I do agree that China has something to loose if war with Iran breaks out. However, Russia stands only to gain. Russia will get free hand in dealing with Caspian sea and at the same time will enjoy rising oil prices. In addition Russia will get to see its Far East rival experiencing problems.

[Zayn]

Originally Posted by proIsrael-nonIsraeli

I'd like to comment on B.

I do agree that China has something to loose if war with Iran breaks out. However, Russia stands only to gain. Russia will get free hand in dealing with Caspian sea and at the same time will enjoy rising oil prices. In addition Russia will get to see its Far East rival experiencing problems.

If that was true they wouldn't be throwing Iran dipolmatic lifelines at almost every turn.

Plus rising oil prices does not necessarily mean good business.

[CEDARLAND]

Originally Posted by Salome

How about Iran? What is their strategy?

Salome
why don't you tell about the Israeli Strategy first ?

[CEDARLAND]

OK Salome let us play it clean :- Here is one defensive strategy the IRANIANS are VERY WARMLY ADVISED to consider. To understand the true meaning of my post, all you need to do is replace SAUDI ARABIA by IRAN in the following article. Got it ? (irony and cynism off !)

Will the Saudis Blow Up Their Own Oil Infrastructure?
Front Page 11 may 05 | Daniel Pipes Posted on 05/11/2005 7:01:28 PM PDT by white trash redneck

Investigative writer Gerald Posner reveals something most extraordinary in Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi-U.S. Connection, his book to be published by Random House later this month: that the Saudi government may have rigged its oil and gas infrastructure with a self-destruct system that would keep it out of commission for decades. If true, this could undermine the world economy at any time.

Posner starts by recalling various hints that Americans dropped back in the 1970s, that the high price and limited production of oil might lead to a U.S. invasion of Saudi Arabia and a seizure of its oil fields. For example, in 1975, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger murkily threatened the Saudis with a double-negative: “I am not saying that there’s no circumstances where we would not use force” against them.

In response, Posner shows, the Saudi leadership began to think of ways to prevent such an occurrence. They could not do so the usual way, by building up their military, for that would be futile against the much stronger U.S. forces. So the monarchy – one of the most creative and underestimated political forces in modern history – set out instead to use indirection and deterrence. Rather than mount defenses of its oil installations, it did just the opposite, inserting a clandestine network of explosives designed to render the vast oil and gas infrastructure inoperable – and not just temporarily but for a long period.

That is the finding that Posner, author of ten books (including Case Closed, the definitive account of the John F. Kennedy assassination) details in a chapter titled “Scorched Earth,” based on intelligence intercepts he gained access to. The Saudi planning began in earnest, he reports, after the Kuwait war of 1990-91, when the Iraqis left behind an inferno of oil-field fires … which, to everyone’s amazement, was extinguished within months, not years. In response, the Saudis thought of ways to assure their oil would stay off the market. They began:

Exploring the possibility of a single-button self-destruct system, protected with a series of built-in fail-safes. It was evidently their way to ensure that if someone else grabbed the world’s largest oil reserves and forced them to flee the country they had founded, the House of Saud could at least make certain that what they left behind was worthless.

This became a top-priority project for the kingdom. Posner provides considerable detail about the mechanics of the sabotage system, how it relied on unmarked Semtex from Czechoslovakia for explosives and on radiation dispersal devices (RDDs) to contaminate the sites and make the oil unusable for a generation. The latter possibilities included one or more radioactive elements such as rubidium, cesium 137, and strontium 90.

Collecting the latter materials, Posner explains, was not difficult for they are not useable in a nuclear weapon and no one had the creativity to anticipate Saudi intentions:

It is almost impossible to imagine that anyone could have thought a country might obtain such material and then divert small amounts internally into explosive devices that could render large swaths of their own country uninhabitable for years.

Saudi engineers apparently then placed explosives and RDDs throughout their oil and gas infrastructure, secretly, redundantly, and exhaustively.

The oil fields themselves, the lifeline for future production, are wired to eliminate not only significant wells, but also trained personnel, the computerized systems that seemingly rival NASA’s at times, the pipelines that carry the oil from the fields …, the state-of-the-art water facilities (water is injected into the fields to push out oil), power operations, and even power transmission in the region.

Saudis also sabotaged their pipelines, pumping stations, generators, refineries, storage containers, and export facilities, including the ports and off-shore oil-loading facilities.

The sabotage was not finished at some date and left in place rather, Posner emphasizes, it is an ongoing operation, disguised as regular upkeep or security enhancements. He recounts, for example, that the Saudis were “particularly proud when in 2002 they were able to insert a smaller, more sophisticated network of high-density explosives into two gas-oil separation plants

Posner raises the possibility that this entire scenario is a Saudi piece of theater, meant to deter an outside force but without any reality. Until someone can check for explosives, there is no way of discerning if it is real or bluff. Another limiting factor: the Semtex explosive only has a few more years of useful life in it, expiring in about 2012-13

That said, planners must operate on the assumption the sabotage system is in place and prepare for the consequences. If this single-button self-destruct system does exist and were used, what would be its impact? The U.S. and other governments hold about 1.3 billion barrels of oil and gas in strategic reserves, a stock that would last about six months. Disaster would follow, Posner posits. “Once the strategic reserves proved inadequate, a nuclear environment in Saudi Arabia would create crippling oil price increases, political instability, and economic recessions unrivaled since the 1930s If such a system is in place, two implications leap to mind. Should the Saudi monarchy retain its grip on power (which I consider likely), it has created for itself a unique deterrence against invasion. But, should the monarchy be replaced by an Islamic emirate in the spirit of Afghanistan’s Taliban (its main challenger for power), this ferociously anti-Western government would have at its disposal a cataclysmic suicide-bomber capacity; with one push of a button, conceivably, it could shake the world order. And it would be highly inclined to do just that.

KEYWORDS ENERGY;OIL; SABOTAGE; SAUDI; SAUDIARABIA; IRAN
The alleged Saudi plot to booby-trap their oil industry with dirty bombs is an interesting theory, until you start to think about it. Firstly, the threat is rather overblown.Secondly, the logistics don't make sense.Finally, petroleum is not chemically reactive to Sr, Cs or Rb. If the materials were introduced to the oil reservoirs, the isotopes could easily be removed during the normal refining processes.It should be made quite clear to the Saudis that if they were to blow up their oil infrastructure, their country would never belong to them again (should any of them be left alive to live in it). something this big, alot of people there would know about it and would have talked Yep, employees of the many Western (ie, American/European) oil field service companies that contract in Saudi Arabia would very quickly notice something like that.

[CEDARLAND]

[proIsrael-nonIsraeli]

Originally Posted by CEDARLAND

OK Salome let us play it clean :- Here is one defensive strategy the IRANIANS are VERY WARMLY ADVISED to consider. To understand the true meaning of my post, all you need to do is replace SAUDI ARABIA by IRAN in the following article. Got it ? (irony and cynism off !)

Will the Saudis Blow Up Their Own Oil Infrastructure?
Front Page 11 may 05 | Daniel Pipes Posted on 05/11/2005 7:01:28 PM PDT by white trash redneck

Investigative writer Gerald Posner reveals something most extraordinary in Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi-U.S. Connection, his book to be published by Random House later this month: that the Saudi government may have rigged its oil and gas infrastructure with a self-destruct system that would keep it out of commission for decades. If true, this could undermine the world economy at any time.

Posner starts by recalling various hints that Americans dropped back in the 1970s, that the high price and limited production of oil might lead to a U.S. invasion of Saudi Arabia and a seizure of its oil fields. For example, in 1975, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger murkily threatened the Saudis with a double-negative: “I am not saying that there’s no circumstances where we would not use force” against them.

In response, Posner shows, the Saudi leadership began to think of ways to prevent such an occurrence. They could not do so the usual way, by building up their military, for that would be futile against the much stronger U.S. forces. So the monarchy – one of the most creative and underestimated political forces in modern history – set out instead to use indirection and deterrence. Rather than mount defenses of its oil installations, it did just the opposite, inserting a clandestine network of explosives designed to render the vast oil and gas infrastructure inoperable – and not just temporarily but for a long period.

That is the finding that Posner, author of ten books (including Case Closed, the definitive account of the John F. Kennedy assassination) details in a chapter titled “Scorched Earth,” based on intelligence intercepts he gained access to. The Saudi planning began in earnest, he reports, after the Kuwait war of 1990-91, when the Iraqis left behind an inferno of oil-field fires … which, to everyone’s amazement, was extinguished within months, not years. In response, the Saudis thought of ways to assure their oil would stay off the market. They began:

Exploring the possibility of a single-button self-destruct system, protected with a series of built-in fail-safes. It was evidently their way to ensure that if someone else grabbed the world’s largest oil reserves and forced them to flee the country they had founded, the House of Saud could at least make certain that what they left behind was worthless.

This became a top-priority project for the kingdom. Posner provides considerable detail about the mechanics of the sabotage system, how it relied on unmarked Semtex from Czechoslovakia for explosives and on radiation dispersal devices (RDDs) to contaminate the sites and make the oil unusable for a generation. The latter possibilities included one or more radioactive elements such as rubidium, cesium 137, and strontium 90.

Collecting the latter materials, Posner explains, was not difficult for they are not useable in a nuclear weapon and no one had the creativity to anticipate Saudi intentions:

It is almost impossible to imagine that anyone could have thought a country might obtain such material and then divert small amounts internally into explosive devices that could render large swaths of their own country uninhabitable for years.

Saudi engineers apparently then placed explosives and RDDs throughout their oil and gas infrastructure, secretly, redundantly, and exhaustively.

The oil fields themselves, the lifeline for future production, are wired to eliminate not only significant wells, but also trained personnel, the computerized systems that seemingly rival NASA’s at times, the pipelines that carry the oil from the fields …, the state-of-the-art water facilities (water is injected into the fields to push out oil), power operations, and even power transmission in the region.

Saudis also sabotaged their pipelines, pumping stations, generators, refineries, storage containers, and export facilities, including the ports and off-shore oil-loading facilities.

The sabotage was not finished at some date and left in place rather, Posner emphasizes, it is an ongoing operation, disguised as regular upkeep or security enhancements. He recounts, for example, that the Saudis were “particularly proud when in 2002 they were able to insert a smaller, more sophisticated network of high-density explosives into two gas-oil separation plants

Posner raises the possibility that this entire scenario is a Saudi piece of theater, meant to deter an outside force but without any reality. Until someone can check for explosives, there is no way of discerning if it is real or bluff. Another limiting factor: the Semtex explosive only has a few more years of useful life in it, expiring in about 2012-13

That said, planners must operate on the assumption the sabotage system is in place and prepare for the consequences. If this single-button self-destruct system does exist and were used, what would be its impact? The U.S. and other governments hold about 1.3 billion barrels of oil and gas in strategic reserves, a stock that would last about six months. Disaster would follow, Posner posits. “Once the strategic reserves proved inadequate, a nuclear environment in Saudi Arabia would create crippling oil price increases, political instability, and economic recessions unrivaled since the 1930s If such a system is in place, two implications leap to mind. Should the Saudi monarchy retain its grip on power (which I consider likely), it has created for itself a unique deterrence against invasion. But, should the monarchy be replaced by an Islamic emirate in the spirit of Afghanistan’s Taliban (its main challenger for power), this ferociously anti-Western government would have at its disposal a cataclysmic suicide-bomber capacity; with one push of a button, conceivably, it could shake the world order. And it would be highly inclined to do just that.

KEYWORDS ENERGY;OIL; SABOTAGE; SAUDI; SAUDIARABIA; IRAN
The alleged Saudi plot to booby-trap their oil industry with dirty bombs is an interesting theory, until you start to think about it. Firstly, the threat is rather overblown.Secondly, the logistics don't make sense.Finally, petroleum is not chemically reactive to Sr, Cs or Rb. If the materials were introduced to the oil reservoirs, the isotopes could easily be removed during the normal refining processes.It should be made quite clear to the Saudis that if they were to blow up their oil infrastructure, their country would never belong to them again (should any of them be left alive to live in it). something this big, alot of people there would know about it and would have talked Yep, employees of the many Western (ie, American/European) oil field service companies that contract in Saudi Arabia would very quickly notice something like that.

It is possible of cause. But I do not think Saudis would do this to themselves for few reasons.
First, they already are cooperating and there is no need for war. Second, all these royals must understand that by doing so they are endangering their own well being at least financially. It is not that difficult to arrest all their assets throughout the world.

On brighter note. If this is to happen it will force us to get off oil dependency much sooner. That is oil will still be used for strategical applications (military mostly) but rest will move to nuclear/electric diet.


As to Iran using the same scenario. I'd let Chinese deal with them. We do not buy their oil anyway.

[Salome]

Originally Posted by CEDARLAND

Salome
why don't you tell about the Israeli Strategy first ?

I asked first

Well how shall I know their strategy, we can only guess. According to that theory I mentioned earlier, Israel shall attack Iran first, of course the US support will follow.

So what about Iran? Are they willing to fall for any provocation?

[Zayn]

Originally Posted by Salome

I asked first

Well how shall I know their strategy, we can only guess. According to that theory I mentioned earlier, Israel shall attack Iran first, of course the US support will follow.

So what about Iran? Are they willing to fall for any provocation?

There will be no war between Iran and Israel until Iran has a nuclear deterrent.

Israel won't attack Iran because it would inflame the entire region and bring devestation upon Israel in a fashion exponentially worse than what Hezbollah did.

Iran won't attack Israel because it will then have to deal with an offensive by both the US and nuclear-armed Israel.

Either side would be foolish to attack the other.

[Salome]

Originally Posted by Zayn

There will be no war between Iran and Israel until Iran has a nuclear deterrent.

Israel won't attack Iran because it would inflame the entire region and bring devestation upon Israel in a fashion exponentially worse than what Hezbollah did.

Iran won't attack Israel because it will then have to deal with an offensive by both the US and nuclear-armed Israel.

Either side would be foolish to attack the other.

I also dont think so that there would be a direct attack from either sides. However there are talks about indirect involvments or provocations. So how much is Iran willing to fall for a provocation and get involved into an escalating conflict?

[Salome]

Foreign Affairs - The Costs of Containing Iran - Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh