CBA Debate: Invasion of Iran.

It's a shame that my opponent missed the deadline. Hopefully he will be able to make it up by posting both the benefits and the costs in his next speech. Nonetheless, there is one essential cost to the CON side of the debate that must be addressed. COST ONE: NUCLEAR WAR A. Iran will proliferate within the year, creating the most probable scenario for Middle Eastern war, widespread proliferation, terrorist attacks and Israel first strikes. -Charles S. Robb, former Democratic senator from Virginia, Charles Wald, retired general and air commander in the initial stages of Operation Enduring Freedom, The Washington Post, A show of force for Iran, 7/9/2010 As Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium grows... two scenarios become increasingly likely in the coming months: First, current trends suggest that Iran could achieve nuclear weapons capability before the end of this year, posing a strategically untenable threat to the United States... a nuclear weapons-capable Iran... would set off a proliferation cascade across the Middle East, and Iran would gain the ability to transfer nuclear materials to its terrorist allies... An Iran emboldened by nuclear weapons clearly might overstep its boundaries, pulling the Middle East and the United States into a treacherous conflict. B. The United States must interfere to prevent Iranian Proliferation http://www.aei.org... Should the Islamic Republic acquire nuclear weapons, it may become dangerously overconfident as it convinces itself that its conventional, irregular, or proxy forces can operate without fear of serious reprisal from the United States, Israel, or any other regional power. In order, therefore, to contain a nuclear Iran, the United States and its allies in the region will need to enhance their military capability to counter the likelihood of successful Iranian conventional action... If the Pentagon has pre-positioned enough equipment and munitions in the region, this might take three or four days; if not, it could take longer. If U.S. forces are to contain the Islamic Republic, they will require basing... Without a sizeable regional presence, the Pentagon will not be able to maintain the predeployed resources and equipment necessary to contain Iran... C. Proliferation causes global nuclear war. Utgoff 02 (Deputy Director of the Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division of the Institute for Defense Analyses., Survival, vol. 44, no. 2, Summer 2002, pp. 85–102 "Proliferation, Missile Defence and American Ambitions") Widespread proliferation is likely to lead to an occasional shoot-out with nuclear weapons, and that such shoot-outs will have a substantial probability of escalating to the maximum destruction possible... Unless nuclear proliferation is stopped, we are headed toward a world that will mirror the American Wild West... With... nuclear ‘six-shooters'... we will all gather on a hill to bury the bodies of dead cities or even whole nations. D. Nuclear war would devastate the region leaving millions dead. http://coteret.com... "The war could be long,"... "its length could be measured in years"... "(There will be) ongoing and massive rocket fire... which will cover most of the area of the country, disrupt the course of everyday life and cause casualties and property damage. The effect of such fire will greatly increase if the enemy fires chemical, biological or radiological ordnance… massive Iranian support... will help the organizations continue the fire over a period of indeterminate length… due to the long-range of the rockets held by Hizbullah... If the current tension between Turkey and Israel rises, Turkey may also permit, or turn a blind eye to, arms shipments and Iranian volunteers that will pass to Syria through its territory and airspace. Israel will find it very difficult, politically and militarily, to intercept the passage of forces through Iraq or Turkey. The participation of Iranian forces will make it very difficult for the IDF to occupy areas from which rockets are being fired. "Along with these steps, Iran may launch a massive terror campaign against Israeli targets within Israel and abroad... The Iranians will fire missiles at population centers in Israel, and will rebuild the nuclear facilities that were bombed, in such a way that will make it very difficult to bomb them again.... Half a million dead, a million wounded, two million refugees and displaced persons, economic damage estimated by the Iranian government at about $1-trillion—more than twice the value of all Iranian oil production in 70 years of pumping oil... "The ramifications are clear and harsh. COST TWO: PROLIFERATION A. Even without nuclear war, the devastation of a nuclear equipped Iran would be clear. http://www.slate.com... The whole emphasis on Israel's salience in this matter, and of the related idea of subcontracting a strike to the Israeli Defense Forces, is an evasion, somewhat ethnically tinged, of what is an international responsibility. If the Iranian dictatorship succeeds in "breaking out" and becoming a nuclear power, the following things will have happened: 1) International law and the stewardship of the United Nations will have been irretrievably ruined. The mullahs will have broken every solemn undertaking that they ever gave: to the International Atomic Energy Agency; to the European Union, which has been their main negotiating interlocutor up until now; and to the United Nations. (Tehran specifically rejects the right of the U.N. Security Council to have any say in this question.) Those who usually fetishize the role of the United Nations and of the international nuclear inspectors have a special responsibility to notice this appalling outcome. 2) The "Revolutionary Guards," who last year shot and raped their way to near-absolute power in Iran, are also the guardians of the underground weapons program. A successful consummation of that program would be an immeasurable enhancement of the most aggressive faction of the current dictatorship. 3) The power of the guards to project violence outside Iran's borders would likewise be increased. Any Hezbollah subversion of Lebanese democracy or missile attack on Israel; any Iranian collusion with the Taliban or with nihilist forces in Iraq would be harder to counter in that it would involve a confrontation with a nuclear godfather. 4) The same powerful strategic ambiguity would apply in the case of any Iranian move on a neighboring Sunni Arab Gulf state, such as Bahrain. The more extreme of Iran's theocratic newspapers already gloat at such a prospect, which is why so many Arab regimes hope—sometimes publicly—that this "existential" threat to them also be removed. 5) There will never be a settlement of the Israel-Palestine dispute, because the rejectionist Palestinians will be even more a proxy of a regime that calls for Israel's elimination, and the rejectionist Jews will be vindicated in their belief that concessions are a waste of time, if not worse. 6) The concept of "nonproliferation," so dear to the heart of the right-thinking, will go straight into the history books along with the League of Nations. B. Unchecked nuclear Iran causes proliferation throughout the middle east. http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil... Iran's continued insistence that it acquired its nuclear capabilities legally under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) would, if unchallenged, encourage its neighbors (including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and Algeria) to develop nuclear options of their own by emulating Iran's example, by overtly declaring possession... Such announcements and efforts, in turn, would likely undermine nuclear nonproliferation restraints internationally and strain American relations with most of its key friends in the Middle East.