Despite warnings by Iran that an attack on its nuclear facilities would trigger a "domino" effect across the Middle East, in truth, Iran does not have the military power to retaliate. The warning came at a time when the deeply divided world powers met to review Teheran's co-operation with United Nations resolutions. Mohamed ElBaradei wants to give Iran more time, thus following in the footsteps of Hans Blix with Iraq, which soon afterwards resulted in the invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has endorsed Iranian promises that access to suspected nuclear facilities will increase in the months ahead. At a meeting of the body's 35-country board of governors in Vienna, battle lines were drawn both over ElBaradei's faith in an Iranian blueprint and the text of the IAEA's latest report, which said Iran had cleared up several key questions about its past research.

America and Britain are pushing for the UN to quickly impose a third round of sanctions on Iran to reinforce the drive to close the Islamic Republic's secret programme of atomic research, which appears to be slowly yielding the capability to make a nuclear weapon, they claim. China and Russia, which have not yet swung behind new sanctions, appear poised to back ElBaradei's calls for negotiators to be given more time.
"ElBaradei wants to get across that Iran has shown real willingness to co-operate and we are making important progress, so let's stick with it," said a Vienna-based diplomat. His argument is unlikely to impress those nations alarmed by a line in his nine-page report conceding the IAEA's knowledge of Teheran's current atomic activities was "diminishing".

From within Iran, warnings have been heard that if the US were to attack and would not let the inspectors perform their work, retaliation is to be expected. But Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history and strategy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem says that, for all its bombastic rhetoric and saber rattling, there is little Iran can do to protect itself from an attack by the United States or to strike back in retaliation.
Iran has an underfunded defense budget, ill-equipped ground and air forces, and a limited number of unreliable Shihab III missiles that, while technically able to reach Israel, do not pose much of a threat, van Crevald says.

Still, any first strike by the US would be ill-advised, van Crevald warns. A US air attack using cruise missiles and manned aircraft aimed at knocking out Iran's large, entrenched nuclear program would succeed only in exacerbating conflict in the Middle East and put US troops in Iraq at risk. "The scenarios are really terrible," he says.
Iran's leadership is in a panic, with the September bombing by Israel of a nuclear installation in Syria and implied threats by the US of similar action in Iran. In response, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other officials are "lashing out in all directions," van Creveld explained. "What makes me think they are in a panic was this commander of the Revolutionary Guard [Gen. Mahmoud Chaharbaghi] talking about 11,000 rockets that they would fire at a single moment," he said. "Either he's mad or he's trying to bluff or he's in a panic, because militarily, it makes no sense whatsoever."

There is little substance behind the threats. Van Creveld estimated Iran's defense budget at about $6.3 billion - just more than half of Israel's and less than 2 percent of the United States' - hardly enough to fund a conventional force. If struck, there is little Iran could do to retaliate. Its air force is a sorry collection of old US-made aircraft left over from the Iran-Iraq War, some Russian-made fighters and homebuilt Saeqeh jets modelled after the American F5 Tiger, an aircraft last updated in the 1960s and rejected by the US Air Force, he says.

Militarily, the greatest risks would be to US troops in Iraq. Those soldiers are configured to fight an insurgency, and a conventional attack by Iranian forces could result in some US troops being isolated and in danger.
"You can well imagine a scenario where they are surrounded, and where the US would use tactical nuclear weapons to extricate them," van Creveld says. Iran also could start trouble - what the Iranian commander could have been referring to when he talked about the 11,000 missiles - among Persian Gulf states, which would cause the price of oil to skyrocket and have an immediate impact on the West, he says.

The question that needs to be answered by US and Israeli officials is whether they need to be concerned about a nuclear Iran. Historically, every time a country-whether it was the Soviet Union, Israel, Pakistan, India or others-was to test a nuclear weapon, the United States warned of terrible consequences.
"Each time any country wants to go nuclear, the United States will invent some kind of reason why that country does not deserve nuclear weapons," van Creveld says. "And each time it goes nuclear, nothing happens. It's all rubbish."
The argument that a nuclear Iran is more of a threat than those other countries makes no sense.
"In the whole of history, who was more crazy than Josef Stalin?" he asks. "In the whole of history, who was more crazy than Mao Tsetung? I don't see that Ahmadinejad is more crazy than them. Maybe to the contrary. I listen to Ahmadinejad's rhetoric, but I cannot think of even one case since 1980 and the Iranian Islamic Revolution that this country has behaved irrationally. "

In the end, what may be best for the US, Israel and the rest of the region is for negotiations with Iran, van Creveld said. The West should accept a nuclear Iran and draw the country into talks about setting up some kind of regional security program. Western powers also need to ensure that the Gulf states are protected, a move that he believes already is underway, possibly through a deal with the United States.
"The greatest threat coming from Iran is not to Israel," he says. "Israel can take care of itself. The United States has nothing to fear from Iran. It is the Gulf states that have to fear."