Frightening Speculation of the Day: "Cargo of Death" Iranian Ship a Massive Dirty VBIED Intended for the Coast of Israel

It's such an awful notion I don't want to conceive of it as possible. Which means I probably should be slow to dismiss it.

[Russian sources claim she] was an enormous floating dirty bomb, intended to detonate after exiting the Suez Canal at the eastern end of the Mediterranean and in proximity to the coastal cities of Israel. The entire cargo of radioactive sand, obtained by Iran from China (the latter buys desperately needed oil from the former) and sealed in containers which, when the charges on the ship are set off after the crew took to the boats, will be blasted high into the air where prevailing winds will push the highly dangerous and radioactive cloud ashore.

Big problems with this theory:

1) There's no way that we just happen to get so lucky that pirates randomly seize this particular ship. [Objection to that objection: Maybe the pirates were in our employ. But I'm not really a believer in the competency of our intelligence services anymore -- how could they possibly have learned of this plot?]

2) There's no way the pirates wouldn't have already have allowed our intelligence agents on to the ship yet -- it's not only a get out of jail free card, it's a likely $10 million payday for each pirate, their biggest booty ever. [Objection to that objection: It's possible that this has already all been done, and the US and Israel are keeping quiet for the moment as they try to plot their response.]

3) Why would Iran do this with a ship registered out of Iran, for Pete's sake? [Objection to the objection: None, really, that I can think of, unless Iran figured that it would be obvious who'd done it anyway and so they might as well announce it to the world.]

Although this all seems patently absurd, so did 9/11. While liberals will all laugh at the cowardly chicken little conservatives, the difference between us seems that we can imagine the possibility of the next 9/11, whereas they can barely even acknowledge the last one.

And here's the thing: We must have paid off the pirates to have ourselves a sneaky-peek at this ship by now.

Assuming we did that, why is there no statement from the US that the cargo is harmless whatsits or the like?

From the Drawn Cutlass.

Sleeper? While it seems hard to believe Iran would risk this before it had nukes, what if the idea was to put a sleeper ship out there, a maritime second-strike, going from port to port, just killing time, in case and until Israel struck Iran?

And only then attacking?

posted by Ace at 01:04 AM

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