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April 24, 2005

Post-show thoughts for Fox's "Iran: The Nuclear Threat"

[See the live-blogging here, and read about Fox's ideas here.]

Overall, a pretty good overview from Fox. Thoughts on the various options:

First, the Israeli strike option. I'm sure many others have pointed the following out already, but there are many many differences between Osirak in 1981 and Iran in 2005:

1. The distance: It was hard enough for the Israelis to reach Iraq. Any targets in Iran would be twice as far. Do the Israelis have an aerial refueling capability? If so, where would it be based?

2. The overflights: The 1981 strike required sneaking through Jordan. To hit Iran, there would be no sneaking through Iraq: The US has that airspace sliced and diced every which way. We would know what they were doing. The rest of the world would know we knew too, which would make for some splaining on our part, otherwise we would be seen as being complicit -- and that would be good or ill depending on who's talking at the moment . . .

3. The targets: Osirak offered one concentrated target to destroy Iraq's entire program. Iran has no such critical vulnerability for its program. Or does it? How good is US or Israeli intelligence? How much redundancy have the Iranians built into their program?

Moreover, if it took four F16s to pull off the Osirak attack, how many would be needed to attack Iran's decentralized program? Is Israel willing to risk a very large number of its aircraft?

4. The defense: how much more capable is Iran's air defense? The Fox program mentioned that Iran possesses some F14s and F4s. These are leftover from the 70s and have probably received no factory-quality maintenance since 1979. This leaves missile defense? Could the Israelis get past Iran's defenses?

Israeli policymakers will have to be comfortable with the answers to all of the above questions before attempting an aerial strike against the Iranian nuclear infrastructure. This option is their last resort. it has too many variables -- too many risks that either cannot be mitigated, or can only be reduced with significant US assistance. The Israelis will only undertake this option if they have lost all confidence in the US to solve the issue by military or diplomatic means.

As to the US options. Fox lists three, and is not explicit as to whether these three were developed by the network, and then shopped around to their experts for comments, or were proposed by the experts themselves. The former seems more likely than the latter. From Fox:

1. Covert Action: The Bush administration might send CIA agents or commandos to sabotage Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“There were no smoking guns, no fingerprints,” said Walter Russell Mead (search), with the Council on Foreign Relations. “We wouldn’t be faced with that ugly, ugly choice of, we have a war or they get a weapon.”

This plan does have a certain appeal. It is dependent on several things that could make it go dreadfully wrong:

a. Intelligence: Do we have the information we need to do this? Often, Special Forces are used in a surveillance capacity before they strike. But in this case, passive human surveillance would likely not gather very much of use, except for entry and exit patterns at a given facility, or work routines. The things we need to know in order to know if we have chosen the correct targets are more likely to be gathered through technical collection: phone conversations, gas emissions, radiation. So we need to know these things before we put our guys in. Otherwise, we're putting large numbers of operatives on the ground for no reason.

b. Mass: That's another point: This would be a lot more than just a few SF teams. There are at least a dozen key facilities, each of them the size of a large research campus, and they are scattered over the entire country. Using covert action means using large numbers of people.

c. Surprise: According to the wording above, one of the key advantages to this plan is its untraceable aspect. Sabotage, it is assumed, would be deniable. Perhaps. But Fox mentioned on air that B2 bombers could be launched from stateside and do the job themselves. More on that in a moment.

2. Naval Blockade: U.S. warships would be sent into the Strait of Hormuz (search) to stop the export of Iranian oil. This would pressure the mullahs to give up enriching uranium and allow intrusive inspections.

One downside is that Iran is OPEC (search)’s second largest oil producer, so a blockade could also put a stranglehold on the economies of many U.S. allies. Other potential problems are that it may not work fast enough and it would leave Iran’s existing nuclear facilities intact.

“So the question is not whether we could do it. We could. The question is, at what cost?” Mead said.

This seems the worst of many options. Costly to implement in terms of ships and time, costly to friendly economies and our own in turn, and has little or no direct effect on the nuke program itself. Would also hurt the Iranian populace a good bit. As we learned from Saddam, the elites always manage to weasel their way to a comfortable life, while everyone else suffers under sanctions. So what advantage at all does this offer? None. Wait . . .

Nope, still can't think of one.

3. Surgical Strikes: U.S. forces could zero in on Iranian nuclear targets, hitting the country’s highest-risk sites — such as Bushier, Natanz, Arak, Isfahan and a dozen or more others — using cruise missiles launched from land or sea.

“We are moving some aircraft carrier groups into the Persian Gulf as we speak," said retired Army Major Gen. Paul Vallely (search). "They will be positioned to launch any aircraft from the Mediterranean Sea, the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf.”

Next, F-117 stealth fighter jets could take out a radar system by firing missiles and anti-aircraft guns at Isfahan or surface-to-air missiles around the Bushier reactor (search). B-2 bombers carrying eight 5,000-pound laser-guided bunker busters would hit buried targets like the Natanz (search) enrichment site or the deep tunnels in Isfahan (search).

Surgical strikes would also aim to hurt Iran's ability to counterattack while limiting civilian casualties, according to Vallely.

“We're not after the population,” he said. “We're not after blowing down bridges anymore. We're trying to disrupt command and control, their ability to use their forces on the ground, their forces in the air, as well as their naval forces. ... Bring them to their knees early. That's the key.”

While Fox seems to have confused some of the details here, this is probably the most likely option the US would actually undertake. Also, what is the goal? Regime change, or destruction of the nuke program? This is the critical question here. This seems a better option for destroying the nuke program.

If you hit at night, then speed to Guam or Diego Garcia to park, and you are stealth, isn't that deniable? Would the Iranians know what had happened? It would probably be obvious to most, but the Bush administration could just release a statement to the effect of "Nuclear weapons are dangerous. Iran obviously didn't take the necessary precautions."

4. All-Out Assault: A huge American military effort, involving hundreds of thousands of troops, would be needed to get “boots on the ground.” But the experts FOX News spoke with consider that to be the least likely scenario.

The U.S. military is already stretched thin with its commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq (Iran is four times the size of Iraq, with almost three times as many people). A ground war could kill thousands, maybe tens of thousands, and the cost could run well into the billions. And assembling a broad coalition would be even more difficult than it was for the Iraq war.

“For one thing, the British don’t sound very willing. And let’s face it, without the British, we don’t have a coalition,” Mead said.

Vallely said that while the United States has the ability to launch a major ground invasion, it wouldn’t have to.

“We can take a country down with just our air assets,” he said. “We don't have put boots on the ground all the time if we're after specific targets.”

This option is just not going to happen. While the war in Iraq is still going on, asking the Pentagon to invade Iran is like waking up your buddy at 7am the morning after his bachelor party and offering him some Jose Cuervo shots for breakfast. Call up every individual ready reservist, activate every reserve unit and guard unit at the same time. You still have to get them there and then win fast enough to get them home without changing the law. One of the commentators on the show said the chance of this option was 1%. That's a little high.

Interestingly, this is the option that the left will most likely feel is going to happen any time. More on that later this week . . .

So, to end, here is Chester's gold-plated plan for solving the nuke problem (with the understanding that, as Dwight Eisenhower said of the plan for Normandy, plans are "useless, but planning is invaluable"):

a. Foment revolution in Iran; support protests and publicize the same; support anti-regime organizations, if possible, train them, and if possible, carve out a small portion of the country to use as a safe haven while doing so. If you can't, then build a few camps in Iraq. When the revolution happens, it will have an Iranian face. Publicity is key. There is a lot about protests in Iran in one-off press sources. These need to be featured in mainstream news outlets, Lebanon-style. Iran needs to have a Ukraine, or Lebanon moment. Like the guy standing in front of the tanks in Tiananmen, but before the ensuing slaughter. Do all you can to support dissidents, dissent, protests, etc. We here in the blogosphere are happy to help anytime.

b. While you are fomenting revolution, build human intelligence networks. Continue targeting the entire nuke infrastructure for technical collection.

c. Ask your smartest intel guys when they think Iran will have an operable weapon.

d. Halve that estimate.

e. Make that a-day. If the regime has not been transformed via protest and revolution to the extent that Iran will willfully abandon its program by a-day, then the airstrikes start.

f. Airstrikes can be deniable, but it should not be assumed that they are a one-time event. No reason not to hit again if the first wave doesn't do the trick.

There you have it. Simple enough for Napoleon's Corporal to understand.

This is all rough and meant to foster discussion. So go right ahead. We haven't covered Iran in-depth in some time -- since December it seems. Let's have it.

Update: Actually, the last Iran series ended in November. How time flies!

Posted by Chester at April 24, 2005 9:07 PM

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