Would the national will of the US, flagging already, fail even further if the Iranians created the perception of chaos throughout the region, and not just in Iraq?

If Iran could engineer some sort of terror blitzkrieg attack in the region -- say in the capitals of Kuwait, Jordan, and Iraq, it might bet that the American response would be to speed the US departure from Iraq, instead of causing a confrontation with Iran.

I'll take a contrarian position.

In my narrow vision of the world, conservatives tend to be the ones that actually take the "progressive steps". Liberals blather on endlessly about it, the conservatives actually do it. Reagan was perceived as one of the greatest American warmongers of the 20th century. He also functionally ended a 40 year old conflict without firing a shot. If Ted Kennedy or someone like him, had proposed the kind of cuts in nuclear arsenals that Reagen and Gorbachov did, their would have been zero support in the Senate and hence, no progress.

In terms of being a hardline nationalist nutcase bent on destroying the world,(a view much of the world had of Reagan and Thatcher during the 80's), the current Iranian leader wins the Grand Prize of all time. This also puts him in a position to acheive "Peace" with the West and Israel without internal opposition, if he were to so chose.

War is always a miscalculation by one or boths sides.

And here I am with my spidey sense tingling.

Anybody wonder what all those ex SoDs and SoSs were doing meeting with the President the other day?

I have a feeling that 2006 is going to be as interesting as 2005 (and that ain't necessarily good)

Anti-media says in his/her post

"3) A strike will "justify" their taking out of Israel, leaving only the US to oppose them."

How much do you think would be left or Iran (or the entire Arab world, for that matter) after an Iranian strike, given the nuclear arsenal Israel allegedly has?

Bush is too damaged politically to be able to lead America to attack Iran, barring a direct and incontrovertable attack on the US first. With Abramoff now adding fuel to the fire, American impotence will only increase.
Without national - even international - unity an attack on Iran will fail or be immensely costly. This was almost as true four years ago, and Iran was even then a charter member of the Axis of Evil. The initial attack was made on Iraq instead of Iran only because it was the best that could be done. The hope was, as Big Pharoah said, 'Buy Iraq, get Iran for free.' But national/international unity failed to sustain, and the gambit failed. We'll have to wait until the next round of raises circles the table to see how high the cost gets to continue this war on Islamofascism.

I think we would be wise to take the Iranian President at his word. The prophecy of the Hadith (12th Imam - return of the Mahdi) gives true believing Islamists hope for the repeal of the modern world and establishment of Islamic heaven right here on earth. Much to hope for if you're an Islamic Jihadist, much to fear if you are not. My heart says wait and see, history says we'd better get ready, big time.

While the UN is a dysfunctional body there will probably be a dance there before any strike. This could actually be a good political move because with Iran's current government, their attitude will likely be that they are going to build the bomb and the rest of the world can stuff it.

If the US attacks, it is unlikely that it will be just a surgical strike with cruise missiles. To keep Iran from attack Iraq and Afghanistan, and our other allies in the region the attacks should be with the intent of destroying Iran's ability to make war. It would be more like the 1991 Gulf War than the 80's Israeli strike. This would have the added benefit of making a general uprising, similar to that against the Taliban, more likely.

Given 10's of thousands of US troops scattered across Iraq and very long suppy lines originating in Kuwait, I got to believe the US has zero interest in starting a blood feud with the Iranians. The world has yet to see a crazy Nuke power. North Korea is a candidate but still don't know if they have the bomb. Iran will get the bomb, I think that is a given. Deterrence will be used with new American guarantees extended to our MidEast friends.

Isreal simply doesn't have the military capacity, short of its own nukes, to cause much serious damage to Iran....tryanny of distance comes to play. For Iran to be set back years, a sustained air and ground op would be needed. Who can do that? We could, but then we'd have a much wider war in the middle east. During an election year. By a lame duck White House. Ain't happening.

If I were Bin Laden, Zarqawi, and Zawahiri, I would definitely be unenthusiastic, at best, about Iran's current course of action. OBL & Co. may be fanatics but they're not idiots: they know that Iranian miscalculations could well result in a war-to-the-knife that would quickly turn the once and future Caliphate into one giant radioactive crater, not to mention Islam itself into just a lengthy historical footnote. Indee, the "seam" Chester talks about could widen to the point where it could engulf them all.

The Iranians seem to have forgotten that, as in 1914, once the troop trains start rolling, it could be damn near impossible to call them back.

I believe the Iranians are (1) pushing as hard as they can to develop a nuclear weapon, (2) they will use it against their enemies, and (3) no amount of non-military pressure will persuade the Iranians to do otherwise.

They don't care about being censured by the UN. They're as immune to economic pressure as a country can be. They don't care if their athletic teams are excluded from the Olympics.

The only thing that will put off the day they get nukes is military action. A full scale invasion and occupation (ala Iraq) is not needed. We may not know of every facility, but the ones we know of and can put out of commission (whether by airstrike or by tactical insertion of Special Forces) will allow those who would be on the receiving end of Iranian nukes to live just a while longer... a worthwhile goal, in my estimation.

And, with Sharon out of the picture, we can forget about the Israelis doing our work for us. There is no way the new Prime Minister will order military action against Iran, for fear of being blasted by Bush as not 'helping things' along the path to peace.

Civilized countries have long had problems treating the crazies of the world as they are... instead we deal with them as if they are sane and logical and only need some nice talk and gentle pressure to come along. And the sooner we realize that the President of Iran is crazy (by our standards) and deal with that, the better and safer we will all be.

And for those who hesitate against using military force now because of fears of what Iran might to in retaliation, wouldn't we rather be dealing with them now, before they have the bomb, and not later, when they can wreak whatever mischief they want, knowing they have the greatest deterrence ever invented?

Merv,

I like your analogy to the Gulf War. A 6-week air war, but without the ground component seems like it is certainly within the realm of possibility. You are right -- this would be no surgical strike.

Another thought: before Iraq there was much consternation about "the Arab street." Turned out to be a case of conventional wisdom gone wrong. Now, we have similar concerns that a US attack would radicalize the Iranian populace and turn them toward their masters in the clergy rather than away. Could this piece of conventional wisdom be off-key as well?

The plan for US troops in Iraq in the near future - say the next 5 years at least - seems to be to have 40,000 or so in Baghdad and Anbar, and then another couple of divisions on call in Kuwait. Pundits usually examine this plan through the lens of how it affects our strategy in Iraq, but it will have greater effects on the region as a whole. Two divisions in Anbar to keep the peace and be two-days driving distance from all Arab capitals. And two in Kuwait that can serve as a trip-wire to Iranians coming south (or actually defeat them) or can turn south themselves and seize the Al-Jubail oilfields if all goes to hell in Saudi Arabia. This force-planning will come to fruition in the next 18 months, and is the realistic counter to our idealistic drive for democracy in Iraq.

Finally, Glenmmore, I think you hit perfect pitch as to how constrained Bush is at this point. But all bets are off if Iran provokes anything. Bush is constrained in terms of starting anything for now. But if provoked, the easiest response for him, politically and militarily, is the kind of air war that Merv implies and I detail above.

This is one reason why I'm making no predictions about which of the two events -- airstrikes, or large-scale terror attacks -- will come first.

It's apparent that at least some of the responders are unaware of Iran's intentions.

When the leaders of Iran get to together, they end their meetings with "Death to Israel! Death to America!" It's not an empty threat.

Iran has successfully tested its Shahab-3 missiles...firing them off of freighters and detonating them at high elevations.

According to President Reagan's chief scientific advisor, William E. Graham, the sole purpose of a test like that would be to detonate nukes at high elevations...creating EMP nukes (electro-magnetic pulse nukes.)

EMP nukes fired from the Atlantic and detonated over the east coast would shut down all the electricity as far as Chicago and St. Louis and cover the entire east coast.

There would be no refrigeration, tap water, working toilets, trucks, cars, etc.

It would result in chaos and pestilence for half the country.

The nexus of Muslim fanaticism and EMP nukes means we must act quickly and dramatically.

THAT is why the former Secretaries of Defense and State were brought to the White House. We are about to ebark on an extraordinary venture to protect our very existence.

If we don't..."Death to America!" will not be just a slogan...it will be a dream come true for the demented, twisted Islamists and their messianic 'million-man-Jonestown-kool-aid' fantasies.

The US won't make a strike. The American people have no will for another war on another front. By all rights we should be in Iran & Syria for what they've done supporting the "insurgents", but it simply ain't gonna happen.

Israel probably would want to, but they can't do anything. Iran is further than Iraq and and learned the lessons of the Israeli attack on the Iraqi nuclear program, and has spread things out and has bought air defenses.

Iran will get a bomb, and just about the only thing will happen is Israel will go public with their nuclear problem, making sure that Iran knows the price they will pay if they try anything.

From what I've read Iran is developing in nukes in heavily populated civilian areas knowing that this gives them some protection against the more compassionate west.

If we were to strike, the resulting civilian deaths could likely turn the population against us -- or it could be like Germany after WWII...the people were tired of the Nazis, the country was obliterated, and people just wanted to get on with their lives.

Tried to send a trackback but your server isn't accepting them.

I've written two articles on Iran and the Bomb. We are coming to a decision point, probably by the end of March: do we accept Iran as a nuclear power, or not? If not, what are we going to do about it?

Iran used all of the EU's diplomatic efforts to stall for time while they raced to complete their quest, and they are almost there. I don't believe we can let them into the nuclear club, because Iran is governed by an aggressive and irresponsible regime that has demonstrated its complete and utter disdain for the respect of sovereignity, international law, and human life. Letting Iran have the Bomb is akin to letting Charles Manson own a gun shop... except, unlike Manson, the Iranians are capable of planning and execution.

War's coming, and it isn't going to be pretty. We can't count on the Israelis to take care of the problem, and we never realistically could, anyway. If anyone's going to take care of Iran before they attack, it's going to have to be us.

Two of you have now mentioned that Bush's meeting with former foreign policy officials earlier this week was actually about Iran. That's intriguing so I took a look at his remarks on the occasion. No mention of Iran, and 4 mentions of Iraq or Iraqis.

But who knows what they talked about with the doors closed and the cameras gone.

johnclif,

I'll double-check my trackbacking. Why the end of March? I've read this elsewhere too. What's the rationale there?

I'm not as convinced as some of you guys that Iran's leadership has a big hard-on to use a nuke as soon as possible. Look how significant a player Iran has become since knowledge of its nuclear program became widespread. I'm sure there are factions within the Iranian power structure who recognize that they are about to acquire a big pile of chips.

"Cold war" assumes that rationality drives Iranian strategy and that the rational course is survival. I doubt Iran sees it that way. ... said somebody in an unattributed post above. No, I would counter, that would only be the course if survival were the only option. And it would only be the case if some kind of monolithic Iran would "see it that way". Iran isn't doing the thinking, a group of human beings, all competing for power, is doing the thinking.

Cold War is actually the better model for what is going on, better than WWI. The "entire Persian civilization" is actually smaller and easier to diplomatically isolate than was post-WWII U.S.S.R. There is no Shiite equivalent to a Communist Internationale because the Shia constitute a minority within the world of Islam. Although Iran has active elements within e.g. Lebanon via its client state Syria, they are not exactly the kind of allies that inspire confidence in a foxhole. Syria's moribund regime is less stable than that of Iran.

To my knowledge (and I very well could be wrong on this; please correct me if you can point me to a source) there is no tradition within Shia Islam which can be thought to be analogous to Sunni Qutbism/Wahhabism. Therefore, although Ahmadinejad might spout the occasional partially-coherent anti-Semitic rant, I doubt they have a plan in place that goes, "Okay, Imam, first we nuke the heck out of Tel Aviv, and then, after the passing of the resulting nuclear winter from the massive retaliation, we can REALLY push ahead with the Universal Caliphate!"

...Why the end of March?...

I posted this over at Froggy Ruminations...

I've got an internet-acquaintance who has a theory that the reasons for our war in Iraq has more to do with macro-economics than oil or Saddam's brutality. It goes something like this...

Roosevelt took us off the gold standard, and ever since then our currency has been tied to "the full faith and credit" of the US. Since then, when the government needed money, they just printed it. [Imagine bumping up against your credit card limit, and then simply moving the limit.] There have been many requests for audits of the Gold Reserves at Ft. Knox--all of them ignored--the implication being that Ft. Knox doesn't have any (or anywhere near as much as we're lead to believe.)

We live in a world where the Dollar is the world's standard trading currency. I don't quite understand the reasons why, but we derive benefits from this. [The lefty-moonbats may actually have a point when they scream about the debt crushing the Third World, left to them by the World Bank and WTO policies. Otherwise, they're still moonbats.]

Saddam was about to begin trading his oil for Euros. The Euro is partially backed by gold. Therefore, Saddam was on the cusp of starting an Economic War against us. The Euro was making a play at becoming the world's standard trading currency. Knowing this, it is no wonder that we got no help from the French or Germans. We went to war to keep the Dollar preeminent.

What does this have to do with Iran? In spite of the nuke issue, and their irrationality over Israel, the Iranians are about to do exactly what Iraq attempted to do. They are about to sell oil on the Iranian Bourse--basically a stock or trading exchange.

The only difference I'd have with you Froggy is on the timing. The "point of no return" isn't going to be in '07 nor is it tied to the American election cycle. It's going to be this March--when this Bourse opens.

The domestic intelligensia is aware of the threat that Iran poses, but for the simple reasons--nukes pointed at Israel, the US, and the rest of the West. They don't understand the macro-economics of the matter.

Ah the joys of Iran. Plenty of options, each worse than the other.

Ultimately it comes down to assumptions about the intent of the Iranian regime. Are they messianic mad men who will launch a nuclear attack to bring about the destruction of Israel and the return of the 12th Imam or are they simply going to try to play big boy power politics?

Neither option is very attractive.

I think we’ll get a good read on where the President is going during the State of the Union. If Iran figure prominently, I think we can read that as the beginning of the campaign to build support and prepare the public for what’s coming. If he doesn’t, it’s not definitive of course, but I think it may indicate that the administration may ultimately be willing to accept a nuclear Iran (or they’ve come to the conclusion they can’t stop it).

If an attack does happen, I agree that a sustained air campaign is still the most likely scenario but the issue then becomes, what happens the day after? Iran isn’t going to take it without striking back. They can make life a lot harder in parts of Iraq that have been calm till this point. They’ve had 20+ years to place terror cells across the world and of course the Lebanon-Israel frontier may explode.

Unfortunately, that may be small potatoes compared to what Iran with nukes will do.

I'll double-check my trackbacking. Why the end of March? I've read this elsewhere too. What's the rationale there?

ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, has said that Iran could have a nuke by the end of March.

Since the maniacal head of Iran believes that the end time is near, one might expect Iran to follow through with his vision...a vision held by 20% of Iranians, according to an article today on WorldNetDaily.

Chester,

Your contrarian scenario is far too rosy. Ahmedinajad was deeply involved in the 1979 hostage taking. Moreover, you leave out what many analysts really fear - an alliance among China, Russia and Iran. Russia has the most advanced ICBM technology currently deployed. China has economic vitality and cash to buy. Iran has strategic position. An alliance like this increases the probability of a 1914 scenario, but with nuclear weaponry.

chsw

I think the current stalemate results out of what Iran can exploit in Iraq if the West were to launch an actualy strike. That's why any move will probably come at the very last minute -- in order to buy time. Of course, there's the typically reported Iranian agent infilitration into the south of Iraq, and the general pro-Iran sentiment and connections there. But I also read that Iran is amassing some 200,000 troops on its western border, in preparation of an invasion of the country -- blitzkrieg style -- in the south, should the West try to attack it. And most of our own men aren't down there.

In terms of buying time, I mean building up the Iraqi army and the country's national institutions so that it can deal with such a threat should the West actually have to do something about Iran.

The Israeli elections are at the end of March. This creates a temporary power vacuum of its own.

chsw

Iran will use their nukes as a deterrent for any regime-change and then can do more damage by exporting terror, etc.

This way they've got their "defense" all set up and can work "safely" at whatever nefarious stuff they want to do.

Plus the leadership gets to live, which won't happen if they use a nuke. Nuking Israel is just their fantasy and not a reality, much like some Americans want to turn France or Mecca into a glass parking lot...not for real.

Also, keep in mind Iran has experienced poison gas attacks and city-busters from Iraq before. If their original program was designed to counter any Iraqi WMD's can you really blame them?

Great debate here.... first time listener, first time caller.

It is practically impossible to ascribe to Ahmadinejad any kind of an understandable "rational" strategy. And the mullahs are nuttier.

Iranian hard line politics are infused with the concept of the 12th Imam, caliphate, yada yada.. Unfortunately for the schizocracy of Iran, they rule a bunch of Persians. Persians are civilized.

The Iraninian government does not have the benefit of the support of its people. Eventually, the islamic republic will fall, and that time is close. From 79 til now, they have gone on further and more incoherent rants about Israel and the Great Satan, which can only lead one to the conclusion that as their political rhetoric becomes more insane, their leadership has done likewise; to wit: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Khatami would never have engaged in the damning talk and insan policies of the current government. Neither would he have blown off a meeting with the EU or the IAEA. Tehran Sally has done both.

Don't act as if we are dealing with a rational "realpolitik" player in Ahmadinejad; we're not.

There will be no cold war because there will never be a nuclear Iran. A joint US-Israeli-NATO strike involving both air and ground forces will eliminate the Iranian nuclear program and likely cause a revolution by the civilized Persians who desparately want to join the civilized world. This WILL be far easier than Iraq.

Chester, the rational for the end of March has to do with elections, but in which country I can't recall.

Iran signed an agreement with Syria, in December, which allows Iran to send nukes and missiles to Syria for safe-keeping if attacked by the US and Israel. It also allows Iran to station their military forces in Syria to launch nuclear missiles at the southern parts of Europe, Italy and Austria to name two, in case of hostilities with the US and Israel.

It's like chess: we checked Iran by invading Afghanistan and Iraq, now they have made a compromising move. Next move is our's.

Most of the positive comments here are valid. I agree with Chester that EMP nukes, just one, could turn Fortress America into Tomb America in an instant. That the meeting between former SoDs and SoSs are a prelude to something big on the horizon requiring more experinced thinking and consensus than available with Administration secretaries alone. Saving the nation, saving or culture requires all hands on deck and in agreement.

Iran doesn't care about killing millions of Palestinians along with Israelies, both are infidels as far as Iran is concerned. We have to stop them and soon!

And we should not be worried about the civilian casulaties in Iran, as has been mentioned in Regime Change Iran several times, the people would defend their country against American troops on their soil even though they hate the Immams.

There is this one point, the president of Iran does not have his finger on a launch button, president Bush does and can launch Irans demise instantly.

Frankly guys, the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran scares the sh*t out of me. Thanks Kelly for the larger stain on my trousers.
I'm not sure I agree however with the idea that Bush is too politically impotent to do anything about it. I believe the president(and his cabinet) have the brains to see the writting on the wall, and the balls to do what needs to be done. At least I fervantly pray so. The citizens of this country have spent untold billions financing a military to protect us from just this sort of senario. If our leaders are not going to use it in our time of need...I want my money back.

The scariest element is that the people of Iran hate the mullahs and vice versa. I have spoken to several Iranians who have gotten out at different times and almost all say the people absolutely despise the religious leadership but the mullahs have the guns.
Most think that the mullahs would be just as happy to lose Teheran and other cities. The city people really hate the religious leadership.
The leaders of the Soviet Union still loved their own people and didn't want to risk a nuclear war. The mullahs really don't care.

On the purely political side, what would be the domestic and international repercusions of a US strike against Iran? I have been trying to figure that out for a while now, and to little avail domestically. I think I can figure out the international side. The usual suspects will declaim the US, our allies will mostly sit on the sidelines or perhaps slap our wrist, and most will secretly be glad that the US has removed one more problem that they would have to deal with. But now that Bush has won re-election, domestically what can be expected?

Lots of good comments here. I do feel that many comments here underrate how quickly American public opinion will change and harden in response to an Iranian nuclear attack. I often thought how Bin Laden, Arafat, Zarqawi, Zawahiri, and now Ahmadinejad look at the West the same way that Hitler and Tojo did. They see the affluent society where people are comfortable and do not want war. Nor do they need war to enrich themselves by plunder, the capitalist economy affords better opportunities. That desire to avoid the unpleasantness, brutality and destruction that war entails is reflected in the attitudes and actions of their leaders.

Those actions, observed by people with the mindset of Hitler, Bin Laden, Arafat, Zarqawi, Zawahiri, and now Ahmadinejad, create the germ of an idea – “Just with ferocity I can conquer this society and plunder its wealth.” Not having an understanding or tendency towards democracy they do not appreciate how quickly public opinion can change in response to events.

The classic example of this occurred during WWII. I saw related first by John Derbyshire of National Review:

“….during the early weeks of what in England was called "the phony war" (the Germans called it sitzkrieg — "the sitting-down war"), there was an illuminating exchange in the House of Commons. Some members of Parliament were putting pressure on Sir Kingsley Wood, the head of the air ministry, to bomb German munitions stores in the Black Forest. Sir Kingsley was shocked. "Are you aware it is private property?" he protested. "Why, you will be asking me to bomb Essen next!" Essen was the home of the famous Krupp munitions factories.

Four years later the Royal Air Force firebombed Hamburg, completely leveling eight square miles of the city and slaughtering 40,000 people — most of them civilians — in one night alone….”

My point is that people who think Bush is constrained or unwilling to fight Iran are not considering how American public opinion will change in response to Iranian aggression.

I think I've read everything I could find on this subject over the last few days, and everything I've read has bypassed one key possibility: Does Iran already have a nuke?

If so, that changes the game. If Iran is simply waiting for a pretext to detonate a weapon, then the situation is far more dangerous.

"3) A strike will "justify" their taking out of Israel, leaving only the US to oppose them."

Huh?

If Israel strikes first, Iran will not have the capability to retailate.

Israel can field 18 divisions of infantry and armor (that's 50% larger than the authorized strength of the US Army and Marines combined) in 72 hours. Israel has more first-strike aircraft than the US Air Force.

Right now, I bet half the Iranian Jews (who migrated to Israel) are back in Iran. Marking targets.

Five times the combined Muslim world has tried to eradicate Israel. Five times the super-powers stayed Israel's hand.

Wonder what will happen with Iran?

The one thing that would make US action against Iran impossible is Bush's political future. Thing is, Bush has no political future, nor would he care. Bush can not run for anything.
Fifty percent of Americans already know that Iran has always been a bigger problem than Iraq or Afghanistan. Those of us that remember the Carter Administration have always assumed that Afghanistan and Iraq have been have simply been a way to put bases and troops within striking distance of Iran.
We will see a few days of the B2 Spirits and G117 Frisbees knocking out Iran's anti-air, then a few weeks of open season on anything bigger than a beebee gun by everything we have that flies. That includes both the zoomies and the rotorheads. Then the sixty days of the War Powers Act will loom, the idiots in Congress will squeal and scream, Bush won't care, he can't run for anything anyhow. The Dems will screech, Bush will stop the 'fight' and the Republicans will pick up another few Senate and House seats in '06.

Can't argue with your predictions or most of the analysis here. Only two points. First, Ahmadinejad sounds exactly like Hitler in the late 1930s. The worldwide political situation is close enough to 1936-1938 for government work. Failure to take action will lead to some cataclysmic event resulting in war somewhere due to a failure to appreciate Islam's basic tenets of conquest for Muslims against all infidels.

Second, Everyone, including most of us here, have consistently underestimated President Bush's resolve and guts. I don't think he cares one wit about whether he has the political capital to generate support for war in Iran. He will go to war if it is required to defend America from this threat, even if Congress can't get their act together. Don't ask me how he would pull it off, I just feel the man has a finely developed sense of right and wrong and doesn't care if Congress has insufficient courage to do the right thing. He has managed to exceed everyone's, (and I mean everyone's) expectations of what he can accomplish. And this is no exception.

He'll not allow Iran to develop AND deploy nuclear weapons -- one way or the other.

Subsunk

"at the moment there is quite a transitional seam in Israeli politics and therefore policy. If there were plans on the drawing board for an Israeli strike, they are being shelved for sure."

I wouldn't be so sure of that. No particular quotes or links, just various things I've been reading about how Israeli govt is organizing post-Sharon.

These comments are absolutely spectacular.

I say let the Iranians mass their troops on the border with Iraq as much as they want. Let them leave their troops there and then when they do something stupid, we'll turn it into a free-fire zone and make the retreat from Kuwait City in 1991 look like a kindergarten picnic.

chsw, I think there are possibilities for loads of ad hoc cooperation among the Iranians, Chinese and Russians, and really, let's be honest, such cooperation already exists. But I think the idea that they will create some kind of alliance is unlikely because they all distrust each other way too much. Especially Russia and China. Iran can play them off against each other and get favors from both with ease though.

Subsunk,

Even though I can't figure out how he'll pull it off, I share your basic and unfaltering belief that Bush will save the day simply on the cojone factor.

If Iran gets the bomb, they will see it as cover to intensify their terrorist war against Israel. They won't pre-emptively nuke Israel and won't expect (rightly) Israel to do the same.
That being said, I don't think they plan on stopping with Israel. Half of Iraq and the oilfields of Saudi are Shi'ite, and I'm sure they don't like our presence in Afghanistan. Plus, I'm sure they have no qualms about using Hezbollah in Syria, either.

They have expansionist ideas and will push them unless their face is pushed into the mud.
We'll eventually do it, but I bet we wait too long.

If I were the Israeli defense minister right now, I'd be pretty GD nervous.

I don't think Iran already has a nuke. The first one off the line will be tested in the desert and held up for all the world to see. Malmood will bludgeon every one he can with the propaganda it provides while he builds the stockpile. However he has an achilles heel. Oil.

He's totally dependent on oil and gas for his foreign exchange. He's already causing serious financial disruption with the stock market down 30% and wealth fleeing the country. Dismantling the oil and gas infrastructure one facility at a time, is a low collateral damage operation which can be accomplished with Special Ops, Stealth JDAMS, Cruise Missles and a few MOABs for effect.

We will be supported by all our "friends" in Europe and the Congress will give the go ahead. Of course this option depends on a timely response. There's a diminishing return the longer he gets to acquire further weapons.

The nuke threat will be what's in the news, but the key to Tehran is its oil and gas facilities. The mullahs may decide it is time for Malmood's workplace accident and car swarm rather than give the reformers so much ammunition and leverage.

It's definitely a worrisome situation, particularly as a lot depends on the rationality of the Iranian power structure.

We should note that Mao was extremely bombastic during the 1950s. Then the Chinese got the bomb. Suddenly they were much less bombastic. (There's an interesting analysis of the question at http://homepage.mac.com/msb/163x/faqs/nuclear_warfare_101.html)

It boils down to realizing just how much horror you have available, _and that the other side does too_. Which means that actually doing anything can result in destruction.

_If_ you're rational about it. Mao was a materialist and didn't want to risk China getting blown off the map. I don't know -- and a lot depends on -- whether the Iranians really believe that they can win a nuclear war with Allah on their side.

Terry- The 12th "Imam" is NOT the Mahdi, he's a Shia fantasy aimed at dividing the Persians and setting up Persian nationalism from other Muslims; the real Mahdi (Mohammed ibn Abdullah) will be the next elected Kalif by the shura council (in Saudi Arabia). The ahadith are clear that he will be in Mecca and that an army will come across the desert from the east in Arabia to fight him. The Mahdi will come via peace and economic prosperity- not through a war with Tehran. If anything, the new Islamic dinars, and Iran's plan to dump US dollars in March 2006 will do more to bring the Mahdi than Israel's bombs. Don't forget that Palestine will be back in Muslim hands before the Massih-ad-Dajjal is slaughtered, and in the last days there will be little technology. If you would like to claim that the annihilation which creates this scenario is eminent, then Allahu 'alem.

I wonder how many people realize that it is Israel who is playing the cards here? If you don't believe me- go read the Ha'aretz Daily and the Jerusalem Post sometime. Israel has been pulling the strings of US military policy in the middle east for a long, long time. Israel just loves freaking out Americans and having Congress attack its enemies for it, so precious Israeli blood doesn't get spilled. Ask yourself- who gets caught in the middle when Iran and Israel go at it? It's the US troops in Iraq, and they are downwind of any nukes. Hasn't anyone noticed that this whole Iran scare is fairly recent? I mean, no one was complaining 5, 6, 7 years ago that Iran has nukes... they may have just elected a jerk this summer, but the whole nuke scare was just starting to pick up at the same time, and BANG! Everyone's in panic mode.

This is a tremendous discussion.

One time, roundabout 1993, I was a sort of referee in a political debate between two friends with WIDELY divergent views. At sometime during the rambling discussion, my friend on the Left said "We should not be waging war for oil." My friend on the Right replied, without hesitation:

"Can you name a better reason?"

If Iran wants to start the world in a slide back toward the Middle Ages, their target would not be Israel or any Westernized nation (although the Eastern US EMP idea must look tantalizing to them).

It would be across the Gulf, in Saudi Arabia (in my opinion). Last time I saw numbers, Saudi Arabia sits on roughly 25% of known conventional petroleum reserves, produces about 30%, and supplies over 60% of Europe's needs (that last number is fuzzy and may be errant).

Two thirds of all that goes through Abqaiq, population ~20,000, nearly all expats. Most of that comes out of two huge terminal on the Gulf, where it THEN must pass through the Straits of Hormuz.

Were Iran to render those ports or Abqaiq itself unoperable, they'd not need to kill the West, as the West would kill ourselves fighting over $30 loaves of bread.

Maybe that last part's hyperbole. Maybe not.

The Saudis are conducting a study on building a pipeline through the Empty Quarter through the Yemen to the Arabian Sea. Why?

Anyway, great discussion. My point is that a lot of these scenarios are hideous bloody scary; Iran taking Saudi Arabia offline, to me, is slow death scary and makes my hands sweat more.

Tim,

Good point about Iran v. Saudi Arabia. But Iran doesn't have to actually use the nukes, they just have to be seen as being crazy enough to. Suddenly, they run OPEC and set the price of oil.

Also, I would assume the Saudis are working on getting thier own nukes and the day Iran announces that they have one, the Saudi effort goes into overdrive.

Anybody sleeping better thinking there are two nuclear armed countries in the gulf? It's not like the Saudi's government has great long term prospects and thier replacements aren't likely to be pro-Western liberals, are they?

The possiblilites just get better, don't they?

Since two commenters seemed puzzled by my third point, I feel compelled to expand upon it. (Both Pissedoffinnj and Ymal Brucker brought it up.)

3) A strike will "justify" their taking out of Israel, leaving only the US to oppose them.

With all due respect to Israel's renowned fighting forces and their will to survive, it would only take two well-placed warheads (say Beersheba in the south and Nazareth in the north) to obliterate the state of Israel entirely. And Ahmadinejad has been quite clear that he intends to do just that. I doubt seriously he's concerned about collateral damage. The Negev would shield Egypt to some degree. Lebanon has enough Christians to "justify" deaths there, and Jordan is a "corrupt" western-style country. The Palestinians would die, but they're martyrs anyway.

So unless you think Israel knows where every missle and warhead would be and they can successfully take them out on the first strike, then the possibility of Israel surviving a nuclear attack would be almost nil.

The last part is hyperbole. maybe even ignorant hyperbole. Go ahead, slag the oil fields, that just means the trillion barrels of oil shale under Montana, Wyoming and Alberta are not economically viable to develop. So Gas gets a little more expensive. Big deal.

I've watched Gas go from $.99 to $2.30 and unemployment is still 5%.

The EMP threat is overhyped (like Y2K).

Chester asked

Would the national will of the US, flagging already, fail even further if the Iranians created the perception of chaos throughout the region, and not just in Iraq?

If Iran could engineer some sort of terror blitzkrieg attack in the region -- say in the capitals of Kuwait, Jordan, and Iraq, it might bet that the American response would be to speed the US departure from Iraq, instead of causing a confrontation with Iran.For the next two years, the national will is irrelevant. Bush will do what he thinks best regardless of public opinion. He'll worry about propping up the national will afterwards. (I'm not being critical of Bush - simply stating observable fact. One of the reasons I support him is because he doesn't sway with every wind of public opinion.)

Whoops. Make that "the trillion barrels of oild shale under Montana, Wyoming and Alberta are *now* economically viable to develop".

Commenting as I read through. If the reputed "flagging of the national will" is based on the perceptions created by the Alien Nation Media, it is a chimera. The polls reporting this flagging are as trustworthy as the 'reporting'. I don't think Iran will initiate any blitzkrieg attacks, as it invites a retaliation which needn't be too fussy about collateral impacts. I suspect Iran will continue to creep, backstab, pay off killers and push blackmail and Madrids. I think Iran sees a nuclear weapon (Homer, "It's pronounced nooklier") as another kind of defensive fortress. The stakes immediately raise, because if anyone uses one, the piling on will be horrifying. That Armegeddon scares me. That the population of Iran is some 50% under 25-30, (help me, is this correct?), the mullahs have this potential brushfire/firestorm at their own feet to contend with. Given our military's skill with small unit/Special Ops, it's a resource waiting to be exploited. (I suspect it's being exploited already.) Will a nuclear Iran dampen down that dry grass enough to slow the overt passing out of SF matches? don't know. And finally, there is the impact of a Democratic Iraq next door. Elections are force multipliers to be sure. Another finally, Tim may be most correct.

Chester is on the money here.

Sharon gone, confusion in Israel; Democrats chattering about impeachment of Bush; open divisions in the US as November 06 approaches. All this will mean TO IRAN that it CAN attack Israel and cause havoc in the Middle East. As Armageddon and the mullahs "KNOW", the US is basically gutless, and in the face of real havoc, will happily withdraw. Europe and Russia are not even important factors anymore. India will stand back and watch.

"Iraq the Model" is depressed because of the problems Iraq has in putting together a democratic government; this being the first time in Middle East History, the expectations have been - perhaps - too high; and the disappointment, too crushing...

Victor Davis Hanson made a speech at Hillsdale, in which he pointed out that Sparta attacked Athens because ... it could.

Iran will be thinking that it can. Now.

Maybe an analogy is in order here. No one here would consider robbing a bank, because the risk of bad things happening are far too great and it's morally untenable.

But there are people who do rob banks. Some might even do it knowing they're going to get caught. The difference in thinking between those of use who would never consider robbing a bank and those who actually do rob banks is huge.

And then there are the truly crazy people. That brings us to Ahmadinejad (sp?). He apparently drives a 30 year-old car. That might be our first clue that his motivations are not the same as ours.

He also believes that a mystical light shone on him during a recent speech he gave. He even believes that the people in the audience never blinked during his 22 minute address.

He also thoroughly believes that the end of the world is near. He might be nearly right with his self-fulfilling prophecy.

What makes Ahadinejad so dangerous is that his nation is taking every step to carry out his promise...those Shahab-3 missile tests off of freighters aren't being done for nothing.

But Ahmaddinejad isn't alone in his wish...meetings are ended with chants of "Death to America!"

When there is a leader with messianic dreams of end times, combined with the ability and support to act out the dream, the only suprise would be that this zealot would betray his own heart and NOT attack the US.

Ahmadinejad is not the type of person who would decide against his own grand obsession. His mind is that of the crazed robber...not the mind of rationality.

He isn't motivated by money...he is motivated by a passion to create end times. His every move indicates that is where he is headed.

This spring. No later.

Political considerations and popularity fall way down the list on the operative influences that G.W. Bush will consider when the safety and security of the nation are at stake.

I don't see a standoff war conducted over the course of weeks or months - DS Redux - as being useful at all. Not that we couldn't break Iran's infrastructure and their military that way, but the objective doesn't require a broad target set to achieve victory.

What do we need to accomplish here? We aren't targeting Muslims for being Muslim. We aren't targeting populations to bring about total surrender of states.

This isn't about genocide, on our part. Yet. It has never been anything else but that on the part of our enemy. The pivot is become the existence of a nuclear armed jihadi nation - which Pakistan is not, but Iran most certainly will be.

Jihadis conduct operations as Joe family man - right up to the moment they detonate their little bombs inside schools, mosques, funeral parties, buses, or restraunts - because their existence is dedicated not to victory but instead to death. Armed with boxcutters, shitty little bombs, websites, stolen airplanes, or guns, they get to do their act all the time. They win no war. They win no battles.

Except each murderer killing random innocents is just the head of a long line of nihilist savages waiting for their turn. And the swamp just keeps breeding more. They will never win the war - but that's not the motivation behind the murders. It's the murders for murder's sake that drives them.

The savages are on the cusp of unveiling a REAL bomb. What paradise awaits the shahid who sacrifices not only himself, but an entire Muslim nation, in attacking the infidel?

None, say I - but no jihadi has ever evidenced the least interest in a theological discussion on the point. Not one that didn't involved death for somebody. The jihadi lives to die in the act of empty murder.

Does anyone here doubt that Iran won't use a bomb? I don't.

The end objective of the war on terror remains to be restoring the safety and security of the nation and the safety of our citizens.

We have chosen to instill (not install) representative democracy across a swathe of countries in the HOPE that such governments will break the cultural and tribal cycles of despotism that produce Islamic jihadis.

We have tried a new kind of war to this end; sadly, there isn't going to be time to see if surgical war would have worked. All previous clashes between western civ and Islam have ended, without exception, when one or the other side ran out of resources or interest in conducting wars of annihilation. Capital "A" annihalation: no prisoners but women and children, cities and regions laid waste.

The Iranian people may well be awfully tired of the mullahs. They will soon have a window of opportunity in which to stand up for civilization, or they will join the mullahs as ash drifing east over south central Asia.

Targeted airstrikes and ground raids. Destroy known facilities, locate, kill/capture leadership, and sieze and hold known or suspected nuke related sites.

There will be a pause in which the Iranian population will be granted a choice.

We may be cursed with a high ratio of ne'er- do -well legislators and a population jaded by too much cable TV and Mickey D's, but we've got a president who understands his office.

Faster, please.

The EMP threat is overhyped (like Y2K).

What do you base that assertion on? Not only does William E. Graham, the former scientific advisor to President Reagan, believe in the danger of an EMP nuke, so does former CIA director Woolsey.

But perhaps more importantly, so does Iran...which is why they've tested detonating Shahab-3 missiles at high elevations after firing them from freighters. In other words, Iran is going to try it...if they get the chance, they are going to fire a nuke up high over the US to see if it will knock out our electricity.

If it works, it will put the US into a true disaster. Even if we flatten Iran with nukes from subs in response, the US will still experience untold starvation and pestilence.

Who and What is Ahmadinejad? A violent radical who's only experience with Westerners was torturing hostages seized from our Embassy in 1979. That's it. Of COURSE he will nuke Israel. Decisively. Killing most of the Israelis. Unfortunately without Sharon there exists no will politically to strike first despite this knowledge. Everyone knows Iran will destroy Israel. There just isn't the ability to muster the political courage to do something about it. And as a practical matter it would require US support which won't be forthcoming.

The Democratic Party defacto opposes Israel's existence and objected to a resolution condemning Iran's desire to "wipe Israel off the map" and Holocaust denial. A poster upthread could come out of Kos or DU or Howard Dean's office.

We of course will also be hit. Iran shelters bin Laden's senior staffers and Saad bin Laden, most influential son. Ahmadinejad has said publicly that striking the US will cause us to collapse, and has threatened to burn the Great as well as the Little Satan in the "fire" of Islamic nuclear weapons. When you are the agent of the 12th Imam, and God shines his special light on you at the UN with world leaders at your feet, what other course of action can a devout Muslim take?

Of COURSE we will get war. It's not ours to choose. Democrats have so poisoned the ability of the President to face REAL dangers that we will certainly lose at least one and possibly two cities. Ahmadinejad with no experience of the real West believes this will cause us to collapse in wickedness and Kerry take over, grovel with apologies. Or perhaps Pelosi. HE understands us less than we do him. Unlike the Soviets who understood us very well, since they were just a nasty variant of ourselves.

Likely happenings? Strikes on Israel that kill most of the population, with retaliation by the Israelis that kill many but not all Iranians which Ahmadinejad expects publicly. Probably also strikes against Europe, and several terrorist smuggled nukes into US cities, likely San Diego (important Navy base) and LA (using the Iranian exile community, probably as dupes, to facilitate shipment of the nukes).

At that point, well the Dems will certainly be happy with Israel being wiped off the map, and us being hit ("we deserved it" they will cry). However I guess most people will turn them out in a fury, and we will be launched into a real, global, ongoing war against Militant Islam that will make the slaughter on the Western Front 1914-18 seem like a picnic. The lights are going out all over the World, and we will not see them lit again in our lifetimes.

Just like the slaughter in the trenches could have been solved by fixing the Balkans before it errupted, so too could Iran before they went completely capable. IMHO their nukes are already there, they just need the warheads fitted to the new Shahab 3 missiles. This is the seam they seek to exploit. They've been open about it. They tried guerilla warfare in the Gulf in the 1980's found that it doesn't work on the Ocean against the USN. Now they have their trump card. Nukes. Probably with the threat of more against us unless we surrender. It's just a bigger version of the 1979 Hostage takeover. "Do this or we kill them."

That's what Ahmadinejad knows

Chester -- Wouldn't be so sure about Russia and China being bitter enemies. 2005 saw a breakthrough in diplomatic and military relations, with both countries holding unprecedented joint military exercises (invasion style, looked like practice for Taiwan). And they've re-energized the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a once relatively irrelevant institution, in what looks to me like the beginning of a drive to oust the U.S. from Central Asia post-Andijon. I'd say the new world is more about practical interests on both sides rather than ideology, etc. There's likely a mutual benefit to making sure Iran stays alive and kicking as people in the upper hierarchies of their governments have extensive business interests there -- and in Syria, as they did Iraq.

Iran's counting on their vetos and they'll probably get it. What will be more important is not if they side with us, but if Europe can revive its will to fight as its patience wears thin with its own negotiations. The Holocaust comments from Ahmadinejad seem to be really taking the piss out of Germany.

No nation has received the full extent of our collective power/wrath for decades.

The commentors here who opine that the Arab world sees the US as weak are correct. They even teach that to the jumpin jihadis in their fun little schools.

We need to make an official statement putting us firmly into an alliance with Israel. A statement to the effect that the Arab world's first nuclear detonation, for any reason anywhere, would be their last.

These thugs do not understand diplomacy at all, but are impressed with power.

Time to start "testing" our nukes in international waters in the Arabian sea.

Welcome back, Chester. I missed your blogging.

Excellent discussion. Allow me to throw in my $0.02.

Predicting Iran's future behavior after they acquire nukes is futile...and misses the point. The US simply cannot allow Iran to have nukes.

There's no question that the American people would be overwhelmingly in favor of decisive military action in response to a nuclear attack against the US. But that also misses the point. It is absolutely essental for the US to take action to prevent this from occuring.

Any suggestion that Bush is politically constrained from taking such (dare I say it?) pre-emptive action is to risk committing the oft-repeated error of misunderestimating (;o>) him. I'm sure that Saddam, bin Laden, Kerry, and Gore all have unique insights concerning this.

I think the sustained air campaign is the most likely military scenario. I don't think it wouldn't be necessary to hit every single nuke-related facility in Iran to throw their nuke program into disarray. And signficantly degrading their military capabilities in the process wouldn't hurt our cause either.

As we speculate on how the US will react to events in Iran, I think it's fair to say that this scenario we currently face has already been war-gamed in great detail. If you look at a map of the ME, I think you will see that a grand strategy has been unfolding over the last four years. Bill Roggio made a great point on this over a year ago:

It is no accident that Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia have been divided and surrounded in this manner. These nations have been ringed with a series of logistical bases, naval, air and special operations bases and prepositioned military equipment. The facilitie provide the support and logistical chain needed in the event that military operations must be executed from the spearhead in Iraq. Without Iraq, threat of invasion into Iran was limited to amphibious assault from Indian Ocean or Persian Gulf. While not militarily impossible, an amphibious assault would require enormous resources and increase the risk to Naval assets and the assault force. The American ground presence in Iraq provides for increased flexibility and safety if future operations are required.

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure our course WRT Iran has already been charted, our future actions having long been planned in advance. We're just waiting until a decision point is reached, based upon success or failure of diplomatic options. The ball, I think, is in Iran's court.

And speaking of Bush's meeting with the former Secretaries, I think that had much more to do with Iran than Iraq. Despite the negative view promulgated by the media, Iraq is not a crisis. It does not merit such an unprecedented consultation with so many former high-level administration officials. But Iran is and does. And I have to wonder: was Bush soliciting policy advice for a difficult decision to make...or seeking political support for a difficult choice already made?

The EMP threat is overhyped.

To some degree, that's true. I used to work at SAC headquarters and part of my job involved EMP studies. First of all, any nuke will create an EMP burst, albeit localized. To create an effective high-altitude EMP burst, you have to hit a sweet spot in the ionosphere. Even if you do that, the EMP distribution is not uniform due to the electromagnetic sphere; the degree of upset varies widely. You don't just draw a circle of X radius around a burst point. And if you want to cover the CONUS, you'll need several bursts. One won't do it.

Sorry, I can't get more specific. Any more detail is, AFAIK, still classified.

Some will cite that one high-altitude test in the Pacific that supposedly turned out half the lights in Honolulu. But remember: half the lights stayed on.

I'm betting no Iranian nukes will ever reach Israel because any missiles would have to navigate a gauntlet of American and Israeli anti-missile systems from the Patriot in Iraq (PAC-2 and PAC-3) to the more capable Arrow as point defense... Anyone know if Aegis cruisers in the gulf would be able to intercept? Firing 2nd maybe a better option. Although waiting for an EMP over the US does scare me.

Great discussion -- very smart bloggers -- but to save us having to stay up all night typing and reading -- let's just ask the expert -- the guy who started it all: Jimmy Carter, remember?

Robert,

Your musings on China and Russia make me wonder about things from a different perspective:

Is there a chance, any chance at all, that such a Chinese-Russian-Iranian pact could galvanize NATO into working better, both in this instance and in the future?

Sadly, even if so, the most the Germans and French could offer would be moral support, not military forces. They just don't have that much.

Enigma,

I agree with Bill's estimation, except that I have to point out that the ground option in Iran is really a last resort. And I also think you are right about that big meeting this week of officials. It just sounded strange to me that Bush would consult all those folks on Iraq. He's not going to change his Iraq policy, no matter what Madeleine Albright says. But as you state, has a decision already been made about Iran that he is seeking consensus for? My guess is that the decision has not been made and he's seeking second opinions and outside the box thinking. Look for similar meetings with Congressmen about "Iraq".

Also, recapping what many have posted, looks like all of the above will happen in March:

-Election in Israel -- outcome not sure
-Iran has nukes according to El Baradei
-Iran sells oil on in Euro-denominated instruments

So perhaps we are looking at a 90-day time-frame. I'm just spitballing here.

Also, I'm about to post another update in the main body of the original post, so check it out.

Chester -

I stand by my "sieze and hold".

The word is already laid down: "Iran will not become a nuclear armed state."

Better to capture the evidence than destroy it.

Not for Bush's political comfort or cover, but to bring the evidence of Iran's threat front and center. The left will ignore any evidence, of course, but they are on their way out.

Would that we could send the 3ID and maybe 2d MarDiv up to conduct an inventory in Syria...

I bet that NOT doing that in 2003 is regarded as a crucial error. Allowing the left to promulgate the "no evidence of WMD" unchallenged turned out to be a pretty detrimental move.

Well, to calm down some of the "they'll nuke us if they get it", I think there are some things that need to be addressed.

First of all, it's obvious why the mullahs ousted the moderates and put in a hardliner as their front man. WE ARE on more than two of their borders. We are not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but we are in all of the stans (except uzbekistan due to political issues, one of which is that it is still leaning hard on its Russian relationship), not to mention in the Persian Gulf and we own the Straits of Hormuz. All of which spells something ugly for Iran's future, at least to the Iranians.

On the otherhand, the last four years have seen both Iraq and Afghanistan getting serious economic aid from Iran including building power infrastructure, roads and trade agreements. All of which seems odd in the face of growing political problems. Yet, at the same time, the hardliners are in fact shoring up their regime, sort of like the porcupine feeling he might be attacked and puffing out all its quills to ward off a potential predator and the predator isn't necessarily the US directly, but in fact, democracy on both its borders and even liberalization in Kuwait (you know they have just registered all women to vote and they outnumber the men?) and democracy movements in the north. We may not be able to see it with the media blackout we continually get from there (by the way, did you hear that the Iranian Kurds have organized themselves as a political movement and made it quite public?), but my guess is, the mullahs are shaking in their turbans. Don't forget, we've said we will support all democratic movements across the globe (particularly there which means we are probably funnelling in lots of money and hopefully that means we are crashing their dinar or whatever)

Of course, if I was a Mullah, having the US all around me and democracy closing in, my own population disillusioned, not just with political freedom, but the crappy economy they were stuck with (it grew something like 1.5% last year and that is with the giant increase in oil prices), I guess I'd feel the need to act extremely tough, too and Almondhead is the perfect tool.

I agree that Iran's nuclear weapon desires are largely for "self defense" in regards to self preservation of the current regime insuring that the US cannot help (ie, creating no fly zones, or air cover, etc) their population should things go sideways and hoping, of course, that the knowledge that such help was not forthcoming will keep their own dissidents down.

The second use of a nuclear weapon would be military hegemony over the largest part of the oil and natural gas producing nations of the region. When I say "region" I don't simply mean Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Gulf states, but I also mean the Central ASian nations within its reach such as Kazahkstan, which broder the Caspian Sea, where there is large oil and natural gas deposits and where certain agreements keep the oil and gas fields under production from turning into a slug fest between these nations, however, these fields are obviously overlapping and certain drilling must be taking a nice chunk of resources out of the area and out of Iran's hands. Largely by dent of US and European companies.

Why do you think we are so intent on pulling these nations into NATO partnership and offering them protection? Both the US and Western Europe rely on these resources, along with Russian resources, to exist.

Iran's economy is almost completely based on exporting energy resources. Please note again the comment that, even in the middle of the great oil price hike of the last year, Iran's economy only grew 1.5%. On top of that, while Russia had a nice 7% growth 2004(also largely based on energy exporting), in 2005, it had dropped to appx 5%.

In both of these nations, whenever Saudi Arabia and the GCC (arguably the most powerful group of nations in OPEC, which Iran belongs to along with Venezuela, but which Russia is separate from and has no control) agree to increase or stabilize the production of oil, it means both Russia and Iran suffer since their oil is worth less or at least stays worth the same which means their economies do not grow or actually suffer (the EIA indicates that a drop of $1/bbl oil means a loss of $146 billion in Russian revenue or 1/7th of their national GDP which is just about disasterous).

With Iran having nuclear hegemony over the region, they get the biggest poker hand over OPEC and the regions oil and natural gas output. They can claim that certain efforts on the part of the Saudis or the GCC to increase oil output is a direct threat to their economy and stability, thus an act of war and shake their nuclear arsenal whenever they feel the pinch.

Why do you think Venezuela (besides having crazy Chavez at the wheel screaming about potential US invasion), an OPEC member, has been so quick to make claims of commradeship with Iran? Their own economy is completely dependent on oil, too and they want to be part of the kingmaker's court where they set the price for oil. They may or may not want to see the destruction of the US completely, but they certainly want to have power over us and drive our economy into the dumpster (remember, economic destruction of the USSR and the probability that THAT is the only way to destroy the US short of a nuclear holocaust which would arguably set in motion the destruction of the rest of the world).

Russia wanted in on this deal, too and is why they were offering to supply nuclear fuel, hoping that they will become partners with Iran in control of the oil and gas output of OPEC and pricing, helping their economy stabilize or continue to grow (Russia is barely a second world economy at this time) with their own oil and gas output being either second or first (depending on who you ask) Saudi Arabia.

Of course, with the US being the direct umbrella for Saudi ARabia, the nuke maybe simply an "equalizer" among nations, but arguably, Iran is right there and we are far away or stretched thin with our forces.

Of course, Iran realized that, if Russia had control of its nuclear fuel, then it would be Russia in control and they are having none of that considering they are already a debtor trading nation with Russia as well as realize that it is not necessary for them to allow Russia that control in order to have that power.

While that's going on, we should not take our eyes off the Caucuses and Russia. Russia is fighting separatists in Dagestan and Chechnya, both regions, if they were able to break away, would cut off Russia's access to the Caspian Sea oil and gas reserves and also narrow, considerably, the southern access to the Black Sea port through which it exports appx 40% of its oil production and a nice chunk of its gas to the US and Europe. Most of these exports get to that area by railroad and river transport.

If you are missing some of the news reports lately, Moscow News reported that a train was blown up in "Southern Russia" and that police in the area have been killed. Not a good sign.

On top of that, watching also the news, Russia tried to play hardball with the Ukraine because, not only did their chosen guy not win the elections, the pain pipeline for gas to Europe runs through the area. The US is there now training Ukrainian forces as well as training GEorgian forces. Why do we need to do that?

In short, Russia has many problems, not the least of which is continued internal unrest, economic tightroping and a military that hasn't seen great days since at least the 70's. In short, their army stinks and they couldn't protect these nations if they wanted to besides their nuclear arms and what the heck is that going to do for them if the threat is local and internal or at least local to the Caucases? Are they going to destroy their very own economic lifeline?

Then, of course, we must not forget China out of all this mess. China, too, must be feeling the closing gap of democracy considering the little touted and hardly noticed democracy experiment going on in Mongolia, right on their longest and largest border. On top of that, China is very dependent on ME oil and gas. It was in October 2004 they signed a deal with Iran to build pipelines for both in order to secure their own resources and economy. This pipeline must go directly through the malacca straits, right through the area that we largely control. Now, this pipeline will be on the sea bed, supposedly to protect it from US ability to cut it off, but there is one place that we CAN cut it off if we so desired and that is bombing the hell out of Iranian terminals.

Which, by the way, China would most likely consider an act of war. So, while we are discussing how a nuclear weapon or two (or 100) in the hands of Iran would be dangerous and we could stop it through various military actions, remember that China gets 80% of its oil from the ME and that Iran supplies 20% of Opec oil to the market (thus, not only would destruction of Iran's infrastructure put a serious hurt on China, it would severely cripple the world oil market, causing problems for Europe and the US as well).

On top of all this, with the rising cost of oil and gas, along with our continued efforts to diversify our trading options with NAFTA and CAFTA (ie, increasing the sell of goods to other nations to improve our own trade deficit as well as find cheap goods that we could import and offset our reliance on cheap chinese goods to keep costs down and thus inflation) we are slowly trying to decrease the economic MAD (mutual assured destruction) that China holds over us (and our trade deficit puts us in the red for this economic MAD). All this while China's economy continues to grow, leap frogging it to the fourth largest economy in the world in 2004 and possibly overtaking France and Britain.

If we mess with their oil and gas supply, they are going to be very angry (which is why they've made great strides to bolster their blue water navy and expeditionary forces, above and beyond the need to bring Taiwan back into the fold to protect the area in the China sea they need for their oil and gas pipes).

So, back to Iran, nuclear weapons and why we are meeting with past SoDs and SoSs.

A) We understand that we are in no position, economically, militarily, politically (internal) and diplomatically (external politics) to take any such action against Iran, we expect that they will go nuclear and now we are developing our second Cold War strategy; these folks having contacts around the globe that we are trying to corral into supporting economic sanctions.

B) We know we only have a few months left to take action and we need the contacts of thse folks and their strategic expertise to come up with a method that will allows us to quickly put an economic siege on Iran, not piss off the other players too much and see if we can bring Iran to a state of economic and political upheaval without completely pissing off the world and driving oil and gas prices out of this world.

c) we are tapping these folks for ideas and contacts in order to prepare the world for US v. Iran in which case we will assure everyone that it will be quick and painless, unlike Iraq, and even if it isn't completely painless, it's necessary to lance the boil before the crazies infect the whole body of the region and try to hold everyone hostage. (PS, in reality, China can't afford to have gas and oil prices go up much since it will start dragging down their economy right quick so lack of oil through war or unearthly oil prices via nuclear hegemony is not good either way)

I don't think all of these folks are meeting to discuss Iraq alone and, if they are, I would be severely disappointed.

Unfortunately, I believe that its likely we are discussing A. Not because I don't think the president doesn't have the cajones, but because it simply does not seem like common sense to go to war in our current condition.

all bets are off, of course, if Iran does actually go gawgaw and drop a bomb on somebody.

I wonder if the oil markets could be pricing this risk in current trading. We're trading February deliveries for another week, then rolling into the March-delivery contract. The strength of the recent price spike is notable (up $6 per barrel in the last seven days of trading).

I'm sure that a lot of people would see an attempt at an EMP bomb from an Iranian freighter as a "nuclear attack" on the US, and would expect a full retailiation.... and Tridents won't be affected by the EMP attack.

Chester,

Best thread ever. How do you do it? You could write a book from this stuff.

Subsunk

Chester,

Best thread ever. How do you do it? You could write a book from this stuff.

Subsunk

So we bomb Iran for a few weeks.
Could we plan for the after-effects this time?
No, really. This is only half-a-plan at most.
Let's learn our lesson people.

Someone has to take out Iran for the good of humanity. With the problems in Isreal they are not a candidate. That leaves the UK or the USA.

It seems someone is escalating the terror attacks right now. Depending on your source between 250 and 300 Iraquis killed in the last 3 days in Iraq. Plus 5 Marines and 6 soldiers. Have not seen where any of the latest attacks are linked to Iran, but who knows?

Oil is Irans point of weakness. Without oil, Iran cannot be a power, especially without nukes. We should hit the facilities, and initiate the "Iron Eagle" option. If Iran so much as twitches we cut their pipelines, mine their harbors, and let Iran know we have set our JDAMS for every oil well in the country. Iran then has no nukes, and reconstituting them will be impossible without oil revenues. Lashing out at the West will lose them their oil. That's how we checkmate them, dont attack their queen, attack their king.

Secret nukes have little strategic value, since the adversary is not aware of the existence of the threat. When they have one we will know about it.

While questions have been raised about the lack of political support for attacking Iran, there is probably more than there was for attacking what was left of Yugoslavia/Serbia, since Iran at least is a threat and has been consistently labeled the worlds leading state sponsor of terrorism. The Iranian president also has the capacity to generate support for his removal with his tendacy to blurt out his intentions.

The meeting with the former Secs was a photo op to counter the Bush in the bubble nonsense. I have seen no reports of any discussion of Iran.

"Russia has the most advanced ICBM technology currently deployed." Huh?

I have posted a machine-translation of the French-language blog that trackbacks to this post. You can read the translation in the Extended Entry of this post. Also see Update #4.

There is an aura of unreality with some of these comments. Take out Iran; Iran can't have nukes; the Mullahs are crazy.

Iran is a very tough country with battle tested leadership. They survived the Iran-Iraq war after suffering catastrophic losses. I think that war in the 1980's motivated their nuclear program. Then the first Gulf War showed them that US conventional war fighting powers could never be countered unless they had nukes. Iran has been very clever in the way they've gone about national survival. They have cemented alliances with Russia for help in peaceful nuclear technology. They have cemented alliances with Pakistani officials for military nuclear technology. They have cemented alliances with China and its vassel state North Korea for long range missile technology to deliver their bombs. It has learned from North Korea on how to disperse and tunnel its nuclear infrastructure.

This is a country behaving rationally as it goes about its mission of national survival.

I do not believe the US can launch a "surgical" strike" and somehow contain this new terror. Once started, this will be a long war. China and Russia won't set still. They will take sides and new hot war and cold war will begin. Even if we somehow destroyed Irans nuke making infrastructure, Iran won't say "damn they did it" and just stop the war. No, Iran will continue the fight and most likely some of the above countries will enable Iran to strike back with nukes against American targets which will be rich within 500 miles of Iran.

Lets remember the US has the power to obliterate Iran and its thousands year heritage. For the foreseeable future Iran won't have similar power against the US. Lets depend upon US diplomacy, our own nuclear deterrence, our ability to build anti Iranian alliances throughout the Middle East first. Then afterwards if things go sour, we will always have the means to militarily confront the Iranians.

1914, huh? Hmmm...

Here's Winston Churchill, writing in the mid-Thirties, of the political climate immediately before WWI:

At the time [before WWI, c]onflict unceasing grew year by year to a more dangerous intensity at home, while abroad there gathered sullenly the hurricane that was to wreck our generation. Our days were spent in the furious party battles..., while always upon the horizon deadly shapes grew or faded, and even while the sun shone there was a curious whisper in the air.

Yep, that does sound like the handbasket we're currently in, up to a point...

I predict that Europe will be worse than useless in containing a nuclear Iran. This is because the European leaders will be too chary of giving offense to their large, restive Muslim minorities.

Congratulations on the instalanche, btw.

Random thoughts.

In the 1930s, everyone assumed Hitler was just another politician. Including many German industrialists. He had written his whole philosophy out in Mein Kampf and people still saw him as just another pol. "Peace in our time" and all that.

The Iranians are not just another politician. Denying the Holocaust, lights around his head, the audience not blinking. They guy is absolutely mad.

Bush most definitely has the courage to do something and the ability to see the results of inaction.

I can't see Russia siding with Iran when so many of their problems stem from internal fighting with Islamists.

The Democratic party is totally under the control of Kos, DU, Soros and Hollywood. Expect nothing intelligent or strategic from them. Expect impeachment hearings and silliness.

I think people underestimate just how culturally rotted the EU is. They lack the will to stop anything. They're out of the picture.

The Chinese economy may be a house of cards. They can hardly afford a spike in oil prices. Like Mao, these guys like things. Working things. Things that aren't radioactive.

No one has mentioned India. A regional, nuclear super power that has no interest in a mad mullah with the bomb.

Where does that leave Iran? Surrounded and with no allies who have the courage to stand up for it except the Democrats.

Bush knows this and that's why he summoned all those former leaders to discuss Iran. My bet is that he hopes to persuade the few remaining sane Democrats before he launches a multinational strike on Iran.

K T

Larry, you may have missed it, but, in December, Russia deployed missiles that it says can break change course and avoid our current anti-missile defenses (according to moscow news). I believe that is what is being talked about.

Let's be clear, in all things we discuss, it's very unlikely that we are going to bomb Iran's oil infrastructure since that would create the very shortfall in oil production that would set off serious repercussions around the world, not to mention the US (can you imagine the price of oil if you knock out 20% of the ME's oil to the world market).

We want to stop their nukes and knock the Mullahs off, not create another suck hole that can't support itself and use its oil revenue to rebuild.

There are other problems that must be considered, including the fact that Iran, like Iraq, has at least three particular groups who don't necessarily see eye to eye and may set off other tremors in the area. For instance, let's say we knock the Mullah's off without there being a concentrated, internal democratic movement with concensus agreement that can immediately take hold. The Iranian Kurds will very likely make noises to join the Iraqi Kurds and build "Kurdistan" which will then make the turks nervous.

Unless we can be assure the Turks that the Iraqi and Iranian Kurds will stay Iraq and Iran, this could be a major problem.

The only way Iran can be successfully attacked without all of the dire consequences, there has to be an internal opposition that is capable of holding the country together.

HOwever, this morning I hear that the Russians and Iranians may still be trying to hash out a deal for nuclear fuel which I think, if Iran is looking to stave off attack, it will consider seriously. I believe that there is one thing that we can do that will put Iran in a serious bind and that is economic sanctions and an oil blockade. This might take it off line for awhile, but it isn't permanent and we can certainly crash their economy enough that we could give the reformers some momentum..

Beyond cold war, that would be my next step. something less than complete war and something more than cold war.

"Now you encourage the west to keep you in power and to help you discourage democracy. "

There's only one problem with that and that is the make up of their population is largley shia non-islamist so we really aren't worried about the political, religious, sectarian make up of Iran like we are Pakistan where the entire population is in fact full of crazy Islamist (although, I believe their are some crazy Islamist Shia in Iran, I do think the population mixture is completely different).

On the other hand, I do agree that the nuke is self preservation against real democracy. At least to stave off interference, although a nuke is hardly deterrence against your own population unless you ARE Hitler and decide that, if it isn't your Iran, then they should all die.

I'm sure that a lot of people would see an attempt at an EMP bomb from an Iranian freighter as a "nuclear attack" on the US, and would expect a full retailiation.... and Tridents won't be affected by the EMP attack.

Yes, we will wipe them out when it happens. But that doesn't turn your toilet, sink, refrigerator, car, truck, etc back on. It still means chaos, starvation and pestilence at this end.

'There's only one problem with that and that is the majority of their population is largely shia 'non-islamist''

A. That's just not true. You would certainly get that impression reading english language pro-freedom iranian blogs, but believe me the 25 years of brainwashing has had a significant amount of success - iranians are nothing if not at least nationalistic, and islamism is a very important component for most people there.

And

B. All the more reason to charade the people's selection of ahmadenijad as their leader - show the west just how islamic they are prepared to be under their own power. The elimination of so-called moderate candidates by the r.c. in the last election was part of this grander plan.

Chester,

Best post I've ever read here! Well worth the wait.

No one has talked much about the possibility of the CIA and special forces trying to support movements to overthrow the mullahs. Also, there have been talks of a naval blockade (which is an act of war) of Iran by the International Community (U.S.) to turn up the heat on Iran. What are some of your thoughts on this?

Okay, hatefrance, I should have said that their population is largely Shia not SALAFI/Wahabi Islamists which are arguably the group attacking us the most lately, though, of course, I do not forget that the rural population of Iran is Shia Islamist and still believes in the revolution.

Still, I agree that there is a difficulty in understanding how big the reform population is, when they can still muster a large number of nationalist/Islamist folks to crack down on the reformers.

AS for blockading Iran being an act of war, yes it is, but it is less than bombing the crud out of them and we are talking about doing it before they get the nuke. (at least, I am)

From what I have read here I come away with these points.

If you let Iran have nukes they will start to influence OPEC, and world oil prices.
This will pretty much give them free reign to start economic wars with whomever they please.

If we engage militarily with Iran and interrupt the global supply of oil we risk a broadening conflict, namely with China.

A movie quote comes to mind here.

"It's all one big sh-t sandwhich, and we're all gonna have to take a bite."

Turkey will hold the wild card at the table, asking itself: Is it worth invading Kurdistan when the war starts to sieze the oilfields that were taken away from it (the Ottoman Empire) by the Western powers after the First World War, or to continue to liberalize its government and institutions to win entry into the EU (ironically the same states that took away its oilfields)? I think that Turkey will continue to look to the west, where its future lies for several reasons. First, Turkey wants acceptance as a Westernized nation within the EU. A land grab would just reinforce old stereotypes of the innate duplicity of Orientals. Turkey also has close ties to the EU: in Germany and other European nations where Turks live, they send money back to the homeland. Turkey also weighs financial gain against political gain. I am thinking about when the transport ships circled around offshore in the Mediterranean Sea with American soldiers and materiel while the parliament debated whether to allow the Americans to use their country as entry into Afghanistan. And although the Bush administration dangled the carrot of billions of dollars in foreign aid to Turkey, it was not the greedy jackass that the Americans thought Turkey was. The politicians saw the aid for what it was, a bribe, and voted against the proposal. And Turkey has already suffered through a series of terrorist attacks against a British bank and two synagogues. It knows how bad it can get in a war zone.
Iran will continue to be portraited as a rogue state with a parnoid style of foreign diplomacy. But there are valid reasons for its extreme view of events. As Nixon used to say, even paranoids have enemies. Iran is hemmed in on both sides by American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. The neo-cons are squeezing them, and the Iranians know it. There are news reports that the Iranian govenment has complained about unmanned drone aircrafts violating their air space. The Americans are obviously mapping the landscape of Iran so that they have real-time grids of the country and facilities to be bombed in preparation for the war in the spring. But Iran has stated that bombing and/or invading Iran would be a strategic blunder, which it would. Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, the population of Iran approaches somewhere around sixty-six million. That's a lot of cannon fodder of draftees to fight against the Great Satan. And despite all the prattle from pundits about Iranian citizens who want democracy, the citizens will defend their homeland. Look at all the millions Uncle Joe killed in the Soviet Union prior to the invasion of Nazi Germany in the Second World War, and he could still rally the citizens to fight against the Panzers and stormtroopers. And the Soviet Union lost close to twenty million citizens on the Eastern Front. So Iran will fight.
So much depends upon the newly elected Iraqi government. Again American pundits hail the recent exercise of purple fingers as a sign that democratic tendiencies will prevail, and somehow despite the divisions between the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shiites, or if you prefer, between the religious sectarians and the secularists, Iraq will crawl then eventually walk as an upstanding new democracy. Of course, this wish bears little fruit in reality. Once the Americans leave, if they leave at all in significant numbers (the Bush administration will continue to fight against re-deployment tooth and nail), the Shiites in the south will align themselves with Iran. Iran has already pledged one billion dollars in foreign aid to Iraq, and there are talks between the two muslim nations about sharing port facilities in the gulf. And we will eventually have a similiar situation as when Syria influenced the politics of Lebanon for so many years. Kurdistan will continue to function as a semi-independent nation, as in its signing an oil exploration deal with a Norwegian firm to tap into its huge oil reserves. The odd-man out, the Sunni in the triangle, will be further radicalized and become for all practical purposes, Jihadistan exporting its services to other radicals in the Middle East. So rather than bringing democracy to the Middle East, the Bush administration has brought more political instablity to the autrocratic kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, the military dictatorship of Eygpt, and the Maghreb states in Africa.
Will America invade Iran? The first answer is no, because the volunteer forces are exhausted after the Iraqi occupation. Some grunts have done two or three tours of duty. The second answer is yes, if the Bush administration wants to re-institute a universal draft. That is when the proverbial merde hits the fan, and the war against terrorism becomes real for all the American citzens within the draft age.

I don't envision this automatic cooperation between Iran and Iraq taking place just because they both have large shiite poplulations.

Let's start at the first and biggest difference between Iranian Shiites and Iraqi Shiites. Iraninans are Persian and Iraqis are Arab. While some degree of cooperation can be expected, a full scale alliance is overly simplistic.

Also, this does not take into account the fact that, as many responders have so astutely pointed out, Nationalism plays a very key role in both Iraq and Iran going back to the Iran-Iraq war and even earlier.

In the event of a civil war in Iraq, would the Shiite majority be so quick to give up some degree of sovereignty to Iran, when they already possess many advantages that would help them win the civil war against the Sunnis? I don't think so.

Wow, sorry for getting off the "Iran Nuke" topic.

Kevin,

I don't have nay confidence in the CIA's government-overthrow abilities, in any way, shape, form or fashion.

Also, I think Bush will not be likely to put all his eggs in the blockade basket. Same with sanctions. Though a blockade can be enforced by the US Navy, Bush et al have no doubt learned the lessons of Oil-for-Food: sanctions regimes, of which a blockade is a subset, don't work, and can have the opposite of the intended effect.

George:

I don't think there will be a ground invasion of Iran anytime soon.

Barring the entrance of other combatants into a full-scale conflict with the US and Iran, which is an absolute worst-case scenario, there won't be a draft at all.

The Turks certainly won't invade Kurdistan while the Americans are in Iraq. No way.

The US is attempting to bind Iraq together with democratic glue. The US military forces in Iraq can be accurately viewed as the vise that is holding the parts together until the glue sets.

Kevin,

I meant to mention your second comment's point as well. The differences between the groups in Iraq and Iran are more than religious, and it is foolhardy to think that Iraqi Shi'ites will automatically align with Iran. Those same Shi'ites have witnessed the failure of Iran's revolution -- many of them while living there in exile -- and they don't want to repeat Iraq's mistake.

Among the groups in Iraq, there are many competing identities: Iraqi national identity, religious belief, and ethnic identity, either Arab or Kurdish -- along with the language and cultural differences that those ethnicities entail. And yes, the Iranians are yet a third ethnic and national identity: Persians, speaking Farsi.

I'm sure there is a European history analogy that would be fitting for these differences, but one escapes me at the moment.

So, based on what Chester is saying, then my guess is we're putting together cold war strategy for dealing with nuclear iran.

This may include continuing to improve on democracy in and around Iran, putting it in a pinch.

Would it be completely strange if we go European and decide on rapproachment with Iran where we open up their economy and ours in order to stabilize their economy and let the pressure off?

Kat,

I think confrontation, not containment a la the Cold War, is on the horizon.

I don't think the desires of the US or the Iranian regime will be served by a stalemate. It's possible that one will result anyway whenever the current period of flux is over. But this period of flux is going to be dangerous, exhilirating, fascinating, and terrifying all at the same time.

I think war, and not the cold variety, is entirely possible. Maybe even probable.

To be a little more optimistic, I've had a thought since the beginning of all this that Bush's basic strategy may be to "grographize" radical Islam, so we can have someone with whom to set up MAD with. He may take it as a given that Iran is going to get nukes.

Sorry, I meant "geographize." Trap it in a country or two where it can't pretend it isn't what it is; and to some extent force the people there to deal with it if they can. And if they can't, well, neither could the Soviet citizens, and we had no problem with the morality of MAD back then.

Curt Weldon's book Countdown to Terror looks to be even more prophetic than the usual fare from Washington. Given the CIA's record for prognostication we can expect that the CIA believes the mullahs are no threat. Everyone was laughing pretty hard at Weldon when his book came out...all I hear now are birds chirping.

http://www.papadoc.net/2005/08/why-able-danger-story-is-important-and.html

Pierre Legrand

There are several factors here I haven't seen mentioned. Dealing with a potential nuclear threat from Iran is not unlike dealing with a diesel submarine threat. It is not necessary to eliminate the target as long as you can deny that weapon the opportunity to strike. If we eliminate Iran's capability to deliver a weapon we theoretically have no need to directly confront its ability to produce a weapon, therefore avoiding the potentially bad-PR laced effects of attacking a production facility in a highly populated location. Which leads to the second point: the Iranians.

While it may be sound to say that eliminating the delivery mechanism makes the question of nuclear weapons somewhat moot, we neither need nor desire to get into a long-term containment game with Iran. Rather, we use to advantage the highly dissatisfied Iranian youth. We need to not only deny use of their weapons but also destroy their command and control, isolating their more remote cities and leaving them vulnerable to mini-revolution. Above all we have to keep out of the Iranian people's way, support them as we can and let them secure the nuclear facilities for us. Look for Kurdish peshmerga to descend from the northern mountains, as they did in Iraq.

The Fifth fleet can effectively keep the Straits open and deny the IRN waterspace. The greatest threat there comes from a lucky attack by a P-3, SAM or especially a Kilo. I'm sure we've got Bandar Abbas and Buscher under close surveilance 24/7 even as we speak, so hopefully we can keep tabs on their SS fleet before they pose a threat.

Afghanistan and Iraq were always almost as much about surrounding Iran as they were about the individual countries. I am sure this campaign will be as conventional as the prior two were, i.e. not very.

Dateline: Istanbul

Moderator: We'd like to call this meeting to order. First, let's discuss the the price of oil now that Iran has an active nuke program.

Ahmadinejad: Everyone is looking at me. Why is no one blinking their eyes? Maybe it's the green light shining down on me. Can they see it, too?

Moderator: Mr. Ahmad, may I call you Ahmad?

Ahmad: I see your lips are moving but no sound is coming out. That is because I am the messenger of the 12th Mahdi. Your inability to blink confirms it.

Moderator: Could someone ask Mr. Ahmad to stop whirling his arms around and to take a seat?

Ahmad: I hear your voices all in unison. They tell me, "Death to America!" It is yet another sign. I will tell my people...you want me to follow the 12th Mahdi's orders and proceed with the end times. Blink if you disagree. Since no one is blinking I will go forth.

So what is the point I'm trying to make with this satiric dialogue?

The head of Iran AND his supporters are not seeing us the way we might see him. He lives in a world of fantasy...in it he sees himself as the person who is supposed to bring about the end of the world.

THAT is why they are building nukes. Not to raise oil prices, etc., but to fulfill an endtime prophecy that is believed by millions of Iranians.

Any attempts at negotiation are seen by that kind of dementia as acts of the devil...so his reaction would be to speed up his decision to start blowing up the word in order to prevent the 'devils' from foiling the plan.

Rational strategies of negotiation are not only useless when a sick mind sees devils everywhere, but counterproductive.

Here in the US, we lock up people who present a danger to themselves or others. We don't have that option with Iran.

We have to act quickly and we have to act decisively. If we don't, it's guaranteed that Iran will bring the US to its knees as it has promised to do.

Yes, we must risk World War III. Because if we don't, the US will go back to pre-Founders Fathers time.

From where I sit it's hard to see anything less than a confrontation coming from this situation.

If we take the Iranian leaders at their word, they will nuke Israel and accept even a nuclear counterstrike. To be sure, some of their wilder statements might be for public consumption, that is to fire up their true-believer followers, but the west famously said that about Hitler in the '30s and look where it got them.

So I think that we do have to take them at their word in that once they get a nuclear weapon and the means of delivering it a strike out of the blue at Israel is a very probably occurance.

I too rather doubt that we'll see a long-term cold war-type standoff. The area is too volatile, and Israel too vulnerable, for that to happen.

submandave makes a great point about taking out Iran's capability to use a nuke, but I am not as optimistic as he is about the desire or ability of the Iranian people to step in after a strike and "secure the nuclear facilities for us." I rather think that a strike, even if successful, will only 1) make them more determined to succeed next time, and 2) sneak a nuke into a US port and blow it up.

In fact, I remember reading (I forget where) that most of the Iranian people may hate the mullahs but support the idea of Iran becoming a nuclear power, mainly for nationalistic reasons. Don't know how accurate this is, though.

But I am not saying we shouldn't strike, for we'll probably have to, because of we don't act, the Iranians will probably strike Israel out of the blue. It's just that it seems that there are no safe options. There are just no good options here.

Let me add one more thing. Once the US is hit with EMP nukes, China would be all too willing to run our country...under Chinese despotic rule.

Tom...one of the things that I've noticed is that in Iran, the idea of having cheap nuclear energy has been sold to people as a way to get out of their current economic decline. Some how they expect that cheap nuclear fuel will let them light up their country, start more manufacturing, improve their economics. It's the magic wand they all think is going to cure their economic ills.

That's what the Iranian population thinks about nuclear energy. Aside from that, from the position of the Mullahs, if they could have seven nuclear plants creating energy, they would have more oil and gas to sell on the market.

That's what is being sold to them and it may all be partially true except for the part where they will have their magic nuclear wand and suddenly the economy will be cured in a decade or so (didn't do crap for us).

http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=21569

USS Ronald Reagan and its carrier group goes to the Pacific.

Chester-- you write:
"we have similar concerns that a US attack would radicalize the Iranian populace and turn them toward their masters in the clergy rather than away. Could this piece of conventional wisdom be off-key as well?"

All due respect-- and I have great respect for your analysis normally-- you're off your rocker. Talk to any Iranian-American, or read any Iranian blog. I'm willing to bet my retirement fund that you will not find a single Iranian, here or in Iran, who welcomes a US war on Iran.

My wife is Russian. Regardless how much she detested the communists, to welcome a foreign invader or "liberator" into Russia was literally unthinkable. Subversion, support for democratic opposition forces, sure, but no sane and patriotic citizen of *any* proud nation welcomes a foreign war of aggression-- or pre-emption of whatever you wish to call it-- on his nation. And Persia is, as you point out, an ancient and very proud civilization.

Please put yourself in their shoes for a minute. This discussion is starting to veer into cuckoo land.

Respectfully,
thibaud

War is the continuation of politics, etc. Y'all have completely forgotten the most important dimension here, which is the political one, and that argues manifestly against any US strike.

1) Bush has spent what little capital remained to him after the Iraq War hit the skids. An attack on Iran will have no support in Congress, or in the nation generally, and of course no west European leader will support it.

2) re Europe, Blair is beyond lame duck status-- he's finished. There's no chance on earth of this badly damaged politician, who has all but handed the PM's chair to anti-Bush Gordon Brown, goiing out on a limb yet again to support a hugely unpopular US military action in the middle east. There is no more limb for Blair.

3) ditto for Merkel, and of course the French government will exploit anti-US interventionism sentiment to distract their populace from their own miserable failings at home. There will be zero support in Europe for a US strike, and no small amount of Schroederesque opportunistic posturing against it-- regardless of what is said to the Bushies behind closed doors.

4) consider the crucial swing nations, India and Russia. Both of them are eager to expand military and commercial ties with Iran, and neither would support a US attack. Without Russia's support in particular a US attack would be significantly complicated, to put it mildly. Keep in mind that Putin does not control his military, which is run, if that's the right word, by floating constellations of FSB appartachiks and criminalized officers in concert with Russian crime figures-- both of the private and the governmental variety. These characters have a grudging respect for Israel-- not least because of the vey deep and wide ties that now exist between Russians and the 1 million+ Russian immigrants to Israel, many of them well-connected business (and a few of them Russian mafiya) characters-- and would probably shrug at an Israeli strike. But an American one might well embolden rogue Russian elements to opwn the WMD candy store at their disposal to their Iranian friends.

From a political perspective, *everything* argues against US military action of any but the briefest, most limited variety. There will be no Gulf War II. Israel will do the wetwork, and the US and Europe will discreetly and quietly express their gratitude to the Israelis.

Great read! Interesting comments all.

Don't forget that Iran and Iraq tried to kill each other just a few years back. Would Iran try to nuke Iraq because Iraq is inching toward an open and democratic society?

Would they go after Iraq first and work on Israel "later"?

I share everyone's fear that some part(s) of the Middle East could soon become a smoking, radioactive crater.

My apologies, submandave. I concur that if we hit them, and we'll probably have to, it must be long, hard, and sustained in order to be effective. That said I don't have much confidence in our ability to forment revolt among the people, however desireable it would be. At any rate it is something we cannot count on.

Kat, good points and I've read that too. And that is also one reason why I don't think that we can count on the population of Iran to turn our way if we hit them.

thibaud you are right in that we must also consider the political aspects, but I think that Bush will act on his own damn the consequences politically if he believes that it's the only way to stop Iran from nuking Israel, or for that matter to keep Israel from trying to hit Iran.

The problem with an Israeli strike is of course distance. I don't think there is any way they can do it without our knowledge and cooperation. Their aircraft will need aerial refueling, or a stop somewhere to refuel. And most important, any action by Israel will cause the Arab countries to go bezonkers, and we'll do anything to keep that from happening at this point.

But like Bob before me says, I just don't see any easy way out of this situation.

Bob,

I've read elsewhere of speculation that Al Qaeda would first use a nuke in the Middle East rather than in the US. Who knows? Perhaps Iran too. It's worth thinking about.

Thibaud,

I'm just spitballing about the "Persian street." I think the conventional wisdom is probably correct: an attack on Iran would inflame Regular Reza against us. But . . . what's he going to do about it? I sincerely doubt we will invade Iran. I think of all the options debated here, the most likely is sustained aerial bombardment over an extended period. It would piss me off if the Iranians bombed Texas, too. But if I'm the president, and I have to choose between angry Iranians on the one hand (who are none too fond of the US already) and a nuclear Iran on the other, I'm going to go with door number one.

Just for kicks, I just googled "Victor Hanson Arab street" as I remembered him writing a lot about the topic. Here's one excerpt:

Do not provoke us too dramatically to bring on an open shooting war, in which the Arab Street hysteria, empty threats on spec, and silly fatwas nos. 1 through 1,000 mean nothing against the U.S. Marines and Cobra gunships.

Segueing into a related topic, luckylucky raises the prospect of decapitation strikes against the mullahs. Now this is interesting. The Iranian leadership certainly isn't in hiding like Saddam was before the invasion. We could probably find them pretty easily. Say, leaders 1-50. Do that first before the general air campaign begins and accompany it with the message to the populace, "Sorry, they weren't working out for you. Try again." Maybe no rolling air campaign of the type that would anger the locals would be necessary . . . again, just spitballing.

This all reminds me of something that I'll post in an update in the main body, soon as I find it. So check it out.

And thanks to all for participating. I emailed Glenn at Instapundit last night to thank him for lighting this fire. I think the scope and tenor of the comments indicate that this is a subject weighing heavily on all of our minds. If that's so, perhaps a few emails to Congress are in order. Just a suggestion.

UPDATE #5 is now posted in the main body above. Thoughts?

Kat --

We are the Mullahs' best friend. We removed the Taliban, which executed their diplomats in Herat; and chased bin Laden their main Islamist rival from the country. We also removed Saddam and his successors in Baghdad will be significantly weaker. Even better, Iran will have influence with the Shiites in the South.

Objectively, in Iran's national interest, there is no reason to be hostile to the US. The US would LIKE to buy Iranian oil, would LIKE to have peaceful relations with Iran, HAS a large Iranian exile community that can provide capital and expertise.

The only reason that makes sense for continued Iranian hostility is the desire to control the Gulf completely and push the US Navy out. They tried that with guerilla warfare with small boats and got decisively defeated. Their likely reason for nukes is to "destroy" America and cause it's "collapse" and thus the retreat of the US Navy and Air Force and soldiers from the region. Not realistic but there you go. Wouldn't be the first time: the Prussian Schlieffen Plan (updated from von Moltke's Plan) was not realistic. Parisian taxis defeated it.

Democracy on their borders are no threats; since the nations around them are not Persian and are weaker without their former tyrannical regimes.

RichB -- this is the same strategy that the French and Chamberlain used to "contain" Hitler. We will get our war with Iran. They chant "Death to America" at the opening of every opening session of their legislature. When someone says he wants to kill you, believe him. OF COURSE IRAN WILL NUKE US. Why wouldn't they? Is not Allah on their side? Is their leader not the agent of the 12th Imam? Did not God's light shine on him at the UN? Has he not disposed of the "Holocaust Myth?" Has he not threatened to "burn the US in Allah's Fire?"

Ahmadinejad like ALL the Iranian leadership believes we are weak and will collapse with one big attack. They get their views of the US through CNN International and the NYT. They see us as weak, divided, the corrupt infidel. For a regime who's "moderates" blew up innocent Argentinian Jews for the mere crime of being Jewish, it's utterly predictable.

France -- Iran's nuclear program dates back to 1979. It's decades long and the ambition of Khomeni to destroy the US through nuclear attacks. Iranian regime is NOT like us. They hang mentally disable 16 year old girls for adultery in public as entertainment. You are just trying to explain away the coming disaster. It's like ascribing rationality to Hulagu Khan. He didn't fight like a Westerner or think like one, neither do the Iranians

Taking up Monnerat's challenge (I can't write or speak french and can barely read it, so here I write in English), I think we should discuss some points on expectations, outcomes and best practices.

From what I can derive, the first thing that we should set is what our ultimate expectations are and what our accepted minimum outcome would be for Iran.

Ultimate Goal: New liberal democratic government; without nuclear weapons or plans to build them; if not directly friendly to western powers, less hegemonic; eschews ties with terrorist organizations at the state level (including hezballah, hamas, Al Qaida or other organizations); eschews ties with or support or involvement with political entities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Maximum acceptable: may include continued adherence to principles of Islam in law as long as it eschews terrorism, nuclear weapons, etc, etc, etc; opens up political parties and reform, appears to be moving towards liberalization. US supports democratic movements to take over and set up less antagonistic government.

Minimum Acceptable: Government remains intact, greatly weakened through military, political and/or economic sanctioning; the economy is crashed to assist in prevention of purchasing necessary materials or making trade agreements that would improve their situation; eschews nuclear weapons and agrees to accept overt monitoring of nuclear facilities and fuel provided by EU or Russia. Nuclear weapons development is greatly retarded while the US continues to develop contacts and assistance through NGOs to democrat/reformists.

Minimum Unacceptable outcome: Government stays intact, continues to suppress democratic and reformist organizations, tells Russia and EU to take a hike, goes forward with development of Nuclear facilities and weapons, continues to support overtly and covertly terrorist organizations; continues to support, overtly and covertly political organizations and militias in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ultimate Unacceptable: Same government. Has nuclear weapons. Steps up over and covert assistance to terrorist organizations, provides nuclear or other wmd to proxy terrorists; steps up providing to political organizations and militias in Iraq and Afghanistan to cause political upheaval in those nations to cause the US more problems, cost and death in those nations than currently experiencing. Basically, causing us much more pain and anguish.

Are there other outcomes above or below these expectations?

From here, what can we expect in order to advance the acceptable outcomes?

I forgot, under all of the acceptable outcomes, I forgot to add that the oil and gas infrastructure would remain largely intact to insure flow to the market as well as keep Iran from imploding economically (unless we want it to).

Its a new day, here is a roundup of news related items and opinion on Iran.

Its nice to have people that will put it all in one place for you to read.

Papa Ray

Even as I was writing my comments I was internally cringing, knowing someong might resurect the rosy predictions some made about the Iraqis rising up beside us. I do, however, believe the situation in Iran is greatly different from Iraq.

• Large anti-government protests in Iran happen fairly regularly.
• Iranian pro-democracy advocates, both exiles and internal dissidents, have a rather high profile.
• Continual low election turnout is not due to apathy, as it is in the US, but rather as an organized protest against the unfair elections.
• A very young Iranian demographic.

This is not to say I believe we are or should pursue a strtegy that relies upon the spontaneous self-organization of previously non-existent groups over which we have no control. What it does mean is that I believe any action in Iran will include very heavy and visible CIA/SOF coordination with known indiginous elements (not unlike Afghanistan) combined with blinding fury against Command and Control and military infrastructure (not unlike Iraq). Yes, he must deny them use of their weapons, but it would be best if we managed to do so in a way that created the least ill will among the people.

"I'm willing to bet my retirement fund that you will not find a single Iranian, here or in Iran, who welcomes a US war on Iran." (emph. added)

I'd take those odds, Thibaud. No, I don't believe Iranians are painting bulls-eyes on top of their houses or giant arrows pointing to military instalations, but I do distinctly remember reading quotes from some Iranians in 2003 specifically requesting "liberation" next.

I have always felt that an internally driven march toward democracy in Iran would be best, but as the presence of nuclear weapons becomes more of a reality the window of oportunity rapidly closes. As many others, including leading Iranian pro-democracy voices, the elevation of the Iranian regime to nuclear status spells tragedy for anti-regime efforts. Backed by a credible threat of nuclear weapons, the regime can act with ever greater impunity against its internal detractors. As someone said earlier on this thread, war is often about choosing among options that would all be unacceptable under other circumstances. I agree that the vast majority of Iranians probably do not look longingly at the possibility of US military intervention, but neither do I think they would welcome even further repression at the hands of a regime emboldened by holding a nuclear trump card nor the vastly more devestating and sure retaliation that would result from use of those weapons.

"From a political perspective, *everything* argues against US military action of any but the briefest, most limited variety."

Everything except the foreign policy track record of the man currently in the White House, and a good thing at that. Like him or not, I fail to see how anyone can discount that he does not make empty rhetorical threats against others when it comes to national security and the GWOT. This is one reason I'm sure he's not said a lot directly opposed to Iran's regime. Over the past five years he has established more credibility that the US will follow through on its stated policy than any other president since probably Truman. I think this is especially important in these times. Like many on this thread, I believe that if Bush views the Iranian nuclear potential as a large enough threat he will first clearly declare it as such, give Iran notice that we cannot allow them to attain that capability and then, if nothing changes, follow through to do his best to prevent it from happening.

"[Iranians] are none too fond of the US already"

Chester, I don't know what you base this upon, but I distinctly remember over the past four years reading many articles about how surprisingly pro-American Iranian youth are (for example, this article in the Smithsonian Magazine). In fact, some use the Iranian people's support of the US as an argument against military intervention ("don't burn up the good will"). While I agree that in itself it is neither a reason to promote nor shun intervention, I do think it is an important determinant in what form any such intervention may take.

Sub...most of the Iranians there and here I've had a chance to speak to seem to say, "help us get power in our own country, just don't invade us" and most of them think that invading Iraq instead of letting it come to a natural conclusion with the Iraqis overthrowing Saddam (as if that was ever going to happen) was very bad and imperialistic.

I have said many times that I am always amazed that these folks want our "help" but don't want the only help that is likely to get them to power.

As has been said before: 'this scares the sh*t out of me'.
Now, I'm but a lowly Dutchman (Europe does not exist... I dare you to point out that country on the map!), but I was reading the eureferendum.blogspot.com (conservative and anti-eu) and they have some interesting material: Russia has tested Topol M missiles and sold something similar to Iran. Gettin' scarier by the minute...
Last: I think China doesn't give a damn who's running Iran, as long as they get their natural gas.

1. Bush will not launch a pre-empt strike he will leave the Iranian bomb problem for the next President to deal with. It won't matter which party is in power nothing will be done unless our country or forces in the field are nuked.
Iran knows this and perhaps can aquire the 450 warheads needed to destroy the United States "someday".
2. Israel cannot go toe to toe with every Arab country after doing a pre-empt either, they have no strategic depth and nuking everyone is really suicide for them. it would take 10 nukes to take out Iran but only 2 for Israel.
3. Iran would rather hold onto their power with nukes than use them. they may be fanatics in the the government there but I would bet there are more realistic survivalist who would take over before they could launch.

We seem to mostly have a consensus about how a US attack would go. It would be mostly airstrikes. It would aim first at iranian air defenses and nuclear sites and maybe locations of political and religious leaders, and maybe then move on to nuclear sites and general military sites. We'd have limited special forces identifying targets for airstrikes and otherwise staying out of the way. We can't do much more than that.

There's the question how well we knock out their hardened nuclear sites. We can't afford to bomb them and go home and leave them intact. We'd have to be sure, it would look very very bad if we left them functional. So we have to either stage little raids to inspect the wreckage, or else use bunkcer-buster nukes.

In probably 6 weeks or less it would be over. I'm going to estimate it would cost around $50 billion, less than the iraq invasion. Lots and lots of bombs, lots of aviation fuel, and maybe we lose a few ultra-expensive aircraft due to accidents and pilot error and such.

The first week the iranian government would declare war. Presumably they'd stay at war with us for the next 20 years or so.

We would not bomb their oil facilities because we need the oil to flow at least as much as they need the money.

After we're gone, the iranians would pick themselves up and start another nuclear program. If we did an exceptionally thorough job they would be 5 years from a working device. (5 years is how long it takes when you have to train all the technicians from scratch and buy or make all the equipment. Nobody who has money and workers and unenriched nuclear material is more than 5 years from a bomb, if they want one.) At a minimum we'd have it all to do again in 5 years.

Let's not estimate iranian civilian casualties or damage due to scattered bombed nuclear materials etc. We don't care about that.

Assuming all goes well, what does it do for Bush? It woul be controversial for him to start another war, this time without asking any kind of permission at all from Congress. But with an official declaration of war by iran, he could overcome all obstacles. The country would be divided but we would be at war for a very long time, and Bush could ignore Congress and do whatever he wants for the next 3 years. If the media tried to say mean things about him he could censor them. If a blogger criticised him the blog could be shut down and the blogger interned. Wartime. The country would be divided but there wouldn't be enough opposition to stop him from doing absolutely anything he wanted.

Now what's the downside? When Bush called iran "Axis of Evil" pretty much everybody else in the world who wanted iranian oil tried to be friendly with them. Russia and china both got friendly relations. Would either of them give us an ultimatum about it? Say we're about to attack and russia (or china) announces that they regard any attack on iran as an attack on them. Would we risk nuclear war with russia to prevent a nuclear iran? Maybe. Bush might assume that the russians would back down. He'd have a lot of incentive to do that, since he wouldn't want the world to see him back down. Whoever stopped us would get a whole lot of prestige. The rest of the world considers us a rogue nation, and whoever could stand us down would be pretty awesome. But the alternative is we do have WWIII. Russia has a lot more nukes than iran will ever....

Then there's china. If they were to sell off all their dollars, we'd have a great big inflation. The dollar would depreciate, maybe another 70% in the short run. This would be an investment opportunity. If you think it's coming, sell your dollars and buy euros. Then when the dollar depreciates 60%, buy. It will probably rise in coming months until it's only down about 40% and you'll have made 50% on your money in a few months. Not completely clear what you could spend it on, though.... Say china stops exporting to us. It would take us well over a year to retool to make all that stuff ourselves. And the price of imported oil would go way up, we'd have tough times. But even if we have a tough 10 years, it will be 10 years of wartime so we can avoid the worst problems with rationing and we can do patriotic recycling, and there might be lots of defense jobs.

Would a lot of countries join in on sanctions against the USA? I dunno. They'd have an incentive to. Which countries have more US investments etc that they could freeze than vice versa? And why should they sell us stuff and take our depreciating dollars instead of getting something real in return?

On the other hand, maybe nothing would happen. We do our airstrikes, the rest of the world breathes a sigh of relief that we ended the threat, the iranians dig their survivors out of the rubble and life goes on as if nothing happened except the iranian nuclear program is set back 5 years.

Is it plausible? On the one hand, we surely have $50 billion to spare to stop iranian nukes for a few years. We simply cannot allow iran to have nukes under any circumstances. So we have to do whatever it takes to stop them no matter what the consequences and whether it works or not. Given that we feel this way about it, we will attack. Then if russia or china tells us not to, we will anyway. And with iran at war with us, Bush wins the domestic war handily.

So the only real risk is intervention by russia and/or china, leading to an economic meltdown or global thermonuclear war.

"I'm willing to bet my retirement fund that you will not find a single Iranian, here or in Iran, who welcomes a US war on Iran."

Thibaud, how big is your retirement? If it's reasonably large I'm pretty sure I can find an iranian here who'd say he welcomes a US war on iran for half of it.

Most commenters seriously underestimate the centrality of the Iranian nuke threat to the Israeli security establishment. Plans to deal with this threat have been topmost on Israeli military planners' minds for more than a decade. Although those in the anti-Israel-amen corner seem to think Israel's Likudnik/neocon cabal maneouvered the dazzled-in-the-headlights Bushies into invading Iraq, in fact Israeli politicians said publicly at the time that the main threat not Iraq but Iran.

Israel's focus on Iran's nukes does not depend on one man currently hospitalized. When people say Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, this doesn't just mean Gay Pride parches in Jerusalem; it means that things are institutionalized. And Israel, to repeat myself, has had one eye on the Palestinians and one on the Iranians for years.

With the experience of the 20th century, Israel's leaders have all agreed that when someone gets up and announces he wants to kill you, take him at his word.

I'm sure the US won't leave Israel to undertake this wetwork by itself, as someone above put it, but I'm also sure that Israel has planned for scenarios where it would ultimately have to solve this problem alone -- Bush's reelection was not, for example, a foregone conclusion.

Iran will not publicize its possession of a nuke and will hide it, if and when it gets one, as best it can.

Rather than preserving a fleet in being, or army in being, Iran will preserve its nuke in being. In other words Iran will use its nuke in every way but as a weapon.

North Korea is doing the same thing. One of the ways North Korea preserves their nukes is that they lead their opponents think that their leadership is insane. That tends to make their opponents more cautious and discourages strikes at nuclear facilities.

The major difference between Iran and North Korea is that Iran has natural wealth. This should make Iran more cautious than North Korea in fact, if not in words.

Iran probably would not sponsor any attack on the 50 states of the USA. W has shown that is a no no.

Iran will continue to assist in attacks on the periphery, to encourage the democrat/peace activists in the USA and the martyrs and true believers.

J Thomas - bullshit. Ask yourself whether you would welcome an invasion by a foreign power should your own bete noire (I'm guessing it's Hillary) come to power here. Iranians are as proud of their ancient nation as we are of our young nation. Bring forth your Iranian quislings if you're so confident-- start by finding for us an Iranian blogger, any Iranian blogger, who welcomes a US invasion.

Adam Khan is exactly right. Israel has long planned for this existential threat, and will of course do what is politically impossible for any western nation.

Chester - what all the saber-rattlers here seem to have forgotten is that Bush can barely summon enough popular support to continue the (unfinished, unwon) war in Iraq, let alone launch yet another major war-- this time against a nation that is 3x larger and vastly more coherent and powerful than Saddam's devastated, impoverished, hollowed-out failed state. Presidents *never* act alone, of their own initiative, in launching wars. FDR waited for a devastating Japanese attack before going to Congress. LBJ had several years of slow escalation behind him, as well as the solid support of the Democratic Party establishment and the opposition party, before Tonkin. Lincoln let the confederates attack Ft Sumter before pushing for war.

And Bush is weaker politically than any of these predecessors! Look at the evidence. His own party is in disarray. The Democrats smell blood and are now demanding a hasty retreat from Iraq, to which Bush/Rumsfeld's response is... an announcement of, lo and behold, the first troop withdrawals from Iraq. The Republicans are now facing the likelihood of defeats in the 2006 elections-- a complete reversal from what was expected barely a year ago-- and Bush's domestic agenda, esp SS reform, is in ruins.

Please tell me, again, why and how Bush will be able to persuade a nation that no longer trusts or supprots him and his party to embark on a SECOND war in a region that most Americans are thoroughly disgusted with and wish nothing more to do with-- when his team has not even brought to a conclusion the messy, protracted, error-ridden FIRST war they're fighting next door?

The notion that the US will engage in yet another war in the middle east is complete fantasy, of the sort that gives the blogosphere a bad name.

Without question, the west, and esp the Bush administration, will let the Israelis take the lead here. Any logistical issues (refueling, etc) are trivial compared to the extraordinary political roadblocks facing a potential US assault. Aint gonna happen. (Thank God/Allah/Gilgamesh.)

A correction to the above: war with Iraq would be not the second but the THIRD concurrent US war in the middle east. Are you folks not aware that Afghanistan's southern tier is now facing a renewed, far more effective and confident assault by AQ? We haven't even won the first TWO wars we're facing in the region, and you folks are salivating over the chance to start a THIRD war!

It makes me smell a troll attack from the Kos Kidz. Or a prank by Mikey Moore.

Will China act towards the US more charitably if we are trying to recover from the devastation of EMP nukes?

It was at this stage that the truth broke in on him that one has to make war, not as one would like to, but as one must. - Sir Michael Howard

That's exactly right, Chester.

Much of the reaction to war with Iran appears to be, quite naturally, an unspoken fear that the US might suffer and suffer greatly. That possibility just "won't do," in the minds of some.

That thinking assumes that there is some better choice than war. But is there a better choice in this case?

We didn't ask the leaders of Iran to repeatedly chant "Death to America!"

We didn't ask Iran to test its Shahab-3 missiles for high elevation detonation.

We didn't ask Iran's president to have visions of non-blinking audience members rapt in admiration of his grand fantasy.

Nor will we ask Iran to fulfill its goal to bring fire down on the US, as Ahmadinejad has promised.

But all of this is being given to us without asking.

Iran ferverently desires to knock the US out. They believe they have a way with EMP nukes. They believe it is their divine mission to deliver those nukes to us. They are preparing to do it.

None of this is something we want. But we still have a choice. Either we receive Iran's blasts that take the US into chaos, starvation and pestilence, or we prevent them.

Yes, there COULD be terrible consquences to the US if we defend ourselves. This much is sure...if we don't defend ourselves from Iran's real threats, then the "could" is strengthened to "will."

There is this to consider also, while we fear the response of China and Russia if we attack Iran. Will China act towards the US more charitably if we are trying to recover from the devastation of EMP nukes?

Or would China and every other nation with animus towards the US decide that the time was ripe to take a pound of flesh? Or worse.

So while it's only natural to to look for a way out of this predicament that leaves us whole, the coming war is not of our choosing...but it is our war nonetheless.

Pu-leeze. There is no "coming war" between us and Iran.

Iran presents an existential threat to Israel. Iran does not present an existential threat to the US. (Sorry, Mark Helprn and Kelley, but chants of "Death to America" don't count as an existential threat. Neither do random terrorist acts in the middle east and other places thousands of miles from the US-- otherwise, we'd have gone to war with the house of Saud years ago).

Unless the Israelis take out the iranian capabilities, Iran will acquire what the North Koreans, Pakistanis and Indians all have, and we will learn to live with it as we've learned to live with all the other nuclear powers. Sorry to burst everyone's war fantasies here, but there's not a chance in hell that a lame-duck president of an unpopular, scandal-ridden party launching yet another war when he hasn't even won the other two that our overstretched military is struggling with.

I don't mean to sound so nasty, but really, Chester, this thread's line of speculation is ridiculous. Y'all would do far better to speculate about what form the Israeli strike will take. There will be no US attack.

I have just posted Update #6 with some new information.

Perhaps a US push for Security Council resolutions will begin in March? Check it out.

(Sorry, Mark Helprn and Kelley, but chants of "Death to America" don't count as an existential threat.

Yes and no. The unified chant of "Death to America!" is but one of the required elements to make a war...just like there are three elements for making a fire...oxygen, heat, and a combustible material.

If Iran had no capability to wage war, then their intense and vocal hatred wouldn't mean as much...we don't sweat the rantings of Palestinians much because they have little means to attack the US.

But Iran has already tested their Shahab-3 missiles successfully...fired from freighters, no less...and detonated at high elevations.

Their leader promises to bring fire down on the US. The same leader sees himself as the agent of the 12th Mahdi. He is, in short, obssessed with bringing the end times.

So in Iran we have a nation that is deeply intent on harming the US with the means to do so. They even say so. Repeatedly.

Unlike Kim Jung Il, Iran's leaders don't seek power or dates with movie actresses...they have a twisted spiritual vision...it is their #1 priority. They firmly believe that their nukes are the means to bringing down "The great Satan."

When they use that term, they aren't saying talking about a cartoon character (which is how we might be hearing it). They truly believe ['know'] that the US is pure evil as in a REAL SATAN.

With that obsessive and twisted mentality, they have no other recourse that would let them live with themselves...they must attack us or be condemned to hell.

So on our end of this dynamic, we either let them follow through or we crush them militarily. There is no middle ground.

Thibaud,

I think there is only one way that the Israelis can take out Iran's capabilities: with their own nuclear weapons. The target set is too large for conventional Israeli capabilities.

The US will do everything in its power to keep this from happening. A nuclear strike is bad news, period. In the Arab world, it would significantly lengthen the war.

I don't share your fatalism about Iran's nuke program coming to fruition.

Several posts have suggested that Bush would be constrained from taking action against Iran because he is a "lame duck" (or term-limited) president. Those holding this view don't understand the nature of term limitations.

As one who served two terms in a term-limited office (county commissioner), I think I have some sense of how elected officials view term limits. The job description of any elective office in the United States implicitly states that the office-holder has two main duties -- the duty to represent and the duty to lead. If you're term limited, chances are you will put greater emphasis to the representative function in the first term and greater emphasis to the leadership function in the second term. I certainly did.

Being term limited may put a president at a marginal disadvantage in getting his program through Congress, but in almost all other ways it gives him much more freedom of action. The fact that Bush is in his second and last term -- and therefore less of a slave to public opinion polls and completely unconcerned about being re-elected -- means he is more likely to take risky, possibly unpopular actions, not less.

As of now, the only real political constraint on Bush is the need to do what he can to ensure the Republicans maintain control of Congress in the 2006 elections. This suggests that he may wait until early 2007 to act against Iran rather than moving in 2006 -- if events in Iran permit.

If military action takes place, I suspect it would be along the lines of the Gulf War I style air campaign that Chester suggests. Such a campaign would be much easier to wage today -- thanks to the U.S. presence in Iraq -- and much more devestating -- thanks to the pervasive use of precision guided munitions. It might also involve a naval blockade and support for insurrections by Iran's major ethnic minorities. War, like politics, is the art of the possible.

It's possible a "lame duck" Bush could undertake this sort of a campaign without asking for Congressional approval -- by invoking the War Powers Act. The latter gives a president up to 60 days to wage military action in defense of the United States without seeking the approval of Congress. Presidents have generally viewed the act as an unconstitutional infringement on their power. But there is nothing in the laws of god, nature, or the United States that would prevent a president from invoking it. Particularly if he was term limited.

Just my $.02...

The key to Iran is not through confrontation. I have long held this opinion and hold it even more firmly despite the recent rhetoric from Ahmadinejab.

Politically, the political leadership of Iran is not monolithic. Ahmadinejab (hereinafter A., because I hate typing his name) and the Supreme Islamic Council (Hereinafter the SIC) are not on the same page. The SIC is made up of mostly very old men who are concerned primarily with sustaining their power, and they are really running the show in Iran. They want no part in nuking anyone, the US included, as it would invite political disaster both internationally and domestically for them. You can almost hear the collective grown from them everytime A. opens his pie hole.

A., on the other hand, has presided over a 30% decline in the country's economy, a rise in unemployment, and a bad track record for basic civil administration. Both the mullahs and the Iranian people are sorry he's around, and given the choice between him (and war) and an opening of dialogue with the US, would gladly choose the latter.

We're not going to stop Iran from getting nukes, plain and simple. It's too late for that. The only sure way would be ground invasion, which is off the table both in terms of manpower and politics. Airstrikes are not a sure enough method to effectively and positively eliminate the nuke program as a whole. And the last thing we need is to do a half-assed job, face the international and domestic outcry, and get maybe nothing in return.

Thus, the U.S. needs to confine itself to figuring out how to get A. gone, and needs to enlist China, India, Russia and Pakistan in that effort. China and India, in particular, are already well entrenched in Iranian diplomatic and economic ventures, and they are going to be huge cash cows for Iran. They could exert a lot of influence on the SIC to find a way to oust A., and probably put him down for a dirt nap. The also aren't crazy about the thermonuclear exchange taking place in their back yards cause by Iran launching a nuke.

We all need their oil, and in the case of China, alternative suppliers are at best many months from coming online, and probably more like years (we are talking about the Russians here). Furthermore, China's economy can't take even a ripple in energy supply without the whole shithouse burning down. China also holds most of their reserve currency in US dollars, which tend to get devalued when NYC is nuked. We, likewise, don't want China stumbling economically, as it would put a big dent in our economy and possibly pop the housing bubble and set off a recession. So on this, the U.S. and China have a common strategic goal: Iran has to shape up, for the good of everyone.

China needs a stable, non-belligerant Iran for other reasons. Not only is most of China's reserve currency in US dollars, a huge proportion of its export market is to the United States as well. An Iranian EMP strike on the US devalues our currency and puts a big stopper on the port facilities of the eastern seaboard. Again, China's go-like-hell economy can't withstand that kind of logjam and the ensuing security crackdown at western US ports. So China's interests coincide with our interests to keep Iranian nukes out of the hands of terrorists (because they will inevitably strike a New York or L.A.), and keep the Iranian political system from pulling some stupid maneuver like forcing us to unload a Trident on them as retaliation.

As for Iran taking over OPEC, they won't. It's not in their national best interests to do so (we're still the largest consumer of oil in the world, with China, India, and EU all making up a large proportion of the remainder). Any tomfoolery with oil prices will cause massive, massive political fallout for the Iranians.

But let's say they do. So what? We smashed OPEC's price and production controls back in the eighties, and we certainly haven't lost that playbook. The only reason OPEC still exists is because we haven't chosen to eradicate them. When they play nicely, they actually prevent wide market fluctuations. Further, maybe that will get us truly engaged in converting to a hydrogen economy, whereby we can tell the whole lot of them to shove it (and potentially sell the technology to India and China to boot, and really rain on OPEC's parade).

I may be overly optimistic here, but Iran does not necessarily have to be an enemy. We've bit our collective policy tongues and dealt with a regime in Saudi Arabia every bit as repugnant to us, and belligerant to Israel.

**ASIDE- For whomever it was who thinks Israel runs our foreign policy: If that were the case, Syria and Saudi would have been gone 20+ years ago. Sorry to disrupt your conspiracy theory.**

Further, we've already established a pretty good M.O. in how to liberalize and pacify bad guys: Establish trade with them and impart so much direct foreign investment them that they can't afford to dicker around with us too much. That was the real legacy of the Marshall Plan. It kept bad guys from re-emerging in the post-war economies of Japan and Germany.

Finally, Iran is the one place in the Middle East where they truly wish they didn't have to be in a pissing match with the U.S. John and Jane Q. Iranian love American goodies and culture, and generally like Americans. Where they hitch comes in is when they perceive the U.S. as trying to keep them out of their (perceived) rightful place as a regional power, and international player. They hate their own government, they like our stuff, and they already have the political infrastructure in place to vote the bums out if they don't choose to engage the U.S. diplomatically. All we have to do is hold our nose, infiltrate the system with iPods and belly button rings, and watch good things happen without firing a shot.

Update #6 only works in intellectual circles well basted with the latest pinot noir.

Those proposed negotiations tactics might have greater success with a band of schizophrenics.

In the movie "Independence Day" the US president...hoping for some type of negotiation...asks a captured alien what its planet wants from planet earth. The alien responds in a frightening voice, "We want you to die!"

That sounds fairly close to "Death to America!" chanted in unison by the legislative leadership of Iran at every opportunity.

2,000 years ago, a Roman Senator repeatedly demanded "Carthago delendum est!" (Carthage must burn!") After a time, Carthage did burn.

Should Carthage have negotiated with Rome?

Well of course here Kelley, the assumption is that every Iranian politico is Ahmadinejab, which is not the case.

For all his warts, Rasfanjani was on the threshold of engaging the U.S. from his end when he lost his election.

The mullahs, while certainly nasty despotic creatures, understand that their continued existence hinges on avoiding regime change and keeping the masses quiet. Their collective religious fervor is a damn sight less intense than their desire to stay both alive and in power. You can bank on that.

Any "Death to Americ" rhetoric is just that: rhetoric. I should add that that rhetoric is mostly for the benefit of keeping the masses vaguely suspicious of the Great Satan, whose music and fashion they otherwise love to consume in as large of quantities as the black market will allow. I wish I had the franchise for Levis and pro sports teams apparel in Tehran's underground rave-ups.

So we can choose one of two strategies here:

1. Go it alone, or with the very-popular-in-the-Middle-East Israel, and do airstrikes, which have a high chance of effectively changing nothing, screwing up the economies of both ourselves and China, and alienating a sympathetic Iranian population. Only for so long, mind you, as the political backlash in the U.S. puts Hillary in office and we reset the national security clock back to 1991. Or...

2. Pick allies like China and India who have influence on the actual prime movers in Iranian politics, convince them of the obvious fact that they and our interests in Iran coincide in moving the radical elements out and coopting Iranian society from the inside, and get a slower but more sure positive result, all the while letting our much bigger military and economic sticks do the Lord's Work of Nuclear Deterrence.

It's not really applicable in this case, but to accurately use your analogy, should Rome (the superpower of the time) have negotiated with Carthage (the up and comer), prevented Hannibal (or possibly his father in the First Punic War) from emerging and causing a lot of havoc, and still ultimately prevailed in the long term?

Well of course here Kelley, the assumption is that every Iranian politico is Ahmadinejab, which is not the case.

Their government has successfully fired and detonated Shahab-3 missiles at high elevation from FREIGHTERS. Ahmadinejab didn't do that...their military did. They are preparing for a sneak attack with EMP nukes.

It is wishful thinking to think there are moderate Iranian leaders who have the power or influence to stop the track Iran is heading down.

You might dislike the war scenarios because they have unpretty results...but Iran is not detered by your dislike of the reality that they intend to attack us.

Yes, there is no question that war with Iran could result in all kinds of horrible messes...none of those messes match the prospect of the entire US or large parts of it having every electrical piece of equipment shut down by an EMP nuke.

Iran fully intends to strike us from freighters...creating chaos, starvation and pestilence over the entire nation.

They are hellbent on bringing forth the prophecy of the 12th Mahdi and destroying the great Satan in the process.

They have the desire and the ability, or will have, the ability very soon. They are obsessed with destroying us. Believe them when they say that...they say it often.

Kelley:

That's a pretty scary scenario, but then so was "Independence Day". I'm not trying to be confrontational here, but the scenario you portray as a sure thing is far, far from. I really find it difficult to sustain a lot of panic when I look at the facts.

Shahabs are ballistic missiles. Therefore they require a very specific and robust kind of launch platform that would be difficult to hide on a freighter (think of what a mid-70s Pershing truck looks like). Said freighter would then have to make the trip either around the Horn of Africa, evading the notice of our allies in South Africa, or through the Suez Canal, evading every British and American warship in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. So a nice slow moving frieghter with that kind of superstructure would make a pretty lousy first strike delivery system in terms of suprise.

Second, an EMP strike, according to everything I have read, would require a detonation altitude of roughly 100 km or more to effectively burn out the US East Coast. You can do a city with less altitude, but not a region, and even at 100 km, the entire U.S. would be nowhere near covered (airbursts dissipate in all directions, and therefore are not as intense in any one direction). Anyway, an altitude of 100 km, on a ballistic arc would take significant time to reach (my limited mathmatical calculations say 8-10 minutes), all the while it would be tracked and triangulated by NORAD, the results sent to Atlantic Fleet via hardened (for a much larger Soviet strike) secured line, and transferred to submarines in the Atlantic who would the interdict the freighter long before it would make it to the Mediterranean. In the event that they only did a city, a quick review of oceanographic or land sat (if not CIA) satellite data would pinpoint the launch site, and the process would then continue on as I mentioned above (US Space Command/Stratcom to Atlantic Fleet HQ to fast cruisers and submarines in the Atlantic).

Now, an EMP strike is an airburst. Airbursts, and particularly ones at more than 30 km, are far less damaging in terms of blast, shock wave and heat. They're pretty bad (both Fat Man and Little Boy were airbursts) but nothing like a H-bomb ground burst. They also produce very little fallout (because they aren't close enough to the ground to irradiate any of the debris or dust). So, while there would be a lot of casualties (relative to anything we've ever experienced on our shores), the long term effects would be pretty negligable for loss of life. Power would be out for a long period and several tens of thousands people would die across the seaboard. Obviously, the closer to the ground, the smaller the EMP but the larger the localized damage and casualties. It's really a question of how much geographical vs casualty bang you want for your buck. If the iranians were smart, they'd go for geography, but if they're mad dog lunatics bent on killing us, they'll go for a lower and flatter trajectory.

And let me restate, that's the extent of the damage one nuke could do. If one nuke could effectively wipe out half the country, the USSR wouldn't have needed thousands of them. Just a hundred or so on sophisticated MIRV'd delivery systems, so they were sure that a dozen or so got through. The rest could be dedicated to hitting silo compounds.

Still, even one nuke is a pretty bad scenario, if Iran could pull it off, which as I have suggested, would be a real longshot.

So let's say for a minute that the highly improbable happens, and Iran does pull it off. Huge to massive casualties and one or more cities set back to circa 1900.

News reports from any of the remaining cities are picked up by wire services across the globe, ultimately winding their way around to Hawaii, where the Navy hears about them (if they haven't already) and immediately transmits to Diego Garcia that a single EMP strike took place over the eastern U.S., and that no reports of thermal launch signatures or heat trails were reported over the Korean Penninsula by any of the vast array of monitoring ships or Aegis cruisers buzzing all around Japan, or in the Taiwan Straits. Diego then reviews electronic surveillance of Iranian media and military transmissions, and lo and behold...How long do you think it will take for us to rule out every other possibility than Iran and dispatch warships accordingly?

Now that we've established that even if Iran could do it, they couldn't do it and escape blame, Let's try to figure out why they would go to all the trouble.

You say: They hate us. They want to see the rise of the 12th Mahdi. They're nuts.

OK, accepting all of that as a blanket definition of every political leader in Iran, for the sake of argument, what do they gain? America is far from destroyed, and is now armed with lots of justification in the eyes of pacifists, Europe-China-India-Russia, the Democrat party, and any of the other perennial squeakers and whiners, to kick maximum ass. Moreover, Iran has now shot its nuclear wad, whereas the US will be quietly chugging one or more missile subs across the Indian Ocean, each carrying more nukes than Iran had to begin with. And when we launch, there will be no one in Iran's corner who will say peep.

Boy is the 12th Mahdi going to be suprised when he shows up and finds a 640K sq. mile radioactive slab of glass where Iran used to be!

Now, the Iranians can do the math just as well as I can. Launching even multiple missiles against the US would be just plain stupid, religious fanaticism notwithstanding. They get none of their goals, and get smoked as a result. I'm going to venture out on a limb here and guess that the cost/benefit ratio would be daunting even for the mullahs in the Islamic Revolutionary Council (my bad-I misidentified them before) or the Iranian military, who works at their will (including conducting launches of missiles from freighters).

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, all the doomsday scenarios and mythology surrounding nuclear Iran shouldn't be the issue that concerns us, because when you look at them coldly even our worst case scenario turns out way worse for them. The real threat from Iran is proliferation. They don't have to produce or launch one nuke to promulgate that kind of threat, and thus it makes it difficult or impossible to bomb out of existence. Multiply that by a power of 100 when we don't know for sure where anything actually is.

I'm all in favor of stomping the crap out of people when the situation dictates, and in some cases (like Cuba) just to make a point. Iran is not a situation where military action, particularly now, gets us what we want in the long run. Sure it feels good, and God knows they deserve it (at least some do), but this whole Middle East transformation is more like a marathon than a footrace. A little patience and subtlety will win in the end.

Kelley:

That's a pretty scary scenario, but then so was "Independence Day". I'm not trying to be confrontational here, but the scenario you portray as a sure thing is far, far from. I really find it difficult to sustain a lot of panic when I look at the facts.

Shahabs are ballistic missiles. Therefore they require a very specific and robust kind of launch platform that would be difficult to hide on a freighter (think of what a mid-70s Pershing truck looks like). Said freighter would then have to make the trip either around the Horn of Africa, evading the notice of our allies in South Africa, or through the Suez Canal, evading every British and American warship in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. So a nice slow moving frieghter with that kind of superstructure would make a pretty lousy first strike delivery system in terms of suprise.

Second, an EMP strike, according to everything I have read, would require a detonation altitude of roughly 100 km or more to effectively burn out the US East Coast. You can do a city with less altitude, but not a region, and even at 100 km, the entire U.S. would be nowhere near covered (airbursts dissipate in all directions, and therefore are not as intense in any one direction). Anyway, an altitude of 100 km, on a ballistic arc would take significant time to reach (my limited mathmatical calculations say 8-10 minutes), all the while it would be tracked and triangulated by NORAD, the results sent to Atlantic Fleet via hardened (for a much larger Soviet strike) secured line, and transferred to submarines in the Atlantic who would the interdict the freighter long before it would make it to the Mediterranean. In the event that they only did a city, a quick review of oceanographic or land sat (if not CIA) satellite data would pinpoint the launch site, and the process would then continue on as I mentioned above (US Space Command/Stratcom to Atlantic Fleet HQ to fast cruisers and submarines in the Atlantic).

Now, an EMP strike is an airburst. Airbursts, and particularly ones at more than 30 km, are far less damaging in terms of blast, shock wave and heat. They're pretty bad (both Fat Man and Little Boy were airbursts) but nothing like a H-bomb ground burst. They also produce very little fallout (because they aren't close enough to the ground to irradiate any of the debris or dust). So, while there would be a lot of casualties (relative to anything we've ever experienced on our shores), the long term effects would be pretty negligable for loss of life. Power would be out for a long period and several tens of thousands people would die across the seaboard. Obviously, the closer to the ground, the smaller the EMP but the larger the localized damage and casualties. It's really a question of how much geographical vs casualty bang you want for your buck. If the iranians were smart, they'd go for geography, but if they're mad dog lunatics bent on killing us, they'll go for a lower and flatter trajectory.

And let me restate, that's the extent of the damage one nuke could do. If one nuke could effectively wipe out half the country, the USSR wouldn't have needed thousands of them. Just a hundred or so on sophisticated MIRV'd delivery systems, so they were sure that a dozen or so got through. The rest could be dedicated to hitting silo compounds.

Still, even one nuke is a pretty bad scenario, if Iran could pull it off, which as I have suggested, would be a real longshot.

So let's say for a minute that the highly improbable happens, and Iran does pull it off. Huge to massive casualties and one or more cities set back to circa 1900.

News reports from any of the remaining cities are picked up by wire services across the globe, ultimately winding their way around to Hawaii, where the Navy hears about them (if they haven't already) and immediately transmits to Diego Garcia that a single EMP strike took place over the eastern U.S., and that no reports of thermal launch signatures or heat trails were reported over the Korean Penninsula by any of the vast array of monitoring ships or Aegis cruisers buzzing all around Japan, or in the Taiwan Straits. Diego then reviews electronic surveillance of Iranian media and military transmissions, and lo and behold...How long do you think it will take for us to rule out every other possibility than Iran and dispatch warships accordingly?

Now that we've established that even if Iran could do it, they couldn't do it and escape blame, Let's try to figure out why they would go to all the trouble.

You say: They hate us. They want to see the rise of the 12th Mahdi. They're nuts.

OK, accepting all of that as a blanket definition of every political leader in Iran, for the sake of argument, what do they gain? America is far from destroyed, and is now armed with lots of justification in the eyes of pacifists, Europe-China-India-Russia, the Democrat party, and any of the other perennial squeakers and whiners, to kick maximum ass. Moreover, Iran has now shot its nuclear wad, whereas the US will be quietly chugging one or more missile subs across the Indian Ocean, each carrying more nukes than Iran had to begin with. And when we launch, there will be no one in Iran's corner who will say peep.

Boy is the 12th Mahdi going to be suprised when he shows up and finds a 640K sq. mile radioactive slab of glass where Iran used to be!

Now, the Iranians can do the math just as well as I can. Launching even multiple missiles against the US would be just plain stupid, religious fanaticism notwithstanding. They get none of their goals, and get smoked as a result. I'm going to venture out on a limb here and guess that the cost/benefit ratio would be daunting even for the mullahs in the Islamic Revolutionary Council (my bad-I misidentified them before) or the Iranian military, who works at their will (including conducting launches of missiles from freighters).

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, all the doomsday scenarios and mythology surrounding nuclear Iran shouldn't be the issue that concerns us, because when you look at them coldly even our worst case scenario turns out way worse for them. The real threat from Iran is proliferation. They don't have to produce or launch one nuke to promulgate that kind of threat, and thus it makes it difficult or impossible to bomb out of existence. Multiply that by a power of 100 when we don't know for sure where anything actually is.

I'm all in favor of stomping the crap out of people when the situation dictates, and in some cases (like Cuba) just to make a point. Iran is not a situation where military action, particularly now, gets us what we want in the long run. Sure it feels good, and God knows they deserve it (at least some do), but this whole Middle East transformation is more like a marathon than a footrace. A little patience and subtlety will win in the end.

Kelley:

That's a pretty scary scenario, but then so was "Independence Day". I'm not trying to be confrontational here, but the scenario you portray as a sure thing is far, far from. I really find it difficult to sustain a lot of panic when I look at the facts.

Shahabs are ballistic missiles. Therefore they require a very specific and robust kind of launch platform that would be difficult to hide on a freighter (think of what a mid-70s Pershing truck looks like). Said freighter would then have to make the trip either around the Horn of Africa, evading the notice of our allies in South Africa, or through the Suez Canal, evading every British and American warship in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. So a nice slow moving frieghter with that kind of superstructure would make a pretty lousy first strike delivery system in terms of suprise.

Second, an EMP strike, according to everything I have read, would require a detonation altitude of roughly 100 km or more to effectively burn out the US East Coast. You can do a city with less altitude, but not a region, and even at 100 km, the entire U.S. would be nowhere near covered (airbursts dissipate in all directions, and therefore are not as intense in any one direction). Anyway, an altitude of 100 km, on a ballistic arc would take significant time to reach (my limited mathmatical calculations say 8-10 minutes), all the while it would be tracked and triangulated by NORAD, the results sent to Atlantic Fleet via hardened (for a much larger Soviet strike) secured line, and transferred to submarines in the Atlantic who would the interdict the freighter long before it would make it to the Mediterranean. In the event that they only did a city, a quick review of oceanographic or land sat (if not CIA) satellite data would pinpoint the launch site, and the process would then continue on as I mentioned above (US Space Command/Stratcom to Atlantic Fleet HQ to fast cruisers and submarines in the Atlantic).

Now, an EMP strike is an airburst. Airbursts, and particularly ones at more than 30 km, are far less damaging in terms of blast, shock wave and heat. They're pretty bad (both Fat Man and Little Boy were airbursts) but nothing like a H-bomb ground burst. They also produce very little fallout (because they aren't close enough to the ground to irradiate any of the debris or dust). So, while there would be a lot of casualties (relative to anything we've ever experienced on our shores), the long term effects would be pretty negligable for loss of life. Power would be out for a long period and several tens of thousands people would die across the seaboard. Obviously, the closer to the ground, the smaller the EMP but the larger the localized damage and casualties. It's really a question of how much geographical vs casualty bang you want for your buck. If the iranians were smart, they'd go for geography, but if they're mad dog lunatics bent on killing us, they'll go for a lower and flatter trajectory.

And let me restate, that's the extent of the damage one nuke could do. If one nuke could effectively wipe out half the country, the USSR wouldn't have needed thousands of them. Just a hundred or so on sophisticated MIRV'd delivery systems, so they were sure that a dozen or so got through. The rest could be dedicated to hitting silo compounds.

Still, even one nuke is a pretty bad scenario, if Iran could pull it off, which as I have suggested, would be a real longshot.

So let's say for a minute that the highly improbable happens, and Iran does pull it off. Huge to massive casualties and one or more cities set back to circa 1900.

News reports from any of the remaining cities are picked up by wire services across the globe, ultimately winding their way around to Hawaii, where the Navy hears about them (if they haven't already) and immediately transmits to Diego Garcia that a single EMP strike took place over the eastern U.S., and that no reports of thermal launch signatures or heat trails were reported over the Korean Penninsula by any of the vast array of monitoring ships or Aegis cruisers buzzing all around Japan, or in the Taiwan Straits. Diego then reviews electronic surveillance of Iranian media and military transmissions, and lo and behold...How long do you think it will take for us to rule out every other possibility than Iran and dispatch warships accordingly?

Now that we've established that even if Iran could do it, they couldn't do it and escape blame, Let's try to figure out why they would go to all the trouble.

You say: They hate us. They want to see the rise of the 12th Mahdi. They're nuts.

OK, accepting all of that as a blanket definition of every political leader in Iran, for the sake of argument, what do they gain? America is far from destroyed, and is now armed with lots of justification in the eyes of pacifists, Europe-China-India-Russia, the Democrat party, and any of the other perennial squeakers and whiners, to kick maximum ass. Moreover, Iran has now shot its nuclear wad, whereas the US will be quietly chugging one or more missile subs across the Indian Ocean, each carrying more nukes than Iran had to begin with. And when we launch, there will be no one in Iran's corner who will say peep.

Boy is the 12th Mahdi going to be suprised when he shows up and finds a 640K sq. mile radioactive slab of glass where Iran used to be!

Now, the Iranians can do the math just as well as I can. Launching even multiple missiles against the US would be just plain stupid, religious fanaticism notwithstanding. They get none of their goals, and get smoked as a result. I'm going to venture out on a limb here and guess that the cost/benefit ratio would be daunting even for the mullahs in the Islamic Revolutionary Council (my bad-I misidentified them before) or the Iranian military, who works at their will (including conducting launches of missiles from freighters).

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, all the doomsday scenarios and mythology surrounding nuclear Iran shouldn't be the issue that concerns us, because when you look at them coldly even our worst case scenario turns out way worse for them. The real threat from Iran is proliferation. They don't have to produce or launch one nuke to promulgate that kind of threat, and thus it makes it difficult or impossible to bomb out of existence. Multiply that by a power of 100 when we don't know for sure where anything actually is.

I'm all in favor of stomping the crap out of people when the situation dictates, and in some cases (like Cuba) just to make a point. Iran is not a situation where military action, particularly now, gets us what we want in the long run. Sure it feels good, and God knows they deserve it (at least some do), but this whole Middle East transformation is more like a marathon than a footrace. A little patience and subtlety will win in the end.

Geez...

Sorry for the triple post. Browser freaked out.

Sorry for the short post, due to the fact that I really have not nearly as much insight into the politics and science as most of the commenters here, but what if the targets for the missiles was a) US troops in Iraq or b) a US carrier battle group somewhere in the Indian Ocean?

Thibaud, sorry, my tone didn't come through. No, I wouldn't welcome an invasion by (say) china if Hillary was president. Or Bush. Or some Libertarian or Green. I expect very few americans would.

I was making a joke with a side point. How big is your retirement fund? Is it $200,000? I expect I could find an iranian in the USA who was willing to say (once) he welcomed a US invasion for $100,000. A hundred thosand for him, a hundred thousand for me, we both win. ;) If his friends rag him about it he can ask them how many lies they'd tell for $100,000.

Of course there won't be an iranian resistence movement, except maybe a secret one among iranian kurds, while the USA is threatening them. If they tried, after the war they would be pariahs. If the USA did a fullscale invasion and successful occupation then there would be some collaborators *afterward*. After everybody saw that they had completely lost and we had completely won and they needed somebody to help us turn the power back on.

But not until after the unconditional surrender. That isn't in the cards, so no overt opposition from iranians against their government, for the duration.

Huskermet,

I have to disagree with almost everything you wrote...make that everything.

The first part of your argument is how hard it would be logistically for Iran to carry out a successful, apparently in an attempt to say, therefore they wouldn't do it.

William E. Graham, President Reagan's chief science advisor, told a Senate subcommittee that the ONLY reason Iran was testing their Shahab-3 missiles would be to employ EMP nukes. Former CIA chief Woolsey agrees with Graham.

So if you disagree with them, try to think of a reason for detonating Shahab-3's at high elevation other than the one proposed by Graham. Do you see how, after you come up empty, that there is indeed no other reason to conduct that kind of testing.

In other words, Iran has the intention and will have the ability, if they don't have it already.

Since Iran has probably spent decades creating a secret nuclear program with this goal in mind, they've probably also looked how to stealithily transport their Shahab-3's. Something as simple as two ships meeting in the middle of the ocean, transfering the missile from one to the other. The possibilities are endless.

In the tests Iran has conducted, they've detonated the missiles at a height that would knock out the electrical equipment over vast areas. Every vehicle impacted by the pulse would come to a stop with its electrical system ruined.

Picture highways with dead trucks and cars littering the highways. The same in big cities.

The electrical systems of water purification plants would come to a halt. Refrigerators would stop working. No gas could be pumped, but then there would be no vehicles that could drive up to them.

Yes, we would be able to wipe out Iran afterwards. So what? Since they are planning to attack us, and preparing to do so, its best we crush their capabilities BEFORE they destroy us.

The Iranian REVOLUTIONARY Council (notice their middle name) has a non-physical goal that drives their thinking. Killing the great Satan is their objective, with heaven as their reward. So defeating them physically AFTER they've struck us is not a deterrent to them.

Their twisted thinking includes MIRACULOUS protection from the 12th Mahdi. Which means the MAD defense means nothing to them. They trust that Allah will spare them or take them to heaven for smiting the great Satan. Either way, they win, in their twisted thinking.

You wrote: Boy is the 12th Mahdi going to be suprised when he shows up and finds a 640K sq. mile radioactive slab of glass where Iran used to be!

Yes, they might be surprised...totally surprised by our response...completely stunned as a matter of fact...but none of their suprise due to their miscalculation protects us...it makes their attack more likely.

Do you see? They don't grasp our retaliatory threat because their religious fantasies preclude facts from entering their thought processes.

So they're is no marathon...it's more like a two minute drill. They have a burning desire to kill us, and they are close to being able to.

Try recalling the most hardheaded, stubborn person with a singleminded cause you've ever had to listen to (other than me ;-)) and then multiply that by 10,000. Then you might grasp what we are dealing with...their fanaticism is single minded. They reveal it often: "Death to America!"

These are not people you can talk to or negotiate with. They want you to die.

"Any "Death to Americ" rhetoric is just that: rhetoric."

Seems this was the common thought pattern on 9/10 concerning UBL's threats, too. The one lesson I hoped we'd learned from 9/11 is that when someone comes up to you and says "I hate you and I want to kill you" that you show them the courtesy and respect of believing them. I'm not so thick as to not appreciate the roll of hyperbole in politics and especially in that region's culture, but this sort of thinking seems, to me, to represent projection and assumption of potentially the most dangerous sort.

Thibaud, I know we're coming from different political directions, but do you really think your stereotypical conservative views the potential ascendency of Sen. Clinton as akin to the existent oppressive Iranian regime? I'd not welcome her to the White House, but too many Democrats seem to have forgotten over the last five years the office and institution is more important then the temporary occupant. The whole issue in Iran is that no matter who is "elected" the mullas never change and their individual whims literally control life and death. If you share the belief that we are living in a totalitarian state headed for a Christian theocracy (a belief that some on the left seem to honestly hold), then I can understand your point. Otherwise it is just a red herring.

What huskermet said (and said very well-- nice work).

Paul Danish says "It's possible a "lame duck" Bush could undertake this sort of a campaign without asking for Congressional approval -- by invoking the War Powers Act."

Let's see. Bush's approval ratings are in the toilet. He's already started to backpedal on Iraq. Afghanistan is heating up thanks to a renewed AQ offensive and yet the Dutch, who are due to take over command there as NATO takes over, are dithering and throwing our operations into confusion. Bush's party is in turmoil due to massive corruption scandals that will almost certainly enable the opposition to make significant gains in the midterm elections-- gains that would destroy Bush's ability to enact any domestic agenda items in his last two years. ne angle of attack for the Democrats is on questions of executive privilege that make many Americans-- including traditional small-government Republicans and libertarians-- uneasy about what was supposed to be a *temporary* post-911 grant of the benefit of the doubt but instead appears as a "trust me" power grab with no specified limits. And you're telling me that this damaged, vincreasingly isolated and very unpopular (even in his own party!) lame duck is going to invoke the War Powers Act? What planet are you on?

As to huskermet's well-reasoned and sane argument, Iran has a shitty government, but Iran is not an existential threat to the US. To Israel, sure, but not to us. Remember that while Iran's shitty government is determined to get nukes, ANY Iranian government that follows this one will be equally determined to get nukes. Even the most pro-US Iranians view it as their national prerogative-- particularly as a great nation that will soon become, if it is not (post-Saddam) already, the regional hegemon in SW Asia and the Middle East-- to acquire the badge of great power status.

For reasons of national prestige alone, Iran will acquire what Pakistan-- whose government, aside from Musharraf, is just as rotten, unstable, corrupt and implacably opposed to the US as the mullahs are-- and North Korea and India and Russia and France and every other medium-sized, ambitious power has. The Iranian people ferevently desire this, and in due course they will have their nukes.

Re the threat, Iran is not a greater threat to the US than Pakistan, whose government is riddled with pro-AQ ISI operatives at all levels, or Saudi, whose wahabbi princes and religious leaders have indirectly (and in some cases more or less directly) supported more and more devastating terrorist strikes on US interests than has Iran.

However, as husker rightly points out, Iran is of huge significance to the region and the world, for both economic and geostrategic reasons. India and China need Iranian oil and want Iranian friendship. China does not give a damn about Iranian democracy or Israel's survival. India sees in Iran another rising non-arab power in its own region and is naturally sympathetic to Iran's desire for nukes. Russia will also take the side of the mullahs. In short, Iran-- mullahs or no mullahs-- holds all the cards here. The only way for us to dissuade the Iranian regime from pursuing a nuclear policy that is wildly popular at home, and supported by the crucial powers of the region, is for us to dissuade those powers-- all three of them, not just one or two-- from supporting a rising, oil-rich power that threatens them not in the slightest and that offers them great benefits. This is simply not a military problem. It is an extremely delicate and difficult diplomatic problem, one that will require not just patience and a focus on the long term but also acceptance that Iran will join the nuclear club whether we like it or not. Put on your diplomatic hats. That's the only way out of the hole we're in, folks.

submandave - you really don't know my views on Hillary or any other Dem or Repub. I tossed out that bizarre scenario in order to help some of the more excitable ones here recognize how utterly absurd it is to suppose that the Iranian people, who eagerly desire nuclear weapons, desire us to make war against them so as to prevent them from attaining nukes.

Now, the Iranians can do the math just as well as I can. Launching even multiple missiles against the US would be just plain stupid, religious fanaticism notwithstanding. They get none of their goals, and get smoked as a result. I'm going to venture out on a limb here and guess that the cost/benefit ratio would be daunting even for the mullahs in the Islamic Revolutionary Council (my bad-I misidentified them before) or the Iranian military, who works at their will (including conducting launches of missiles from freighters).

Benefit: Cripple the Great Satan, earn Allah's everlasting gratitude

Cost: Expedited transport to Paradise, where honey and virgins await.

It's a win-win for the mullahs.

Even though apparently Thibaud is a damned Democrat, we're in agreement, just from different perspectives. So I can forgive him for his flawed choices in political afiliation. ;)

I don't see the mullahs trading power for a desperate act that achieves no goals. But, I also don't see the mullahs staying in power very long after Western influences move in. Once we move out the more radical, paranoid elements, Iran will make the same progress China has since 1989, i.e. not free by our standards, but a damn sight better and moving in the right direction.

There's lots of historical precedent, but the most compelling one is the USSR. They made lots of fairly alarming rumblings in their day, were zealots for their religion (that religion being global communism), and actually had the muscle to back up their threats. Those threats, after about 1972, really toned down due to MAD. Eventually, it was our engagement (with a financial nudge in the form of a Reagan arms race) that brought them down.

Or, look at Paki and India. Pakistan is (as was pointed out) in many ways worse than Iran, and has made very loud and specific threats about the destruction of India since almost day one. And yet, India outguns them, so they haven't, Mahdi or no Mahdi. Now, for the first time, there is actual dialogue opening up, and a degree of cooperation on some non-political issues like tsuanamis and earthquakes. Even Kashmir is back on the table.

The mullahs come from a completely different frame of reference than a suicide bomber, or even Ahmadinejab, and it's a mistake to place them all in the same boat. A., and to a greater degree suicide bombers, come from a nothing to lose attitude. The mullahs are older, and with age comes a degree of wisdom, whatever your religious proclivities. They've got a lot to lose, and the IIRC is the man behind the curtain in Iran.

So, yes, it is possible Iran could be a threat under some very specific circumstances, but only under leadership who has nothing to lose. And so I go back to getting rid of A. We can do that through using China and India to our advantage, or through causing him to be snuffed by one of his own (or doing it ourself covertly). We can't do it with a bombing campaign that will take lots of civilians and street-level goodwill with him, and still leave us on the outside looking in.

Kelley:
Read, if you haven't already, "The Pentagon's New Map". I used to see things very much like you do, and five years ago would have been in your corner. Barnett's book (I'm working on his new one now) changed my perspective on things A LOT. If Sharansky was the philosophical basis for Middle East Transformation, Barnett is the operational basis for how it's going to take place. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are all great fans of his (for the sake of full disclosure, both Kerry and Hillary have also been briefed by him), as are lots of people in the Pentagon right now.

His approach on Iran, because of his access to The Management, are probably what we're going to see transpire, and consists of a less muscular version of what I've been saying (he doesn't necessarily favor negotiation as a means of coopting Iranian society against the mullahs, I do).

Anyway, if I'm wrong, I'll buy you a beer in the bombed out shell of you favorite tavern. If I'm right, you can buy me a cup of coffee at one the soon to be build Starbucks in Tehran.

Chester,
I think there's going to be a major terrorist incident in South America (carried out by Iran proxies Hezbollah/Hamas)as a feint by Iran.
There's a lot of bad stuff going on in the Tri-Border region and their's lots of Islamists operating with Narco groups.

"the Iranian people ... eagerly desire nuclear weapons"

The claim that the people of Iran want a nuclear capability is as poorly supportable as a claim that the people of Iran want the US to invade. Even if true, it still does not refute my point that there is little meaningful comparison to be made between whatever temporary discomfort a Republican might feel about another Clinton Administration within our political framework and the long-term discomfort an Iranian might feel about the continual oppression of the mullahs with no end in sight.

My main point is that I think it is folly to advocate a policy that relies upon a sufficient number of elements in the Iranian government to care more about self-preservation and achieving earthy goals than those elements who believe in an eternal reward. I am sure that had I met Atta or any of the others I would not have come away thinking he did not posess the same attitude on "self-preservation" I have.

I make no claim to have great insight, but I do know that a world view that can seduce well-to-do adults to kill themselves and thousands of innocents is a world view that I do not, under any circumstances, want to have a nuclear capability. The greater discussion here seems to be if the cure is worse than the disease, and my greater concern is that if we do not effectively administer the cure before the disease sets in, future symptoms may call for even more drastic measures. I dread our response to a potential Iranian nuclear action as much as I would the action itself. Judicious action early, I believe, is the best means to prevent both.

In answer to Chester's earlier question, read "Alan Peters" comments at [a href="http://regimechangeiran.blogspot.com/2006/01/irans-lets-roll-beginning.html" rel="nofollow"]RegimeChangeIran.blogspot.com[/a] on Hojatieh, a reasonably accurate analogue to Wahhabist/Salafist extremism in the Shiite sect, at least in terms of their relationship to violence and to their philosophy of ends justifying the means.

Ahmadi-Nejad, according to the above article, is a member of the Hojatieh cult.

But Khamenei is not - and here is where I think many conservatives have gone off the tracks with Iran. The Mullahcracy in Iran governs a state; unlike al Qaeda which exploits the ideologically and economically at risk within many different states and among many different ethnicities, the Mullahs represent primarily a single people, existing within a single state structure. Ascribing to Ahmadi-Nejad not just the intention, but the power, to execute his rhetorical excesses misunderstands both the nature of the Mullahcracy and it's structure - it is Khamenei who pulls the strings, not Ahmadi-Nejad.

The mutual assurances of destruction that existed during the Cold War will continue to exist in the Iranian context, not just with the US but with Israel as well.

This is really no different a situation than existed in terms of the West's relationship to Saddam Hussein, except for a few important details. The primary difference is that the Mullahs are less vulnerable than was the Hussein regime - while it is true that their increasingly oppressive autocracy enjoys much less popularity than often represented here in the West, they have a much greater number of reserves to draw upon, proportionally, than did Iraq. Iran is less dependent upon a single governing group, as well; it is, as I have said, more autocratic than dictatorial.

But the important difference is the relative health of Iran's government as opposed to Saddam's. There is no widespread, politically viable opposition, no real cultural or ethnic divides to exploit, and Iran is far more sophisticated in it's exploitation of religious extremists than was Saddam, their government is closer to the center of the Islamic extremist movement. Paradoxically, I fear this will move the US into a position of complicity with the Mullahs, as stable, state control of their nuclear weapons is preferable to the instability of Musharraf's Pakistan - particularly since, unlike in Pakistan, no American command and control network exists to physically control the weapons.

Too, if the rhetoric of concerning Iraq's WMD is to be believed, then the lesson of the Iraq war is that pre-emptive action to neutralize those weapons is extremely difficult, if not impossible. Such a mission would be far more difficult in Iran than Iraq, which was failed to capture any stockpiles of weapons of mass destructions or their constituent parts.

This leads me to believe that when Iran obtains nuclear weapons, or more precisely when it can credibly claim to have done so, that the US will be forced into a position of working to stabilize the Mullahs regime, to safeguard the weapons from radicals willing to send the earth to hell to obtain their vision of heaven. This is not unlike our position with Russia, in which so much of Western journalism is complicit (how much do we hear of the Chechen war in the West, and how comfortable do you think most of us would be with it?), or with Pakistan.

But while the West has become quite good at preventing war at the state level - it is absurd to envision Iran invading Israel, for instance - it is much less so at controlling violence in the margins. This is no doubt due to the fact that this has, since before the end of the second world war, been the favored means by the superpowers to establish clients and field their equipment in proxy battles. But non-Westernized and often otherwise failed states are quick to realize, and like the DPRK are just as quick to exploit it.

So short of direct military action, there is little in the diplomatic repetoire of Western nations to deter a determined state from acquiring nuclear weapons, or any other type of WMD, so long as they have the necessary patience and a reasonable amount of resources. Iran lacks for neither.

Soon the cloak of Machiavelian realism will once again enshroud relations between the West and the Middle East.

Adam,
I don't even want to bet my A$$ on number 3 LOL
this is just what I think will happen.
what I fear is a strike on our forces in Iraq killing thousands of Iraqi's and our troops.
A President would have to fight Iran then and go for counter force at least or at most Regime change.
An Israeli Pre-empt would set the Islamic world against all non believers hindering our Democracy building in the middle east.
A strike against Israel would just be the end of many Arab country's governments as well as Israel's.
What would I do?
damifino.

Thibaud, sorry, my tone didn't come through. No, I wouldn't welcome an invasion by (say) china if Hillary was president. Or Bush. Or some Libertarian or Green. I expect very few americans would.

I was making a joke with a side point. How big is your retirement fund? Is it $200,000? I expect I could find an iranian in the USA who was willing to say (once) he welcomed a US invasion for $100,000. A hundred thosand for him, a hundred thousand for me, we both win. ;) If his friends rag him about it he can ask them how many lies they'd tell for $100,000.

Of course there won't be an iranian resistence movement, except maybe a secret one among iranian kurds, while the USA is threatening them. If they tried, after the war they would be pariahs. If the USA did a fullscale invasion and successful occupation then there would be some collaborators *afterward*. After everybody saw that they had completely lost and we had completely won and they needed somebody to help us turn the power back on.

But not until after the unconditional surrender. That isn't in the cards, so no overt opposition from iranians against their government, for the duration.

Hey Chester ! Que pasa ?!

First part of my comment is more directed at your Update No. 3:

As a historical matter I'd disagree with you about Churchill's Dardanelles idea being a "disastrous" suggestion.

It turned out that way, but the concept was basically sound. If the British had taken along a land element when they began operations, rather than throwing it in later as an afterthought, when the Turks and Germans had time to get set -- the British would have no doubt gotten through the straits and probably knocked Turkey right out, and the whole business would have been yet another example of Churchill's strategic "genius." The Turks and Germans admitted as much later. But Fisher, who never liked the plan, starved it of naval forces, and Kitchener didn't want to take the necessary ground forces from the Western Front.

Quite aside from my historical quibbling, I agree with your main point. Neither the US or Israel are in a political position to act, nor are likely to be for some months, probably more time than we have to prevent Iran from "going nuclear" in the sense of solving the industrial and scientific problems inherent in building a bomb. Whether we can do something before the Iranians get from proof of concept to deploying an actual weapon is another question.

Aside from that, I think the Persians are bound to have the bomb no matter what we do. I don't think airstrikes would prevent or stop that. Delay perhaps. The problem here has always been more the nature of the regime. A "normal" Iran with the bomb would not be as much a problem.

One point that people are missing:

We say, the iranians have tested their missiles by having them go real high and then they explode them. So we think that means they're looking for EMP effects. That's one possible interpretation.

But remember when north korea tested a missile that flew over japan and landed in the ocean somewhere on the far side? And it was a big international incident? North koreans didn't care what anyhody thought, but iranians care. They need every friend they can get, to reduce the number of neighboring nations that let the USA use their airspace when we attack.

So it makes sense that they'd blow up their test missiles before they get close to the border. Now, do whey aim low and blow them up low, or aim high and blow them up as late as they reasonably can? If the real trajectory will be high to reach europe etc, doesn't it make sense to aim high and get good data for the first part of the trip?

The EMP story makes some sense, but they don't have to be thinking that way. What looks to us like planning for EMP attacks could simply be appropriate for whatever attacks they might want.

"Pu-leeze. There is no "coming war" between us and Iran."

Thibaud, your arguments are convincing concerning why it *would not make sense" to wage war against iran.

However, when you say there is no war coming, you are assuming that the Bush administration will do things that make sense. You have presented no argument why you suppose that might happen.

It's possible the iranian government will do something senseless in coming years. If we assume they will, and that the only way to stop them is to attack them in the next few months, then we won't find out whether they might behave reasonably in the future. We will have been driven crazy by the prospect that they might someday go crazy. We will hzve pre-empted their insanity.

Does that seem unlikely to you? Particularly when Bush gets large political advantages from it, and no political liabilities?

I predict a pre-emptive strike, only not by the US, but Iran. It will be in the form of a series of 'riots' in European capitals. Only this time the 'rioters' will be using Kalashnakovs and RPG's. March would be doable, but a little early. May and June would be better. During the full moon to help offset somewhat the European superiority in night vision equipment. The muslim riots this past fall were a recon in force. The europeans NEVER put an end to them, the 'riots' stoppeed because the 'rioters' found out what they wanted to know.

Remember von Moltke and his statement that 'of 3 possible courses of action available to your enemy, he will choose a forth'. It would be a risky bit of business on the part of the Islamists, but they are losing now and speeding that process up by pissing off the europeans enough to get them into the fight has to be balanced against the possibility that those same europeans will go ahead and accept the koran to save their good life. France as an Islamic nation would give AlQaeda a permenant seat on the security council as well as a bunch of nukes and the capability to manufacture more rapidly.

I agree with J Thomas re: why Iran detonates their missiles at high altitude, the last thing they need is one of thier neighbors mistaking a missile test for an attack.

Kelley, you're seriously overestimating the effects of a high altitude EMP. An EMP is produced when the X-rays from a nuclear explosion ionize the air and those ions recombine. In a "low altitude" burst you have high density of air, and a large EMP, which will fry any unprotected electronics. Of course anyone in the area would be more concerned by the nearby nuclear detonation than the fact that their blender isn't working.

A "high altitude" EMP works by replicating a geo-magnetic storm, you inject extra ions into the ionosphere and set up a current, which will then travel through the ionosphere and radiate energy to the ground. The problem with that is there isn't much air at that altitude, so you don't get a large energy density.

Thus in a high altitude burst there isn't enough energy density to affect something like a car, however you can build up sufficient energy to do damage if you have a large conductor, say a few miles of power line, to act as an antenna. Worst case for a strike on the east coast would be about 2-3 times worse than the big northeast blackout two years ago. In that blackout power was restored to my house before I got back from work, my job site had commecial power by the next day, NYC a couple of days later. It wasn't pleasant to be in NYC then, but there wasn't rampant chaos and pestilence.

MMDeuce:

Just so I'm clear on this: a low altitude EMP has more concentrated effects (not counting the fireball and shock) but on a smaller geographical area, whereas a high altitude EMP (HEMP) has less concentrated effects over a wider area. I think that's what I read before and what you're trying to say.

Also, since you seem to have the knowledge at hand, what's the minimum altitude for a HEMP, or rather what's the cutoff point? I found conflicting data.

It would seem that if you could determine a minimum altitude, you could do a little simple trig to trace back the origin of the launch (basically calculating the parabola, then drawing a radius of the distance at sea level outward from the burst). If that's the case, you don't even need Stratcom to track the missile. You could use a couple of math majors (maybe four for survivability).

Also, does anyone know the approximate size of what Iran wants to (or can) build? Are we talking fission bombs or fusion bombs? Just curious because one nuke is not necessarily equal to another.

MMDuece,

Let me just say that I trust the calculations and opinions of Reagan's chief scientific advisor, William E. Graham, and CIA chief Woolsey over yours.

There is apparently a "sweet spot" or range of altitude where the EMP nukes would knock out the electrical systems over vast areas. If placed properly, the calculation is that the entire US's electrical system would be fried along with parts of Canada and Mexico...from ONE nuke.

Iran would probably fire several nukes to make sure they achieve their desired results.

Kelley:

Where'd you find that info? I'd like to check out what they said, versus what I've read. Thanks.

huskermet,

I don't have the faith that you do in a book, even if you did edit it.

Here's why. Osama declared war on the US. Then he followed through with repeated attacks on US interests.

Iran's REVOLUTIONARY Council does the same EVERY time they get together. But you would have us place our faith in contacts we have with the management of Iran. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

I've made my case by relying on both the preparations and the bellicose behaviors of the leaders of Iran. We shouldn't risk our security in a situation like this based on our contacts with management.

In short, Iran has told us over and over again what they plan to do...all while preparing to do it. I rest.

Kelley:

I wish I had edited it. It was a NYT best seller, so I'd have gotten a piece of that action.

As to faith... I may have faith in a book written by a guy who is trusted and listened to by both parties and is considered one of (if not the most) insightful strategists bumping around the Pentagon, but you're putting all your faith in:

A. Your perception of Iranian intent, without regard for empirical data regarding Iranian national interests. I should remind you that, despite Kruschev's comments (to the resounding cheers of the Supreme Soviet), we somehow remain unburied.

B. A 2004 HASC hearing report (by the way, I found what you are referring to for your EMP info-thanks anyway) with the stated purpose of defining ways to expand military capabilities for EMP defense (Perhaps that may have colored the analysis some?)

C. The ability of Iran to outthink and outmanuever the combined intelligence of the United States and her allies (do you really think the whole "freighter attack" scenario somehow escaped the attention of everyone else?)

D. The combined inertia of the entire rest of the industrialized world in preventing nuclear exchange over most of the world's oil supply

E. The chances of bombing out of existence all of the equipment, processes, scientists, and desire to produce nukes in Iran, in spite of the fact that we conclusively know neither the extent nor the location of any one of these elements

F. The devastating effect of a token hostile gesture on the long term strategic goals of the U.S. in the Middle East

G. The will of the American people to start another shooting war, and the will of the President to do the same, and the will of the US Congress to fund it before an election (Bombers don't run on the War Powers Act)

Whether or not you laugh or cry, I can only shake my head. This is not an either/or situation, as much as many would like it to be. It is possible to view Iran as a potential threat without bombing them, and we have done it before with countries whose leadership appeared equally as bananas and hostile.

That's not taking military action off the table, that's giving military action the benefit of legitimacy if or when we take it. We've already experienced enough public relations nightmares on two conflicts in which we were justified in taking action. Screwing up 95% of the world's economy over what we perceive to be fighting words isn't a hugely forward-thinking plan at this point in time.

Making a comparison to OBL/9-11 is a pretty hollow argument, since we of course ignored both Osama's words and deeds for the better part of a decade. I don't recall myself, or anyone else, or anything I've ever read anywhere else suggesting that we ignore Iran.

In fact, I have in fact suggested that we give Iran more of our attention in an effort to effect regime change without putting the world's oil supply, and the economies of our biggest trading partners at risk.

If stepping back from the hyperbole, looking at how best to achieve our long term interests, and cooly working to achieve them is somehow putting our national security at risk, let's just go ahead and do away with the Department of State and isolate ourselves. At least we'll be safe while history passes us by.

On the way home from work, I stopped at Borders and skimmed the conclusion of the book, "The Persian Puzzle." It was VERY interesting.

I'm still convinced that a Gulf War I style air campaign is very likely. Pollack wrote "Persian Puzzle" in 2004, before Ahmadinejad came to power, and mentions that while the Iranian problem is "Hell" with no silver bullets, and that an air campaign is not the best option and has serious flaws, that it becomes a much better option if it appears that Iran is about to possess nuclear weapons in the very short term. Since Israel thinks Iran could possess a nuke within 3-4 months of restarting its uranium processing, it seems like we are now in the circumstances that Pollack describes as making an air campaign more attractive than usual.

The question I'm puzzling now is what comes after the air campaign.

I just don't think there will be a diplomatic solution to this one.

This has been a great thread, with civilized and informative points made despite disagreement here and there as to what is coming with Iran.

I was struck by the fact that President Bush said that Iran "will not" be allowed to have a nuclear bomb. It was an unambiguous statement, one which he repeated, again without possible ambiguity or wiggle-room, within the last couple of months.

Condoleeza Rice, in a televised interview, was also unequivocal on this point.

I was surprised, because usually politicians leave themselves room to retreat.

And as was earlier said by Paul Danish, who has himself had experience in elective office, the fact that Bush faces no more elections renders him much more free to follow his conscience. He is relatively immune to opinion polls. He's worried about history at this point.

One of the Iranian leaders said in a speech perhaps two years ago that the Muslim world could absorb ten million dead in an all-out war against the West. Whereas the "soft" Americans (and Europeans) would turn away and yield. (I'm fairly sure it was either Rafsanjani or Khamanei.)

Iran may feel that it can devastate Israel, survive any counterattack, flooding Al-Jazeera with footage of maimed and burned children until Western politicians would lose their nerve. How long would it take for Kofi Annan and others to call for a cease-fire, after all? Hours perhaps?

And there might be disinformation or confusion over who fired first. Such tactics have (in a somewhat different guise) worked for the Palestinians very well, who seem always to be cast as the victims by Reuters and the rest of the world press.

Whatever happens, assuming it is something kinetic, it will something few have predicted. There are always surprises and offbeat twists.

Wow! when I saw 164 comments had been posted I thought maybe we were talking about battleships or no battleships.

But a great debate on Iran. It appears we will take the bitter pill and this is why. Our stated policy by the president is that we will not allow Iran to posses nuclear weapons. So with that statement every federal department works to see that goal is achieved. So, the State Department works diplomatically to put pressure on Iran. The CIA along with the DIA and NSA tries to determine the excact state of their nuclear. weapons program. Then the DOD puts together operational plans to fullfill the stated policy. Everything stems from the stated policy. The inertia and the momentum of this can not be overstated. When the intel says they are about to put the nuke together or into operation the policy will drive the go order.

Now, tacticaly how do we achieve the stated goal. Remember, at the present time our goal is not regime change. Just no nukes. We have seen in Iraq how hard it is to bust deep bunkers and Iran has moved much of their development and nuke plants to differnt locations and deep underground.
However, we probably know most if not all of the locations. I see two possible plans.

The First Plan
This calls for special ops and regular airborne troops along with airlifted Marines to be quickly inserted at each location secure the location and then destroy and or remove the nuke stuff and nuke making equipment and then leave.
This is a highly complex plan an will surely envolve casulties and the probabilty that things will go wrong. Also, the possibility that we find none of the nuke stuff that we think is there.

The Second Plan
This plan calls for air strikes that do not try destroy things but contaminates these sites so that no one will visit or work at these sites for the next 500 years. Something like this is what the Saudis have done with their oil fields and an oil terminals. They have rigged these sites with contamintes so that if the house of Saud can not have the oil then no one will and that includes you Osama. This plan could incur no casualties on our side. However, this plan would be the most controversial. We would in effect be using radioactive type materials on a nation. And no doubt this would cause Nancy Pelosi's head to explode and what little brains she has to run down the streets of the Castro district. It is the best plan of the two.

Ok pick it apart but you have to come up with a better plan.

Out.

If we make parts of persian cities uninhabitable for 500 years with radioactive contamination, they're going to remember us for well over 500 years, and not fondly. Every persian child that's born with a birth defect, they'll think might be due to us. in the USA that's more than 1% of births. And we're going to do that to keep them from using facilities that they built in less than 5 years? Don't go there.

You asked for a better plan. Here's one. It requires a level of boldness that I strongly doubt Bush could pull off, but it's still a better plan.

In this plan, the President announces that he's commissioned a study of the old classified material, and he found that nukes are simply not worth what they cost. Their only military use is to keep other nuclear powers from nuking you. And nobody nukes nonnuclear powers.

America was never strong because we had nukes. We had nukes because we were so strong we could afford them. Back in the days when 10% of the nation's electrical power went to making nukes, we could afford that power. And we decided to hype the nukes because we hoped the USSR would follow our example. The resources that we could afford to build nukes, they could not afford. If we could sucker them into that folly.... And it partly worked. A lot of their nukes were fakes, the CIA found out the USSR never had nearly as many nukes as they said they did, but still the effort they did put into it was completely wasted. We published a lot of studies that implied nukes were somehow worth having. Some of the people who wrote them were in on the secret and were making disinformation for us. Some others just got carried away and actually believed it.

Nukes are a kind of white elephant. Weak nations bankrupt themselves trying to make them. Strong nations get weak doing it. Only the super-strong can do it and stay strong. This secret worked for us for a long time, but now we end the pretense.

So the President asks Congress for permission to reduce our total number of nukes to 500. Classified studies show we could easily get by with 200 in the worst case, but he wants 500 to be real conservative and safe. (We could get by without any, but that's too big a step to take so fast.) The money we save can be used to build up the regular forces. We don't need a treaty with the russians. They can make as many nukes as they think they can afford, it doesn't matter. But we will not nuke them or anybody else unless they nuke somebody first.

And he tells the iranians, go ahead and make nukes if you want to. But suppose you don't make them, then the USA will solemnly vow that if anybody nukes iran -- anybody at all, even israel -- and we find out who did it, we will nuke them back for you. And of course we know you don't really intend to nuke anybody else so no need to discuss that.

This is the best thing we could do toward nonproliferation. Make the claim and validate it by getting rid of a lot of nukes. Tell the world that we've been tricking them into building nukes. And then whenever some crazy national leader starts making nukes, his people get to think about it. Do they want him to spend a whole lot of money building nukes and using them, and getting his country nuked in return? On the other hand do they want him to spend a whole lot of money building nukes that will never be used, so that soe *other* crazy leader won't nuke them? When they could get the same effect if the USA or russia (or maybe china or india) did the deterrent for them, maybe for free?

This is a whole lot better than starting a war we don't know how to stop.

It's *vastly* better than nuking somebody, or spraeding radioactive garbage.

Bill,

The story about Saudi Arabia booby-trapping their oil supply to radioactively contaminate it and prevent others from controlling it is 100% nonsense. The amount of radiological material necessary to contaminate even the above-ground oil field areas is greater than the entire world supply. That doesn't include the huge oil deposits themselves which are deep underground. And the materials would have to be regularily replaced to compensate for half-life losses. Furthermore, the alledged contaminants, isotopes of cesium & strontium, both bind chemically with sand. You may not have noticed, but Saudi Arabia is covered with sand. The fallout would blow away like the desert wind. Finally, the world has a huge capacity for refining & filtering petroleum. So any contaminants in the oil could easily be removed. This story is conspiracy theory hokkum.

Antimedia,
You claimed 2 nukes from Iran would destroy Israel. This is untrue. The warheads Iran is working to develop are small yeild, 20-kiloton devices. That would be sufficient to destroy a small city, (1 to 2 km radius of destruction) but not a nation. Scaling up the yeild of the warheads requires much more material & much more sophisticated designs than Iran can produce. They are a few months from producing a Nagasaki type bomb. It will take several years to build up the stock of nuclear material necessary to build more than a few weapons. They are decades from producing a fusion Hydrogen bomb. There's a BIG difference.

Meanwhile, Israel maintains a triad of nuclear retaliation capability. They have a fleet of nuclear armed submarines, one of which is at sea at any given time. They have F15 & F16i bombers which can reach Iran. And they have cruise missiles. In a nuclear exchange with Iran, Israel might suffer a terrible blow, if the bomb gets through the anti-ballistic missile defences. Iran, an the other hand will be obliterated. Can you imagine 50 nuclear weapons spread out over every city & strategic location of Iran? Their civilization would be destroyed.

J Thomas

That is the silliest post every on Adventures of Chester. It's full of factual errors, unfounded assumptions, illogic and glaring ommissions (ie. suppose the the US really did as you suggest, what makes you think even for a minute the Chinese, the Iranians or anybody else would do anything but laugh? And you still haven't addressed the point that Iran has stated their intention to use nukes on Israel.) And "the USA will solemnly vow" to Iran? Are you channelling Barney the dinosaur?

Chester, re: the Persian Puzzle,

The scenarios for the air war include,
a) destroying nuclear centres, and
b) targetting regime power centres, such as the Pasadaran, Revolutionary Guards, the mullahs themselves, command & control, TV & radio stations, etc.

The hope is that with the humiliation of the destruction of their nuclear program, the decapitation of the leadership, & the destruction or disarray of the regime support troops, then the democratic oppostion will have a chance at seizing power. The regular army is nationalistic, but anti-mullah, (which is why the mullahs don't trust them), so they might join with the students & rebels against the regime. The role of diplomacy is not to convince the Iranian regime to behave and put away their nuclear ambitions, (which will never happen) but to cajole the Europe, Russia & UN into coming onside against the regime. Slowly, they are moving that way.

There have been rumours recently that Porter Goss was in Turkey for discussions about the Iran problem, including possible attacks against the regime, which Turkey might participate in. To have a coalition that included NATO, & Gulf states like Oman or UAE would be a huge diplomatic boost for the US, when (not if) action comes. It would be best if Israel sat this out and concentrated on its own defence. To be sure, in any attack on Iran, their Hezbollah proxies will attack Israel.

I'm with you, the next 12 months will be very dangerous. We don't have a choice between a "nice option" and a "bad option". We have to choose between several bad options and try to avoid the worst outcome.

miklos rosza,

It was Rafsanjani, but the quote is a little off. He said that in a nuclear exchange with the Zionist entity, Israel would be detroyed but the Muslim world would only be wounded. I guess Rafsanjani doesn't know the difference between one or two 20-kiloton bombs used against Israel and 50 or 100 more powerful bombs raining down on Iran. He would be wise to reconsider the equation.

Re. the assortment of bad options facing us, what evidence is there that we have anything close to the number and quality of intelligence assets on the ground inside Iran that would be required to effect a regime change there?

Perhaps I'm missing something, but if Reuel Marc Gerecht's analyses are correct (he says the CIA is "flying blind" in the middle east, and I've seen nothing to contradict this assessment), then we're *years* away from building any serious covert capabilities there. Any policy option predicated on the effectiveness of our sad-sack CIA, whose incompetent cadres seem more intent on waging war against the current US administration than upon infiltrating or undermining hostile regimes, seems like the worst of several bad options.

Kenneth, I challege you to document a single factual error in my post. There is not a single disputable *unclassified* fact there. And if you have the security clearance to dispute any of the classified ones, you don't have permission to say your side of it.

You think all those national governments will laugh rather than admit we fooled them into wasting resources? They can go right on wasting their resorces and see how that works. But they'd look a lot better to their citizens if they said, "Yes, we knew all along it was a sham so we didn't spend nearly as much on it as we pretended to." All except the israelis, who could say "We made even more nukes than anybody thought, but who cares? It was all american money, it didn't cost anything."

And I thought it was obvious about iran and israel. If we promise iran that we'll nuke israel ir they nuke iran, what could the iranians possibly expect we'd do to iran after they nuke israel? If ww make a direct public threat they might feel the need to make some public response that caused hard feelings. When we said this much they'll know. They might be crazy but they aren't stupid. If there's som doubt whether they'd understand we could put in a sentence about "We think that any nuclear war in the area would be bad for the world and we don't want anybody in the middle east starting one.".

So anyway,you have made no substantive criticism but you don't like the idea. All the other approaches we've discussed are very, very, bad. If you don't like this approach, come up with a better one. Preferably one that doesn't involve starting a war we have no inkling how to end.

Thibaud, we could rely on israeli intelligence. They're supposed to be pretty good. They've gotten us in trouble before. There's some reason to believe that a lot of the intelligence about iraqi WMDs etc came from israeli sources, but there hasn't been much mention about that -- as if we want to be careful not to make them look bad. And they orchestrated the iran/contra stuff that was such an embarrasment to Reagan. Etc. But if they tell us they have great intelligence in iran we could choose to believe them.

Then we have a bunch of kurdish agents there. Working with kurds in iraq, and with the israelis. They could tell us something. We might have given them sensitive detectors that they trundled all across iran to find the buried shielded nuclear sites.

In both cases, of course, they'd tell us just what we wanted to hear about how easy it would be to do regime change. The iraqi kurds would sure like it if they could expand into iran enough to get a stretch of coastline, or better yet a port. They're far better off if they aren't landlocked....

Anyway, regime change probably isn't in the cards. After the japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, were we ready for regime change? The time a foreign attack gets regime change is after a truly disastrous defeat. Nasser didn't lose power after 1967. Saddam didn't lose power after the Golf War or after Desert Storm. Bush didn't lose power after 2004. It takes a really bad war to get regime change. A US surgical strike wouldn't do it. Maybe if we killed half the civilians in their ten biggest cities, to show them it was really disastrous and not just a big problem....

J Thomas,

Your plan would need substance if one were to attempt to make a substantial criticism of it. But I will try my best anyway.

Contradictions: your "plan" involves using nuclear weapons, as in you "solemn promise" to nuke Israel if it attacks Iran.

The point you are missing is very simple: Israel has no plans to destroy its neighbours. Israel's neighbours, including Iran, have repeatedly attacked Israel with the publicly declared aim of destroying Israel. Your plan fails to address that simple point. Iran will use it's nukes against Israel either directly, or as an umbrella from which to increase the terror war through her proxies, Islamic Jihad & Hezbollah.

Factual errors? OK here are two. You said nuclear powers don't nuke nonnuclear powers. The answer to that is "Hiroshima". The possession of nuclear weapons does not make states weaker, it maked them stronger. It was the threat of nuclear war with China or the USSR that prevented the US from invading North Vietnam and ending the Viet Nam War. Possession of nuclear weapons made China stronger. Is China bankrupt? No. Can you name one country that went bankrupt developing nuclear weapons? No.

Also, the US has thousands of nuclear warheads. Destroying most of them would do nothing to reduce the amount of resources spent on building them, which is I believe the basis of your economic arguement.

The mullahs in Iran & the Communist thugs in North Korea don't give a damn about their people or what they think. Yet your plan relies on that presumtion. That is dangerously naive.

As I said in another post, the choice is not between a nice option (peace) and a bad option (war). The choice is between a bad option (a limited air war to eliminate the Iran's nuclear threat & effect regime change) and a worse option, nuclear war with Iran later on. The certain dangers of the 2nd option outway the uncertain dangers of the first.

J Thomas,

You wrote: "It takes a really bad war to get regime change. A US surgical strike wouldn't do it. Maybe if we killed half the civilians in their ten biggest cities, to show them it was really disastrous and not just a big problem...."

Tehran has over 10 million people. Are you advocating killing 5 million civilians in Tehran just to emphasise the point of asking the regime to change?

Fact check: the airwar against Serbia resulted in regime change, without major civilian casualties. The Taliban was quickly driven out of Kabul without major civilian casualties. Saddam's regime was gone in 3 weeks, also without major civilian casualties (the bulk of the civilian casualties came later during the terrorist insurgency).

The strategy against Iran would be to bomb the nuclear research & production areas, & the regime centres of power. Meanwhile, support would be provided to the anti-regime Iranian groups to seize power. No deliberate bombing of civilians is planned. No US ground invasion of Iran is planned.(Some observers suggest the US might sieze the southern oil fields temporarily as a way of choking the regime.)

Kenneth, there has been only one nuclear attack on anybody, in 60 years. By the USA. At that time we didn't understand what we were doing. We've never done it since. I don't regard that as a counterexample.

Do you believe it was the threat of nuclear war that stopped us from invading north vietnam? Why would you believe that?

Your "contradiction" makes no sense to me. The only actual use for nuclear weapons is to persuade people that foreign nuclear attack is being deterred. If we provide the deterrent, whoever needs that belief does not need their own nukes to provide that belief for themselves.

Your "point" in which you claim that no israeli government will ever intend to destroy its neighbors, also makes no sense. Why would they have 99% of the nukes in the region, if they intend never to use them? Even if we grant your claim, how is it possibly relevant?

As for nations going bankrupt attempting nukes, pakistan is the weakest economy that has every succeeded at nukes. South africa was developing very ingenious ways to reduce the cost when they gave up. Libya gave up. Taiwan apparently gave up. Iraq gave up. In many cases poverty wasn't the reason they gave up, but the fact remains we have a small sample. Most poor or moderately rich nations don't even attempt to build nuclear weapons.

We have to remanufacture each of our nukes every few years. And we maintain a great many of them in a ready state. This is expensive. We could reduce the enrichment of the excess weapons and use the material for fuel. I wouldn't want us to dismantle much of our expensive boomer fleet, but we could give more of them more of a role in studying the oceans etc. We might not save all that much money, after all we'd lose economy of scale, but it would be enough to talk about. The difference between having a nuclear weapons program and not having one *is* significant money, but we wouldn't be ready to give ours up entirely. We have too many ignorant fanatics who'd object. (And a few rational thinkers who'd really rather make sure, rather than rush into such a radical action.)

Rulers who don't give a damn what their people think tend not to stay in power long. There are exceptions -- rulers who are propped up by major foreign powers. In hungary they had the support of the russians. In cuba they had the support of the USA. Similarly in the philippines and panama and nicaragua. But independent rulers need to keep a solid core of support. Saddam had a lot of sunnis supporting him, and some others. Stalin too. Idi Amin. The religious figures who get a veto in iran. The idiots running the USA -- it appears they give serious attention to *nothing* but public attention. I believe that the nutcase in north korea is no exception, that he is careful to appear to do things his people support. One of the problems we are facing is that the iranians generally appear to want nukes, that this is something that tends to increase rather than decrease the current government's popularity, and unless that desire changes we will face the same threat by any replacement regime. Similarly, their slurs against israel trail rather than lead iranian public opinion and publicly threatening israel with nukes (when they have no way to carry out the threats) is done for local public consumption. Any future regime can be expected to demonstrate the same attitudes unless the public beliefs change. Again, I say that it would be easier to change the belief that nukes are cost-effective than these.

You have not refuted any facts here, though you have presented some contrary opinions.

Your conclusion is misstated a bit. "The choice is between a bad option (a limited air war to eliminate the Iran's nuclear threat & effect regime change) and a worse option, nuclear war with Iran later on." You suppose that nuclear war with iran is certain. There are very few certainties in our future, and this is not one of them. I'll restate that. "The choice is between a bad option (starting a war that we have no plausible plan to end, which is likely to delay iranian nukes by up to 5 years) and another bad option, increasing the nuclear club by one and accepting that we lose the ability to invade iran in the future when we are ready to do so.

Saddam was not overthrown by airstrikes.

The Taliban was not overthrown by airstrikes.

There were a lot of civilian casualties in Baghdad, but I know less about other places. And in Baghdad our intention was not to make civilian casualties, and those casualties did not help us. The story is basicly that a whole lot of iraqi units had deserted and left their equipment lying around. Curious civilians gathered around looking at the heavy equipment. Our target-acquisition stuff couldn't tell that they were "ghost units" and bombed them. Not particularly anybody's fault, and we didn't benefit. But this is a side issue.

Serbia is clearly in your favor. Good example. Who would have thought that six weeks of attacks entirely on noncivilians would have created a whole regime change? Who would have thought that we could create peace in the balkans that way, with no need for ground troops? Who would have thought that the serbians instead of resenting us would become our best friends and allies? Serbia is the best possible example to support your case. But perhaps there was something special about serbia, that led to their quick surrender and transformation to peace and kindness and total support for us. Is there some reason to think that iran would be like serbia? We did some pretty heavy-duty airstrikes on iraq in the kuwait war, and they didn't do regime change. We haven't done regime change anywhere else with just airstrikes. If we're going to do airstrikes anyway we might as well try for regime change, it probably wouldn't cost much more provided we don't risk people. But there's no particular reason to expect it to work.

We could probably take the southern oilfields, though likely not intact. But when Saddam did that, the iranians kept fighting until they got them back. This doesn't sound to me like a good way to fight a limited war. Our aim is to persuade the iranians to stop trying to get nukes. Ideally they should agree that nukes aren't worth it, and stop fighting. Actually invading their country and holding part of it is not a good side issue to get them to accept our victory condition.

I wish I had edited it. It was a NYT best seller, so I'd have gotten a piece of that action.

As to faith... I may have faith in a book written by a guy who is trusted and listened to by both parties and is considered one of (if not the most) insightful strategists bumping around the Pentagon, but you're putting all your faith in:

A. Your perception of Iranian intent, without regard for empirical data regarding Iranian national interests. I should remind you that, despite Kruschev's comments (to the resounding cheers of the Supreme Soviet), we somehow remain unburied.

Kruschev was an athiest who didn't believe in an afterlife...the Mullah's believe that killing the Great Satan would give them everlasting life in heaven...which helps to demonstrate why it's a mistake to apply our standards to the radical Islamist's mindset.

B. A 2004 HASC hearing report (by the way, I found what you are referring to for your EMP info-thanks anyway) with the stated purpose of defining ways to expand military capabilities for EMP defense (Perhaps that may have colored the analysis some?)

This unstated argument that we shouldn't preemptively knock out Iran because an EMP strike by Iran wouldn't be that bad isn't acceptable to most Americans.

C. The ability of Iran to outthink and outmanuever the combined intelligence of the United States and her allies (do you really think the whole "freighter attack" scenario somehow escaped the attention of everyone else?)

I think playing defense against a determined enemy leads to 9/11 and worse. When the president acts as commander-in-chief he isn't supposed to limit himself to police powers, but to war powers...thus he should try to stop a potential nuclear attack only when it is in progress...he should strike before the freighters set sail.

D. The combined inertia of the entire rest of the industrialized world in preventing nuclear exchange over most of the world's oil supply

I've already argued that striking Iran could lead to a lot of very bad things...but not as bad as letting the US suffer an EMP nuke strike...those same nations you worry about would not treat us charitably if we were reeling from an EMP attack...no, China would be here first to 'rediscover America' planting its flag in California and declaring all land East to belong ot China.

E. The chances of bombing out of existence all of the equipment, processes, scientists, and desire to produce nukes in Iran, in spite of the fact that we conclusively know neither the extent nor the location of any one of these elements

We have no other survivable choice but to decapitate Iran...because the task would be difficult is not a reason to surrender beforehand. I would leave the tactics that would be employed to our military planners and the president...they've war gamed it for 20 years...my guess is that we wouldn't need to kill every scientist or destroy every piece of equipment...we'd just need to destroy their ability to attack us...a big task, but one that needs to be done.

F. The devastating effect of a token hostile gesture on the long term strategic goals of the U.S. in the Middle East

I don't accept either your characterization of a token hostile gesture or what our goal is. Taking out one of the members of the Axis of Evil has been on our agenda since 9/11....there's no suprise there...nor is that a token gesture, but a major undertaking. We would have prefered more time to carry out the goal...but Iran has forced our hand...enemies do that, you know...they refuse to sit by idly, prefering to push their pawns and pieces aggressively.

G. The will of the American people to start another shooting war, and the will of the President to do the same, and the will of the US Congress to fund it before an election (Bombers don't run on the War Powers Act)

President Bush has said more than once that we will not allow Iran to go nuclear. That's pretty plain talk. You might not like him, but he usually means what he says when it comes to war. He'll have 90 days under the war powers act. if it takes longer, historically speaking, the American people are reluctant to pull the plug very quickly when we are at war.

Whether or not you laugh or cry, I can only shake my head. This is not an either/or situation, as much as many would like it to be. It is possible to view Iran as a potential threat without bombing them, and we have done it before with countries whose leadership appeared equally as bananas and hostile.

While it's possible to view Iran that way, it would be a mistaken view. Nice try on trying to slip in the "This is not an either/or situation, as much as many would like it to be," line. There is a real possibility that we are about to suffer greatly in the US as a result of knocking out Iran's nuclear capability. Life could be really rough...but it is a sacrifice that must be risked because the alternative is far too horrible to contemplate.

Not only is the leadership of Iran fanatically committed to destroying the Great Satan, they've been preparing to carry out their committment with heaven on their mind.

That's not taking military action off the table, that's giving military action the benefit of legitimacy if or when we take it. We've already experienced enough public relations nightmares on two conflicts in which we were justified in taking action. Screwing up 95% of the world's economy over what we perceive to be fighting words isn't a hugely forward-thinking plan at this point in time.

It isn't "over fighting words" and nothing else...it's fighting words AND their nukes AND their detonating Shahab-3 missiles fired from freighters AND the fanatical belief on their part that heaven on earth awaits them if only they destroy the Great Satan.

Making a comparison to OBL/9-11 is a pretty hollow argument, since we of course ignored both Osama's words and deeds for the better part of a decade. I don't recall myself, or anyone else, or anything I've ever read anywhere else suggesting that we ignore Iran.

In fact, I have in fact suggested that we give Iran more of our attention in an effort to effect regime change without putting the world's oil supply, and the economies of our biggest trading partners at risk.

That would be a nice outcome. Unfortunately, Iran has probably killed that dream of protecting trading partners and protecting the economy. I don't have a crystal ball, but I would agree with you that the economy and much of the world is going to go through some hard, hard times due to this impending conflict, due to our actions in making sure Iran does not go nuclear.

If stepping back from the hyperbole, looking at how best to achieve our long term interests, and cooly working to achieve them is somehow putting our national security at risk, let's just go ahead and do away with the Department of State and isolate ourselves. At least we'll be safe while history passes us by.

We don't eliminate the State Department when we are at war with another country. That sounds like the hyperbole you claim you want to avoid...it's just silly.

Re the Serbian comparison, Milosevic's only friends on the planet (aside from maybe George Galloway) were in Russia, and his country was piss-poor and of zero strategic significance. No one except a few Russian mafiosi and Russian brataslavyanskiye volunteers came to Milosevic's support.

Iran's mullahs by contrast have:
1) plenty of well-wishers among the rising powers, most notably India, China and Russia;
2) champions across the European left and center-left;
3) related to #1, vast reserves of oil;
4) as has been noted, decent military capabilities and a coherent, large, highly nationalistic populace which would likely be transformed overnight from hostility to support for the regime in the event of a US attack on their country;
5) a geostrategic significance that is several orders of magnitude greater than that of Serbia or any southeast European state.

Note also that, despite the trivial nature of the Serb enemy's capabilities and the lack of any strategic importance to us, the Kosovo air campaign was a farce, described IIRC by a US general as an "88-day campaign that lasted 87 days too long."

Again, folks, Iran holds all the cards. Nothing would do more to convert the regime's nationalistic young opponents into nationalistic supporters than a US strike on Iran.

My apologies for not getting the italics right in my previous posting. Here is another attempt, hoping I got it right this time:

I wish I had edited it. It was a NYT best seller, so I'd have gotten a piece of that action.

As to faith... I may have faith in a book written by a guy who is trusted and listened to by both parties and is considered one of (if not the most) insightful strategists bumping around the Pentagon, but you're putting all your faith in:

A. Your perception of Iranian intent, without regard for empirical data regarding Iranian national interests. I should remind you that, despite Kruschev's comments (to the resounding cheers of the Supreme Soviet), we somehow remain unburied.

Kruschev was an athiest who didn't believe in an afterlife...the Mullah's believe that killing the Great Satan would give them everlasting life in heaven...which helps to demonstrate why it's a mistake to apply our standards to the radical Islamist's mindset.

B. A 2004 HASC hearing report (by the way, I found what you are referring to for your EMP info-thanks anyway) with the stated purpose of defining ways to expand military capabilities for EMP defense (Perhaps that may have colored the analysis some?)

This unstated argument that we shouldn't preemptively knock out Iran because an EMP strike by Iran wouldn't be that bad isn't acceptable to most Americans.

C. The ability of Iran to outthink and outmanuever the combined intelligence of the United States and her allies (do you really think the whole "freighter attack" scenario somehow escaped the attention of everyone else?)

I think playing defense against a determined enemy leads to 9/11 and worse. When the president acts as commander-in-chief he isn't supposed to limit himself to police powers, but to war powers...thus he should try to stop a potential nuclear attack only when it is in progress...he should strike before the freighters set sail.

D. The combined inertia of the entire rest of the industrialized world in preventing nuclear exchange over most of the world's oil supply

I've already argued that striking Iran could lead to a lot of very bad things...but not as bad as letting the US suffer an EMP nuke strike...those same nations you worry about would not treat us charitably if we were reeling from an EMP attack...no, China would be here first to 'rediscover America' planting its flag in California and declaring all land East to belong to China.

E. The chances of bombing out of existence all of the equipment, processes, scientists, and desire to produce nukes in Iran, in spite of the fact that we conclusively know neither the extent nor the location of any one of these elements

We have no other survivable choice but to decapitate Iran...because the task would be difficult is not a reason to surrender beforehand. I would leave the tactics that would be employed to our military planners and the president...they've war gamed it for 20 years...my guess is that we wouldn't need to kill every scientist or destroy every piece of equipment...we'd just need to destroy their ability to attack us...a big task, but one that needs to be done.

F. The devastating effect of a token hostile gesture on the long term strategic goals of the U.S. in the Middle East

I don't accept either your characterization of a token hostile gesture or what our goal is. Taking out one of the members of the Axis of Evil has been on our agenda since 9/11....there's no suprise there...nor is that a token gesture, but a major undertaking. We would have prefered more time to carry out the goal...but Iran has forced our hand...enemies do that, you know...they refuse to sit by idly, prefering to push their pawns and pieces aggressively.

G. The will of the American people to start another shooting war, and the will of the President to do the same, and the will of the US Congress to fund it before an election (Bombers don't run on the War Powers Act)

President Bush has said more than once that we will not allow Iran to go nuclear. That's pretty plain talk. You might not like him, but he usually means what he says when it comes to war. He'll have 90 days under the war powers act. if it takes longer, historically speaking, the American people are reluctant to pull the plug very quickly when we are at war.

Whether or not you laugh or cry, I can only shake my head. This is not an either/or situation, as much as many would like it to be. It is possible to view Iran as a potential threat without bombing them, and we have done it before with countries whose leadership appeared equally as bananas and hostile.

While it's possible to view Iran that way, it would be a mistaken view. Nice try on trying to slip in the "This is not an either/or situation, as much as many would like it to be," line. There is a real possibility that we are about to suffer greatly in the US as a result of knocking out Iran's nuclear capability. Life could be really rough...but it is a sacrifice that must be risked because the alternative is far too horrible to contemplate.

Not only is the leadership of Iran fanatically committed to destroying the Great Satan, they've been preparing to carry out their committment with heaven on their mind.

That's not taking military action off the table, that's giving military action the benefit of legitimacy if or when we take it. We've already experienced enough public relations nightmares on two conflicts in which we were justified in taking action. Screwing up 95% of the world's economy over what we perceive to be fighting words isn't a hugely forward-thinking plan at this point in time.

It isn't "over fighting words" and nothing else...it's fighting words AND their nukes AND their detonating Shahab-3 missiles fired from freighters AND the fanatical belief on their part that heaven on earth awaits them if only they destroy the Great Satan.

Making a comparison to OBL/9-11 is a pretty hollow argument, since we of course ignored both Osama's words and deeds for the better part of a decade. I don't recall myself, or anyone else, or anything I've ever read anywhere else suggesting that we ignore Iran.

In fact, I have in fact suggested that we give Iran more of our attention in an effort to effect regime change without putting the world's oil supply, and the economies of our biggest trading partners at risk.

That would be a nice outcome. Unfortunately, Iran has probably killed that dream of protecting trading partners and protecting the economy. I don't have a crystal ball, but I would agree with you that the economy and much of the world is going to go through some hard, hard times due to this impending conflict, due to our actions in making sure Iran does not go nuclear.

If stepping back from the hyperbole, looking at how best to achieve our long term interests, and cooly working to achieve them is somehow putting our national security at risk, let's just go ahead and do away with the Department of State and isolate ourselves. At least we'll be safe while history passes us by.

We don't eliminate the State Department when we are at war with another country. That sounds like the hyperbole you claim you want to avoid...it's just silly.

Thibaud, you're still arguing rationally that the USA should not bomb iran. I believe we've moved beyond that argument now.

First, there's every reason to think that it will happen. Bush and Rice have been pretty clear. They are approaching a point where delaying the bombing would be interpreted as Bush backing down, a perception he cannot allow. As so many people have repeated, when he has the means and he says he's going to do it, better to take him at his word.

Second, look at the talking points. Kelley is an excellent type case. The argument goes:

1. Iran can do us tremendous damage by putting a nuke on a missile and shipping it by freighter to somewhere near the USA and doing an EMP blast.

2. It is totally unacceptable for iran to have the capability. As soon as they get nukes they'll use them because they're irrational religious fanatics.

3. Therefore, no matter what bad results we'd get by attacking them first, we must do it because the alternative is worse.

Obviously this simplistic thinking is wrong. But enough people will be taken in by it to provide an adequate smokescreen. So the groundwork has been laid to prepare the US public.

I looked for a report about iran launching a Shahab 3 from a freighter. I didn't find it, but I did find a mention that they'd launched a SCUD from a freighter.

http://www.military-information-technology.com/article.cfm?DocID=639

This is an overview about EMP against the continental US. They pointed out the possibility that some day iran might be capable of that. Here are some other quotes:

... during our bombing campaign in Xugoslavia,

'We met with three of our Russian counterparts on the Duma International Affairs Committee, including its chairman, Vladimir Lukin, and senior Communist Party member Aleksandr Shabonov. On May 2, the Russians chastised the United States for military aggression in the Balkans and warned Russia was not helpless to oppose Operation Allied Force.

Lukin said, “If we really wanted to hurt you with no fear of retaliation, we would launch an SLBM [submarine launched ballistic missile] and detonate a single nuclear warhead at high altitude over the United States and shut down your power grid and communications for six months or so.”

Shabonov added, “And if one weapon wouldn’t do it, we have some spares.”'

Who's the more credible threat, iran or russia? The iranians won't have a nuke tailored for EMP, the russians will. The iranians would be trying to launch from a freighter, or perhaps move their missile to a warehouse in cuba or mexico etc and launch from a more stable platform, and they don't get to do much testing but would have to get it right the first try. The russians have submarines that can do it with a good chance we can't identify the sub. Would nuking iran remove this threat? Clearly, no.

'The most important finding of the EMP commission is this: “Correction is feasible and well within the nation’s means and resources to accomplish.” Safeguarding the United States from EMP attack can be accomplished at relatively low cost.

“The nation’s vulnerability to EMP gives rise to potentially large-scale, long-term consequences can be reasonably and readily reduced below the level of a potentially catastrophic national problem by coordinated and focused effort between the private and public sectors of our country,” the report said. “The cost for such improved security in the next three to five years is modest by any standard—and extremely so in relation to both the war on terror and the value of the national infrastructures involved.'

Clearly, if EMP attack is the problem, cheaply hardening our systems is the solution. There are a number of nations that could deliver an EMP attack in a way that we might not know who did it. Removing one of the minor potential sources of EMP is not nearly enough, but removing the threat of EMP is enough.

However, so far we have not spent the small sums needed to harden our systems. We *will* spend the large sums needed to start a war with iran that we have no way to end short of hoping they get regime change. (Or we could nuke them.)

Will russia or china intervene before we start? If they do, can Bush find a way to back down without giving the appearance that he's backing down?

There is no hope of regime change in the USA in the next few months. Bush is more unpopular in the USA than the iranian government is in iran, but taking us into a third war might improve his polls. His two big surges in popularity came after 9/11 and with the iraq invasion. And for him to get a third surge a new war is less risky than a new terrorist attack. A new terrorist attack might persuade the public that our spending on security has failed. But a new war without a ground war and so very very few US casualties would be ideal.

this report is total nonesense as peters' reports always been

As has been pointed out already, the evidence for the efficacy of airstrikes to deny Iran nuclear technology and to topple it's regime is limited, primarily to the Yugoslavian conflict. Though study of the actual regime change might reveal that European ground forces, however ineffective, contributed more to regime change than is widely given credit for.

Conversely, there is a great deal of historical evidence to suggest that even the more limited goal of eliminating Tehran's nukes is beyond the means of airstrikes alone, or even limited ground actions involving special forces, to say nothing of toppling the Mullahs.

For such evidence one need look no further than the recent Iraq war, in which the US military proved the difficulty in reaching, much less disabling, Iraqi strongpoints. Heavily fortified bunkers buried deeply underground (in one of which Saddam outlasted a concerted US effort to penetrate it and destroy him) have long proven to be more than a match for airpower. It is no coincidence that many of Iraq's strong bunkers were co-developed with German firms, some of which have a history of designing even above ground bunkers to withstand Anglo-American airpower. Peenemunde is an interesting example, taking as it did direct hits from British 4,000 lb bombs (which admittedly were less explosive pound for pound than contemporary weapons, though larger than most US weapons). Peenemunde, of course, was a key facility for the construction, testing, and launching of V-2 rockets, which went on to form the basis of Iraq's SCUDs...but I digress.

The real point here is that such strongpoints are relatively low-tech and inexpensive; given enough time and determination, any government can design a bunker to survive most current conventional airstrikes. Iran has certainly done this, and what's more, has hidden mirrored development facilities in such strongpoints.

The best outcome airstrikes can provide is to retard the ability of the Mullahs to develop their weapons infrastructure, to slow their nuclear program development, and to inflict serious losses on conventional hardware such as aircraft and tanks. This is, however, an important distinction. While in a direct confrontation with the US (or even Israel and soon, Iraq) Iranian hardware provides little advantage, and that while against the West the greatest advantage the Mullahs can employ is manpower, by destroying such hardware without directly facing the Mullahs advantages, the US might set the stage for internal change. That same hardware presents, from the perspective of an internal revolution, the Mullahs greatest advantage. Similarly, against their own people, the Mullahs manpower advantage cannot be as effectively leveraged.

Ultimately, the kind of change in Iran that will benefit the West (and the Persian people) must, as in Iraq, come from within - it cannot be forced upon them from without. It is the role of the West, as in Iraq, to make such change in Iran possible.

300MT, what a crock. The largest bomb ever detonated was the Soviet Tsar Bomba, a 50MT device that tested a 100MT design. Ever since then nobody's built big bombs. Where'd they get the 300MT, possibly the size bomb needed to ensure high-ranking congressional districts are affected?
In the final analysis the things most affected by high altitude EMP are long distance power and copper phone lines. Fiber optics and local power grids will remain unaffected, though the transients induced will probably cause wide-spread, short term blackouts and loss of fiber repeaters.

I think airstrikes are valuable because they give us something is short supply right now: Time. We don't have to get all of Iran's nuclear program, taking out a few key installations (fuel enrichment centers, nuclear plants, research facilities) will delay their acquisition of nuclear weapons by years, especially if we target their oil production infrastructure and remove their primary income. The delay will give us years to find the rest of the program or effect regime change.

Yes, there would be benefits to hardening our electrical system. But that doesn't solve the problem. Far from it.

It would take years...and who is going to harden every refrigerator and every car and truck in America? And how long would it take to retrofit it all. And what about your TV, computer and your stereo? Would you be okay with an EMP attack if the only thing you lost was your refrigerator, computer, TV and stereo? And so did every other American?

And the electrical system on your car?

The idea that an EMP attack wouldn't be that bad and would therefore be acceptable doesn't stand up to the least bit of scrutiny.

The HUGE difference between Iran attacking us and Russia or China is that the Iranian leadership thinks they go to heaven. The Russians and the Chinese just think they'll end up dying. So the Russians and Chinese are not going to engage the US.

But if we get hit by EMP nukes, you can count on China piling on...big time piling on...as in moving up their declaration of war against the US by a decade or two.

The other argument against stopping Iran's nuclear program is that it's going to be really hard. But it won't be as hard as trying to stop them AFTER an EMP attack. Of course, in that case we'd just have to nuke them big time...which is what some of you want to avoid.

Finally, I'd like to say a word or two about the folowing remark: "Obviously this simplistic thinking is wrong."

In this case, as it usually is the case, the words "obviously" and "simplistic" really mean, "I don't have a real answer, so I'll just declare it to be obviously simplistic."

I've already answered above the threat of a Russian EMP attack. We know from history the USSR and now Russia had the opportunity to use EMP nukes for decades, but didn't due to MAD.

But Iran...they are planning their trip to heaven and counting on the 12th Mahdi to save their butts. The difference in the two attitudes is about a 180 degree difference.

I looked for a report about iran launching a Shahab 3 from a freighter. I didn't find it, but I did find a mention that they'd launched a SCUD from a freighter.

In the same article you referenced, Congressman Roscoe Bartlett discusses the fact that Iran did test several Shahab-3 missiles, detonating them at higher elevations.

Those detonations were initialing described by the West as failures. Bartlett notes that the detonations were intentional.

Huskermet:
Here's the link:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/congress/2004_r/04-07-22emp.pdf

If you haven't read the government assessment, do it now!

I just scanned through the pdf file. It's scarier than I thought. As they mention, there is a compounding factor that makes everything get worse.

Imagine intersections filled with electrically dead cars and trucks, with their electrical systems damaged or destroyed. If you have a food delivery truck that was still running, how do you get it through the jammed streets to the people who need it?

Lets say you've got 1,000 commercial jets in the air when the EMP hits. How do they land without running into each other? Will some of the jets crash due to damaged electrical systems?

The report says that the first order of business is to prevent an EMP attack.

As for improving the electrical system, it focuses on improving critical infrastructure. But what good would that be if you have millions of cars and trucks clogging streets? What do you do if you are 100 miles from home when your car goes dead and the temperature is 30 degrees?

Lets say you have a couple of children under the age of five. How long will they survive? How long will you survive?

If you have a stockpile of water and food, will gangs steal it from you?

We've seen from New Orleans what happens when there are no toilets for a week. The EMP could mean no toilets for years from Chicago and St. Louis to New York and Philadelphia, and south to Atlanta, Jacksonville, and Orlando. But by then almost everyone will be dead. You, me, your family, your neighbors, the police, doctors, pharmacists, nurses, grocers, trash collectors...almost everyone will be dead.

El Baredei, the head of the IAEA says that Iran could have nukes by this Spring. After that, all bets are off...forget about your 401k...by Christmas of 2006 or sooner we could all be in the process of dying from dehydration, starvation and pestilence.

Kelley: to take a single simple example of a survivable vehicle: a mechanically injected diesel (compression-ignition) vehicle will survive an EMP strike right alongside it: of course the lights and electrics are toasted, but the rest just keeps churning on. To make it all start, get one with a compressed-air starter motor.

Lovely. Now, if you would, please describe how that vehicle will get around all the millions of other vehicles that aren't "mechanically injected diesel (compression-ignition) vehicle[s]" that are blocking every major intersection for hundreds or thousands of miles?

Just don't believe all the drama, take a deep breath. Humans are adaptable and this too will pass.

The drama you refer to isn't just mine. Go read the report by the experts and then come back and tell the rest of us how the US would fare in the months after an EMP nuke.

BTW, humans are not adaptable to switching at the speed of light to not having food and water available. We as a nation don't have large earthen jars filled with grains which we could grind with out pestels and mortars. It's normal to want the status quo to continue. But it's can be shocking when our wish is suddenly denied.

Kelley, you are comparing the worst case if we don't start a war, against the best case if we do.

The absolute worst case involves iran, sometime in the next 3 years, smuggling a few nukes on freighters and attacking the USA with them. Your rationale for why they'd do this is that they want to die.

The best case if we do start a war is that we destroy all their nukes and insurgents in iran take over the government and replace it with a US-friendly one, they agree never to build nukes and from that time on iranians love israel and love the USA.

But it is far more likely that a nuclear iran does not attack the USA. Lots of iranian leaders have children, after all, and they don't want their wives and children to die.

And it is far more likely that an iran which has suffered a Pearl Harbor-type attack is not going to get taken over by a US-friendly government, unless there are sufficient US soldiers on the ground to enforce that outcome.

Now let's try it the other way around. The best case if we don't attack is that the iranians decide that we aren't so bad after all and become our friends. I'm afraid this is also unlikely.

And the worst case if we do attack is that we fail to destroy their nukes and they declare war on us. The UN decides that we made an unprovoked Pearl-Harbor-style attack on iran and votes to censure us with say 3 opposed and 5 absentions. We veto it. They pass an agreement to impose economic sanctions on us. We veto that, and they carry it out anyway. China stops exporting to us. Japanese factories everywhere stop exporting to us. Foreign-owned companies in the USA are ordered to shut down. We nationalise those companies and order them to keep working. Mexico, cenezuela and canada stop exporting oil to us. We invade canada. Etc.

This worst case may be as unlikely as your worst case the other way.

Let's guess at most-likely outcomes instead of comparing best cases versus worst cases. My guess at what happens if we don't bomb iran is that iran becomes more powerful in international relations. We no longer think we have the option to invade iran, so our standing threat to do so becomes null. Iran, which cannot now be invaded, offers aid to governments or insurgencies in the various 'stans that we want to control. They get bolder about suggesting outcomes in iraq. The iraqis try to balance iran off against us to help end our occupation. Iran announces that if israel nukes any arab nation they will nuke israel back. This doesn't matter directly since israel doesn't actually intend to nuke any arab nation, but it's a blow to israel because it means they have to stop threatening to nuke arab nations.

The result is that US influence in the middle east is reduced. Russia and china both have increased influence, as they are on good terms with iran so they all reinforce each other's influence. The USA doesn't lose completely because we become nations that don't want to go along with those will want our support.

These results are somewhat intangible. There may be further intangible results. For one, the USA may get perceived by some other nations as less threatening. We've already lost our image of invincibility. We might lose the image that we never back down. This might make other nations bargain more aggressively with us because they get the idea that we won't necessarily invade them ir they don't go along completely with what we want. But it's hard to measure such things. Intangible.

Similarly, a number of other nations get the idea that we bully nonnuclear nations but back off from nuclear powers. As many as 20 nations might start secret nuclear programs. Brazil, for example. Some of those may find that it's simply too expensive to bother with. But this would threaten US hegemony. If brazil became a nuclear power, they could go a long way to protect the rest of south america and even latin america from us. We couldn't just invade southern-hemisphere nations whenever we felt like it. And if we couldn't intimidate those countries into trade agreements that are ruinous to them, it might hurt our economy and help theirs. So there's lots of room for subtle intangible effects to damage our empire in the long run.

Now let's look at likely results if we do bomb iran. I can't tell whether russia or china will give us an ultimatum before we bomb. They have strong reason to do so. Russia has mixed reasons, if iranian oil is off the market for a couple of years then russian oil is far more valuable and they make a lot of money. But they get tremendous prestige if they can face us down and win.

So, say that russia or china make a public announcement. "We consider any attack on iran to be an attack on our nation," I can't tell how likely that is. I give it 50% but I don't really know.

Then if we back down, we look weak but mostly nothing happens. Minor intangible results. We hadn't actually come out and said we were going to attack iran and we could accuse them of overreacting. Iran goes on to make their nukes and we get all the results above from not attacking. I consider this unlikely. We wouldn't respond that way.

Or we respond that our vital interests are threatened and if they persist in trying to stop us we will nuke russia or china. Unless they back down, we get global thermonuclear destruction, we get hit quicker and harder than we would in the worst case if we left iran alone. But I consider this unlikely too.

Far more likely is that we threaten them with nuclear war and they back down. Then they look weak and we look insane. We get a whole lot of back-and-forth in the media about how close we were to total destruction and how lucky we were to come out alive. Garbage, it was predictable that they'd back down. From there it goes pretty much the way it would have if they hadn't tried to stop us.

Third choice: They ultimate, we attack iran anyway but don't threaten nuclear war. Now it's their move. They don't nuke us, that would be insane. They might declare war. They go to the UN and the UN blathers against us but we can veto anything, no problem. They infiltrate weapons into iraq to attack our troops, and we can't do anything about it except threaten them. They break off trade with us -- far more serious if it's china than russia. They freeze US assets in their country. They take their case to the World Court. We don't recognise jurisdiction. but a lot of nations that have US assets do, and they could freeze US assets. of course every foreigner who thinks their assets in the USA might get frozen will try to get them out first.... A bunch of very bad results, the biggest crisis we've faced since WWII, but we could pull through. Other results same as if we attack iran without getting an ultimatum not to.

OK, say there's no ultimatum and we attack. First question is whether we use bunker-busting nukes. It isn't clear how good our results will be without that. But if we nuke iran because we think they might someday be a danger, we get our pariah status right there. We'll be the only nation that ever nuked anybody. My guess is we won't do that.

My guess is we send in special forces and attempt to take at least one site intact. Nobody really thinks that they're pretending to have a nuclear program, but we'd want solid proof. Then we'd be bombing a lot of sites. And we'd be looking for nuclear technicians and physicists, we'd capture as many of them as was convenient and kill as many more as we could find. Given trained people they could set up again quick, but if they have to train the people from scratch that adds a couple of years to it. There's an alternative to bombing, namely assassinate as many technicians as we can get to. I think they could protect enough of them to make that fail, and that it won't seriously be considered. But we'd do as much of it as was convenient in addition to bombing.

So the good result is we set back iran's nuclear program by 0.5 to 4 years, possibly 5 or 6 years if we kill enough engineers. But maybe russia publicly agrees to sell working nukes to iran.

One long-run bad result is that every nation in the world decides that the way to keep the USA from invading you is to get nukes. 20 or so of them try. This was an outcome of every other sequence of events too, though. Nonproliferation is dead pretty much no matter what we do. If we want nuclear nonproliferation we need to persuade other nations that it isn't worth doing. Telling them we're going to do whatever it takes to stop them, does not convince them of that at all.

After the bombing, iran is at war with us and possibly also russia or china or both. I figure nobody wants it to turn nuclear, and so nobody wants it to turn into US troops against their troops. Chances are turkey will want us to remove our bases. We haven't been getting along with them all that well recently, and this is a natural step after they let us wage war from their land and don't get anything out of it. Relations get chancy with jordan, lebanon, egypt, qatar, and kuwait. Not that they like the iranians that much or want them to succeed, but they can't very well be strictly neutral and to their people we'll be the boogeyman. Similarly france, germany, japan, south korea, etc. Australia will stick with us. Britain is likely to express sympathy but refuse to take our side in another war just yet.

The chinese will have this fundamental question to answer: Why are they lending us the money to do this stuff? And the natural answer is: Quit doing it.

Europeans don't like the idea of iran having nukes that can reach them. Also they don't like us. When we delay iranian nukes, the europeans get the best of both worlds. The iranians can't threaten them as fast. And they get to punish us for our unjustified attack on iran. They win big.

So OK, the rest of the world considers us barbarians. The Saudis lead an OPEC agreement not to sell oil to anybody who resells it to the USA. If they don't do something dramatically anti-USA quick they're toast. Maybe 20 or so nations begin secret nuclear programs on the theory that they need a deterrent against us. Our dreams of empire are hurt considerably worse than in the no-attack case, but the results are still tolerable. Iran may get a 1-4 year setback in their nuclear program.

If iranian oil production is disrupted, the various nations that promise not to export oil to us have an easier time keeping the promise. When there's a shortage somebody loses, and it would be easier to make sure it's us who wind up with the shortfall. When there's less shortage then we wind up with a lot of imported oil that we pay above-market-price for. We can bribe people to sell to us after they paromise not to, it just costs us more.

But domesticly, the whole thing is good for Bush. Nobody's going to pay attention to the various scandals while there's a war on -- especially if it looks like it will turn nuclear against russia or china or both. And lots of americans will suppot the President because we're at war. He'll unquestionably get all the war powers he's been claiming he already has. And all that will remain for the foreseeable future, since we won't be in any shape to conquer iran, and iran won't be willing to end the war without either giant reparations from us or a full defeat of them. We'll be at war for the rest of our lives. So Bush wins bigtime, unless he makes a misstep and actually does get us nuked.

No matter how bad the economy gets, he can blame it on the war. He gets to censor the media. It's all good.

If Iran wanted to come to some sort of "bargain" with the US over Iraq, it could sell oil in greater amounts on the market (they are holding back production) and hand over Sunni terrorists like Saad bin Laden, and other senior Al Qaeda members.

That Al Qaeda is publicly sheltered in Iran should say it all. Cost to Iran to hand over the Taliban's money men (Taliban executed a bunch of Iranian diplomats) is basically zero.

That Iran has NOT done these things, but instead kept to a 1979 Revolutionary era effort over almost thirty years to get nukes should speak volumes.

Iran's nuclear efforts started a generation ago, and isn't going away. They will get nukes. And they will use them against us. J Thomas and huskermet are IMHO delusional or projecting Western modes onto non-Western societies. Ahmadinejad and the like are hanging an 18 year old rape victim who stabbed her attacker (she was 17 at the time). This is hardly the first time this has happened (a 16 year old mentally ill girl was hanged in public for the populace's amusement for having sex, and a 13 year old was stoned to death for the crime of being raped).

THAT is what we are dealing with. A society that finds public executions of little girls amusing. Entertaining even. OF COURSE IRAN WILL NUKE US. They don't value their children (I find that sentiment laughable) they hang them. They also don't believe they will all be dead.

Ahmadinejad has said publicly that he expects to "win" a nuclear war with Israel and the US because he can lose more than we can. He's a religious lunatic with no experience in the West or understanding of how powerful we are. Mein Kampf was published for everyone to see, and understand, but no one believed Hitler "really" wanted to kill all the Jews and rule the world. Well, that's delusion.

One shared with J Thomas and huskermet. Ahmadinejad is outside their experience, someone who really thinks he can kill all Israelis and many Americans and with God's help "crush their wickedness." Didn't he have a world conference about a "World without Zionism and America?" Ahmadinejad will nuke us in the belief we will crumble in our infidel wickedness and we will withdraw from the Gulf leaving Iran to rule all.

Jim Rockford,

I was going to reply to J Thomas and Huskermet directly until I read your response. You laid it and them out without being rude. you said it better than I could: they just want to believe that the possibility of an Iranian attack is just that - only a probability. By holding that position it provides them with the wiggle room to argue against taking decisive action.

I don't accept their uncertainty for reasons I've already expressed. In the suicide 'game' of Russian roulette, the chances of getting shot in the head is only one in six or eight. Yet, the risk is unacceptable.

The behavior of Iran has been reckless in the extreme. They've been waving a loaded gun and making outrageous statements...statements that align with their fanatical religious zealotry. It's a deadly combination.

When an individual does that, sharpshooters end the danger to the community. When a nation does it, they can bring upon themselves a pre-emptive strike.

At least Huskermet offers a discussion worth looking at when he says if we do strike, it should be to create regime change. That sounds like a worthwhile approach to consider. I don't pretend to be a military expert, but I'm all for supporting ingenious ways for our military to accomplish our goal of preventing an EMP attack. The wide array of weaponry and technology that the military possesses would make any suggestions on my part quaint at best.

I differ with Huskermet that the solution lies within the State Department at this point. We didn't ask the State Department to respond to Pearl Harbor. Yet we still have a State Department despite Huskermet's fears.

Since Iran is commonly called the world leader in International Terrorism, any attack we might conduct against them really shouldn't be considered pre-emptive. As you noted, they provide succor to alqaeda, for crying out loud.

Yesterday, I read parts of the Senate subcommittee's experts report that Huskermet linked to. That report said that the first thing that needs to be done would be to prevent an EMP attack.

It's too late for negotiation, especially when Iran is acting like a drunk loading his gun in a crowded bar. Even if the risk of getting shot is one-in-six or one-in-eight, the drunk needs to go down.

Huskermet, I find I agree with you pretty much right down the line about what we ought to be doing.

"Regime change" in iran will come quite naturally when the large majority of the population is ready for it. That doesn't even need for them to stop being so religious, it's enough to have a whole lot of iranians stay devoutly religious but much less scared.

We differ mainly in predicting what the Bush administration will do. I predict that they'll try to bomb out the nuclear sites hoping to stop iran from building nukes, and the'll try to bomb out the leaders of the government plus some religious leaders,k hoping that will result in regime change toward a US-friendly iranian government.

I predict that the result of this will be generally bad. But that's *good* for Bush, because people who would otherwise pay careful attention to various scandals will instead argue about iran.

You on the other hand intend to sit back and let the wisdom of the US elected officials take over and do something good.

In practice, there's very little practical difference between your conclusion and mine. There's nothing either of us can do to persuade the Bush administration to change its behavior in the slightest. You can sit back with optimism, while I sit back with pessimism, and we both argue with people who're sure they're right, that they understand iranian culture so much better than we do that there is only one reasonable choice here....

I keep thinking I should find a job a lot farther from DC. Not that I think anything will happen to DC in the next couple of years, but if I drift along I could be here for 30 years and who can predict that far?

But then I remember a story about a little group of people who saw early that WWII was coming, that the USA would be involved, and they wanted no part of it. They got their teeth and appendices removed and picked a tropical island paradise that had no strategic value whatsoever, and they went there to wait out the war. The island they picked was named Guadalcanal.

"That's what gives me some degree of optimism. I have two chances in three that people much smarter and better dialed in than any of us will do something that will in the end be to our long term advantage"

What concerns me about this is that the smart guys are working for really dumb political appointees.

Guess who makes the big decisions....

Greetings from Israel, everybody.

I'm following this thread with great interest. I've posted on Iran a couple of times on my blog and see very frightening writing on the wall -- and as it's the wall of my own personal living room, this whole question of what to do about Iran is far more than academic. (As many of you point out, the threat is just as real for Americans, but we're first on the list.)

It interests me that so many people seem to take it as read that the interim administration here will not take any serious action. That assumption is based on the need of the administration to stay in the good graces of the White House. As it happens, I *don't* believe we're going to be hitting Iran on our own in a matter of months, but that will be a strategic decision, not a non-decision based on weakness. It would be most unwise for any enemy of Israel to assume that because Sharon is now out of commission we are not going to respond to any serious provocation.

(Technical oddity...I just posted a comment that starts "Greetings from Israel, everybody," and it came up as having been posted by someone named J. Thomas. It wasn't: it was posted by Gloria Salt, and the blog I referenced is located at: http://gloriasalt.com/blog.)

Gloria, the site design puts your post up with a couple of blank lines separating it from the post before. Then at the bottom it has a written line separating your post from your name.

So it was only natural for you to see my name above your post and think it was saying I posted it. Just something to get used to.

I understand that the israeli military can function perfectly well when the political system is in disarray. The USA is somewhat similar. For example, when we were embroiled in the Nixon problem with everybody arguing about impeachment, the 1973 war started for israel and our military functioned quite smoothly, we sent israel the tanks that were supposed to be defending western europe and the tanks our new guys were supposed to be learning on etc, we provided unlimited support for israel up to and including threatening russia with nuclear war. All at a time when many of us didn't trust the chief executive not to try to stage a coup.

However, I don't think this one will be done by israel. It's a big job that will require thosands of missions and probably thosands of tons of smart bombs. This isn't something for israeli planes to commute to from israel across syria, jordan, iraq, egypt, or turkey. The USA couldn't pretend we were irresponsible about it. And when the UN attempted to do things like impose sanctions on israel, we'd still be the one vetoing it. The international result would be worse for us if we tried to pass it off onto israel than when we just do it ourselves.

It's going to have very bad cosequences and there's no reason to bring israel into it at all. They'd just make it worse.

Kelley, given the constraints that make all our solutions bad ones, your suggestion is not so bad.

It's likely that the nuclear technicians are the critical component for the nuclear program. They're the hardest to replace. But it's hard to get them without also taking out their families and the families in other apartments.... So that's probably not the way to go. Remember that whatever we do, we can't possibly set them back more than 5 years without occupying them.

Taking out the leadership isn't worth doing unless we have a good solid revolution planned that can take over without our ground forces. The problem is, the next bunch of leaders is likely to be as bad or worse than the ones we kill. And we'll be generating sympathy for the policies of the ones we killed. Note that the shia religion is based on religious (and political) leaders who got slaughtered. Kill these guys and we're establishing their place as martyrs for the next thousand years. That might be a bad plan. Notel how much better we liked Kennedy after he was safely dead, and also Lincoln. Getting shot was about the best thing that happened to Reagan politically.

I tend to doubt that a revolutionary group that took over during our attack would have much luck. They would look like traitors, they would look like our puppets -- unless they stood up to us. But they'd have the same problem the current government does. How can they stand up to us without nukes? We've been threatening to invade them for close to 5 years. We got bogged down in iraq so we're behind schedule invading iran, but if you were in charge there wouldn't you want nukes?

They call us the Great Satan, we call them Axis of Evil. Any revolutionary group that got installed during our attack would have two strikes against it.

Anyway, your idea is probably about the best we can do. Given that Bush is in charge, we can't not attack. So we'll attack air defenses so we can bomb them cheaper. And we'll attack whatever components of the bomb project we know about. And we'll attack power plants because it takes electricity to make bombs. We'll attack water works because it takes water to make bombs. We'll attack phone exchanges because phones help them talk about bombs. We'll attack sites that might be involved in the missile program. We'll attack religious leaders because it's all wasted unless we can get a new friendly government in, and so we'll push that plan no matter how unlikely it is to work.

Oh, and here's an overview of Iran's C&C structure. It's from 1987, but nothing I've read suggests that it's radically different these days.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+ir0160)

We must make the best of what appears to be the inevitable, and worst, of the possible outcomes. To that end, military strategy must work to promote Grand Strategy (in this case Middle East reform).

As I have suggested, air strikes as an option are only practical and useful (vis a vis the Grand Strategy) in the sense of furthering the cause of regime change. Thus, they cannot be freestanding. There are implicit and explicit elements to the form and function that military action can take. The explicit is obviously stabilization of the regime and nuclear security for the U.S., Israel, and Europe. Additionally, security and continuity for the flow of Iranian energy should be explicit.

Implicit in any military action, is the concept of regime change itself, as well as the mitigating of any negative political ramifications of military operations for the U.S. (I don’t see much we can do on that tack for Israel). One further implicit element is the positioning of the perception, if not the reality, that military action is "for the good of all".

If you are an advocate of the OODA loop and the Five Rings Theory, as I am, the critical goals at the initial stages center on two distinct parts: complete neutralization of air defense capability, and fragmentation and isolation of command and control elements. Centering on Boyd’s OODA loop, these elements eliminate the efficacy of the Orient, Decide, and Act phases. In more simple terms, they ensure that remaining defensive capability will be ad hoc and localized.

Immediately and seamlessly following this phase is the targeting of nuclear production and storage sites, and the elimination of A., his cabinet, and the Revolutionary Guard (the most dangerous elements of the Iranian political structure), followed by systematic elimination of the radical mullahcracy (leaving the reformist and moderate elements in place for now). The Five Rings Theory suggests that these aspects can be done, in part or in total, concurrently.

Finally, the deployment of immediate follow on ground forces to restore government function and secure new elections. Optimally this would be multilateral, but the artificial timetable we have set for ourselves may preclude that option. So, we do the best we can with what we have put together at the time.

What I am suggesting, FWIW, is the emerging template for regime change (cf. The Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq). Iraq is the example of what we do not want to happen ultimately, but Iraq’s problems stemmed directly from a poor execution of what will be objective 5, so the model remains valid.

To get into specific targeting, I would suggest it goes something like this:

1. Comprehensive and massive air raids on air defenses and C&C capabilities. Due to the much larger scale and sophistication of Iran’s capacities in these regards, relative to 1991 Iraq or the Balkans, this is going to require a huge commitment of resources, probably to the preclusion of other targeting. Therefore it has to be quick and complete, in order to avoid the liquidation of other fixed targets. That’s going to require massive scale, and integration of both aircraft and cruise missiles.

2. Fixed nuclear production and storage targets. The speed with which we move through Objective 1 will directly affect the efficacy of this objective. I would suggest that the two could be near concurrent, as in concentrating on the air defenses and C&C of the nuclear facilities as highest priority, but the national nature of Iran’s air defense net and prevalence of civilian-grade communications like cell phones and computers make that route significantly more dangerous for pilots. Obviously this objective should also include infrastructure capablities to isolate materials and equipment into smaller areas, so infrastructure targets are a part of this (roads, bridges, etc.).

3. A. and his political and military allies. Targeting radical government elements, and the only trusted military elements pave the way for defection of the regular army. More importantly, they eliminate the button pushers and force command decisions backward through the Iranian chain of command to less fanatical and less experienced groups. This phase also targets military supply, armor, and artillery (including SCUD and Shahab sites). Any mopping up of Objective 2 can be done concurrently.

4. Top down targeting of the radical elements of the mullacracy, leaving in place the reformists and moderates. This is the effective beginning of regime change. Leaving in place the moderate elements isolates the conflict to the radicals, their capacity to rule, and the tangible assets at their disposal. It also leaves a somewhat stable and internally-acceptable basis upon which to rebuild the government.

5. Immediate and nationwide deployment (via airlift) of a public affairs/police-style occupation/security force, and demand and enforcement of new elections as a condition for cease-fire. Since Iran already has an election system in place, staging new elections should prove a lot less difficult than in Iraq. The UN must also be called in to monitor the election process, not only to give it perceptual legitimacy, but also to lay the groundwork for eventual negotiation strategies.

The key is to prevent insurgency which will prolong occupation. To do that, you must have a near immediate and complete footprint, and move the election process along quickly (as in a couple of months). The critical element is to get the reformists and exile candidates fair representation on the ballot. If we can do that, we’ll see what the Freedom for Iran people are really made of, and hopefully the Iranian people will take care of the aforementioned implicit and explicit goals for us.

During this phase, we also assemble and deploy humint inside Iran (as there will be lots of exiles desiring to return, this should not prove difficult).

6. Re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Iran, and NNPT negotiations with the remaining interim government, to be finalized by the newly-elected reconstituted government. Again, this is conditional for the ceasefire.

Since all of these items have been laid out in succession, the natural perception is that they are linear. That’s not strictly the case. Objectives 5 and 6 happen concurrently, and objectives 2, 3, and 4 can happen near concurrently. One objective flows into and overlaps the next.

The point is to see and attack the military-political-economic-societal system as a whole, rather than as individual silos. Speed and inscrutability are the rule of the day (meaning the whole shebang needs to be structured from the outset to last months rather than years). We must initially transition from preventing the enemy’s confounding of us (von Clausewitz), i.e. defending and obfuscating targets, to us confounding the enemy (Sun Tsu), i.e. get inside their decision loop to isolate and destroy targets, and do so rapidly and seamlessly. We must then transparently restore government, withdraw ground troops, and leave behind diplomats and covert intelligence.

Now, Rockford and Kelly will expound at length on why all of this can’t work…
For reference:

OODA Loop: http://www.d-n-i.net/index.html

Five Rings Theory: http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/battle/chp4.html

Huskermet, to me your plan looks like Kelley's, but far more detailed.

It seems to me that something like your plan is inevitable. Once we decide that we cannot let the iranians choose for themselves, then we must attack them. And something similar to your plan is the best we can do.

I have two concerns, a minor one and a showstopper. Here's the minor concern: To do your objective 4 at all, it has to come first during the initial sneak attack. Give those guys 6 hours after the start of the attack and you won't find two of them together. You mostly won't find them at all with airstrikes. You'll have to catch them during the 5th stage, on the ground, the way we caught Saddam. But that isn't all that important because if there's a credible revolution brewing it can succeed about as well with the guys we don't like on the loose, as it would after they've been killed. Maybe better -- they wouldn't be martyrs.

Here's the showstopper: You want an occupation force to move in and take over. What occupation force are you talking about? Best estimates were that a force of 300,000 to 500,000 men was required for iraq. Iran has close to 3 times the population and a much more unfavorable terrain. Just as a rule of thumb, wouldn't we need 900,000 to 1,500,000 men in the occupying force? We don't have them available. We're already overstretched occupying iraq.

Well, if they called up their reserves israel could supply about 2.5 million soldiers, about 1.25 million of them male. I don't think that would work for occupying iran, though.

Egypt has close to 2.5 million conscripts, and they could call up 15 million men in a pinch. Would we get egypt to occupy iran for us? That might be the best choice but I think it's unlikely, And there would be risks. Say that popular outrage about it caused an egyptian revolution while half the army is away, and they set up a democracy. We want that result in theory but this method would have a lot of complications for us....

Turkey? A lot of history there. I don't think they'd cooperate well enough with the kurds we're depending on.

Kurds? The kurdish army might recruit a lot of iranian kurds. But that's heading toward a greater kurdistan, not an iranian puppet democracy.

India? Would india send a big army to occupy iran? I strongly doubt it.

Since we aren't considering the possibility of not attacking, we have to do without your fifth objective. In its place we must substitute a bunch of iranian revolutionaries. There's always *somebody* who thinks they can run a country after an invasion and occupation. In norway it was quisling. In most countries the names are forgotten. They get swept out when the occupation ends. The USSR demonstrated they could re-occupy eastern europe whenever they wanted, so the puppet governments lasted there until the USSR fell apart. Would we have any reasonable chance of holding iran that way? Possibly, depending on circumstances.

Try to imagine it from the other side. Imagine that we had a President who was generally despised, who polled only around 30% support. And imagine that he'd weakened the military to the point some other nation (say, the russians) managed to do a surgical strike, they killed him and his leadership without damaging much else, and then they called for elections which they hoped the Socialist Workers Party would win. They expected that after the elections we'd agree of our own free will to demilitarise and get rid of our nukes. If there was then an election and we weren't under occupation at the time, what's the chance that any party that favored russia would win? I don't care how bad the President is, I don't want the russians taking him out. It's our job to do that ourselves.

I don't know that much about iran. I've talked with expatriate iranians at great length, but they didn't discuss politics except in very general terms. But I think the more we did beyond take out the unpopular leaders, the harder it would be. If people could say "Well, they made really stupid threats against powerful enemies, of course they got killed, I didn't like them anyway", then there's a chance. They aren't just like americans, maybe they wouldn't hold a grudge the way we would. Somebody smarter replaces those leaders and we negotiate with them.

If we try to take out the nukes too, then we're hurting their pride. They're likely to get all nationalistic. And the more civilian damage we do, the more they hate us. "They bombed the power plant and all the ice cream in my ice cream shop spoiled! They shouldn't have done that." "They killed my mother."

Success looks unlikely to me. But I think if we can find an adequate occupation army we'll do something a lot like your plan. And if we can't find a good enough occupation army then we'll do something a lot like your plan except in place of your 5th objective we'll substitute some kind of wishful thinking.

The premise of my plan is this:

Stopping at any point along the progression still achieves something of value for further pressure.

Of course with Obj. 5, it becomes a much more difficult task, which is why everything preceding must happen rapidly. The Iranian government will not expect regime change I think. I think they'll assume airstrikes to knock out air defense and nuclear facilities. They seem fairly confident that we either can't or won't take it to the wall with them. Probably for good reason, as it's going to be a real bitch.

As for occupation force, no one said it would be easy to pull it together. In addition to finding the proper number, we'll have to find the proper MOS mixture as well. Like I said, this will optimally come from several countries who are committed to ending any Iranian threat, or at least are committed to getting Iran up and running again as soon as possible. I don't think it is out of the question to look for assistance in India and China, who have way more than enough warm bodies and interests at stake as well.

Pakistan would be nice, but I think that might be out of the question in light of recent events.

Another disturbing aspect is that Iran has had roughly fifteen years to learn from Saddam's mistakes. They won't actively resist. They won't have faith in the survivability of their C&C. They will start immediately spreading out targets, and/or stashing stuff.

They have a version of a National Guard (the Basij? have to look it up), recruited and trained by the Revolutionary Guard, estimated at close to 3 million. That's a very large insurgency already in place and waiting to happen, if we don't manage the situation right.

It's going to be the toughest fight yet.

I would put an occupation force, of the correct composition, at a minimum of 300,000 if the bombing campaign is successful. That would be to maintain civil control the population centers. Any kind of foxhunts would require an additional force of shooters, and how large that would need to be I can't even guess (particularly in the rural regions). What we have to shoot for is to "hold" Iran for as little time as possible, before an effective insurgency can get up and running (and a lengthy stay provides grist for their mill) and get the elections moving. Even then, anti-government groups will still be everywhere. We'll be risking a long-term insurgency either way, but at least we will have given the Iranians a chance at real change in leadership.

But again, my plan assumes we are aiming at the best possible outcome of a bad decision. The spectrum of bad outcomes resulting from anything less than what I'm suggesting boggels the mind and again tilts the scales back toward containment and deterrence. Best not to think to hard about it.

The Big Brains in Washington I'm sure are aware of all this (and probably have a much more detailed plan on the table already). How they choose to act on their knowledge is anyone's guess. I hope cool heads and logic prevail over fear.

I can predict that we will NOT use Iraq to fly sorties out of. al-Sadr will have the proverbial shit-hemorrhage about that, and the last thing we need at this point is to have him stir up Iraq. Then it really would be a free for all.

Look for an additional carrier group or two to start making their way toward the Arabian Sea (need to maintain a safe distance to avoid those Russian-made anti-ship missiles) as a precursor. Then look for a flurry of fairly high level (Asst. Sec. of State up) diplomatic missions back and forth with the EU-3, China, India, Pakistan and perhaps Russia (that's going to happen anyway with the upcoming Security Council vote). Any increased public support from Russia or China will be the signal that we're going all the way with it. Nothing happens before the SOTU Address.

Er...unless we let our foot off of Israel's tail.

Geez. The more I think about it, the more I'm sure this is a bad decision.

Huskermet,

Actually your detailed plan looks good to me...only one quibble...the UN. My sister works for the UN...despite that fact, the UN is worse than useless...they are quite experienced at passivily watching genocide take place before their very eyes...they're doing it right now in Darfur.

But if we did everything you suggested, the UN is a tiny aspect of your overall plan. The key goal is to protect the US from Iranian nukes. If we can't establish a more democratic form of government, we might still at least prevent an EMP attack.

I'd also agree with you, it looks a like a very tough task. It's not something I look forward to; rather it appears as if our hand is forced by the maniacal Iranian behavior. I sure as heck did't want the year 2006 to be a year of heavy duty war. But that's what it looks like to me.

Btw, my name is Kelley, not Kelly. Thanks.

PS. Now for the wacky. I read a book on Crop Circles one time. It was full of photos of the extraordinarily complex designs. I am persuaded that the circles are not made up the spoofers who claim to have done them with simple boards on a rope. It seemed to me that the most logical cause was a secret military program.

Here's why. IF, and its a BIG if, we have the ability to zap fields with intricate precision, then maybe we have the ability to do something similar to military targets. At least I hope so.

Btw, I purchased a purchased a brand new laser light for $2 at a flea market. The darn thing can put your eye out in a second. If I can get a light that can do that for $2, imagine what a $10 million black box military research program could do...maybe they could etch out a Crop Circle.

And then they could tell the Chinese, "If you try to mess with us, we'll carve a crop circle on your forehead." It would make for one excellent deterent with any nation of people who want to aren't driven by visions of the 12th Mahdi

Errata: the last sentence should read: It would make for one excellent deterent with any nation of people who aren't driven by visions of a 12th Mahdi

Kelley:

Whether or not the UN is useless for most things (and they are) they excel at some things (some of them even ethical).

One of those things is ponderous declarations of moral correctness. The main thing I care about WRT Iran and the UN, is management of political fallout. Thus, they are necessary (if not actually useful) for their role in certifying elections and giving an overall group-hug feel to the operation.

Others are of the feeding children and turning lights back on variety. Certainly good things to have in a public affairs-style occupation.

Even the greatest UN pessimist will have to admit, post-strike nation building would be a whole lot simpler politically if we could do it under the auspices of "global community". A good part of the world still thinks that concept actually drives what the UN does.

All of that is academic if we don't succeed in taking out the radical elements. Upon further reflection, we're going to need SOCOM shooters going in with the first wave of bombers, if not before. But then we tread precipitously close to assassination of political leaders, which is illegal, so that rules us out. Maybe we can get SAS or MI6 involved. Surely they must have some Pakistanis who look Iranian enough to blend on the payroll. Whoever it is, they have to be competent (Mossad would sure be nice, but that would be inviting backlash).

Also upon further reflection, a quick occupation could cause an insurgency, which we would then leave to the fledgling government to deal with. Depending on the nature of such an insurgency (former regime elements, Salafist, or A-Q Iran), martial law and house to house disarmament a la Bosnia is probably wise. Into the future, we'd better have import/export provisions in place in the ceasefire as well.

Right now we can't do it alone, if we want to do it right. We might be able to do it if we could redeploy from Iraq, but that issue is nowhere near settled conclusively. So we'd better start soliciting allies, post haste.

Starting about tomorrow, we've got to start selling the "Iran as a failed state" meme. I think the EU-3 are sufficiently pissed to buy into it (excepting perhaps France), Australia is pretty fed up with the whole thing (they may wait to follow China's lead though) and I'm pretty sure we can sell it to the Indians. Again, Russia and China become key players in the doability.

Actually, this whole thing might be simpler if it dragged out until Iran actually had a nuke. We could then play upon the fear that they might use it on say, Rome or Istanbul, and really open up the field for potential allies.

This upcoming conference on the "Holocaust Myth" will, I think, do wonders for our persuasive abilities as well (particularly with the Russians). It would be useful if we could keep things contained until then.

One positive thing: no matter what the outcome, this is going to put a crimp in Hezbollah's and Islamic Jihad's cashflow.

"But then we tread precipitously close to assassination of political leaders, which is illegal, so that rules us out."

Haha, good one! Are you starting to get that this is going to be a real war? Not like iraq or vietnam. War.

Silly legal rules won't matter at all. We'll need to give up a whole lot of civil liberties. There are well over a million iranians living in the USA, closer to 2 million. Luckily the majority of them are in Los Angeles and near DC. Needless to say, they're freaking out. They're worried about getting put in concentration camps.

We'd better start gas rationing right away. If things go very very well there won't be more of an oil shortage, but we'd be fools to expect it. Our technology is a whole lot better than the last time we tried to do rationing. Ideally every family would get a smartcard that would allow them so many gallons of cheap gas a week, and they could buy as much more as they wanted at free market prices -- with records of how much they bought and what the price was. That way poor people could meet their minimal needsbut there's still be a free market, and it wouldn't be a black market but a regulated and taxed one. Places that sold more gas at market would be taxed to subsidise those who sold more rationed gas, so they wouldn't have an incentive to cheat.

We'd move to full censorship of the media etc. Maybe not block foreign websites or news that said unpatriotic things, but instead track which citizens wanted to look at them.

It would be silly of us to care about little things like assassinating foreign leaders. In a real war little details like that get completely swept aside.

"Also upon further reflection, a quick occupation could cause an insurgency, which we would then leave to the fledgling government to deal with."

Is there any doubt of it? But are we planning to take out their whole army? Or just the particular battalions that we think are loyal to the ayatollahs? If significant parts of the iranian army are left intact, then they can pretty much decide which government they'll support. Unless we have occupation forces that control things, the iranian army will declare martial law and set up their own elections. Right? Or if they're disagreed they can fight each other. isn't that what we're talking about, about a revolution? Find enough generals who'll support it, and then bomb the others? Kind of like chile.

If the troops keep following orders, you're got yourself a satrapy. The new military government promises they'll have elections as soon as the situation stabilises, and there you are. Egypt all over again. It's plausible the new government will have much less support than the old one, but that isn't our problem. Of *course* there'll be an insurgency, and it will probably wander off into failed state territory, but as long as the oil keeps flowing it isn't our problem. And the more things settle into anarchy the longer it will take them to get nukes.

"So we'd better start soliciting allies, post haste."

Haha! You're on a roll!

"I'm pretty sure we can sell it to the Indians. Again, Russia and China become key players in the doability."

It depends.

10% of all the oil in the world. Nobody but us wants us to control it. Either russia or china might agree to a deal provided it gave *them* control of it. Would we agree to that? But if we don't attack soon, iran will get nukes and some iranian government or other will control the oil forever. That's unacceptable to us, but would it be acceptable to russia or china? Yes, definitely to china. Iran wants to sell, china wants to buy. Neither of them wants us to control the deal.

Russia would be much more prosperous if the price of oil went up another $20 or more. So they'd do just fine if iranian oil went off the market. They might agree to sanctions that reduced iranian oil exports. (But china wouldn't.) Russia might be secretly glad of a war that destroyed iranian oil infrastructure. They can hardly lose. The best case for them, they sell iran lots of great defenses and make money, then we attack and their anti-air stuff gets precisely the right targets. We take military losses and lose status in the world, and we get overstretched with another failed state, and world oil prices go way high -- and every nation in the area that's scared of us has the russians to ally with. What's not to like, from their view? They do better to give us some rope. Veto any UN action (provided france or china etc don't), so we'll look like that much more of a rogue state when we do our pearl-harbor-style attack, but do nothing substantive to stop us, just sell iran all the defenses they can afford.

"Actually, this whole thing might be simpler if it dragged out until Iran actually had a nuke."

Well, yes. But that won't happen. Bush and Rice have said repeatedly that they won't allow that. Waiting is not an option.

"The Big Brains in Washington I'm sure are aware of all this"

Unfortunately, the Big Brains don't get to choose. Bush/Cheney get to decide first what to do, and the Big Brains get to figure out their best chance at making it work.

Unless the iranian coup comes in before we attack, it's likely to be pretty bad.

Haha, good one! Are you starting to get that this is going to be a real war? Not like iraq or vietnam. War.

Those weren't wars? I have in my Rolodex at least ten people who were involved in one or the other who would disagree with that assessment.

Silly legal rules won't matter at all...
It would be silly of us to care about little things like assassinating foreign leaders. In a real war little details like that get completely swept aside.

Don't let your dislike for Bush get in the way of rationality. Short of a rescinding of Ford's Executive Order (which would be cause for bi-lateral freaking out), the Executive is forbidden to order the assassination of foreign leaders. That is why, since 1976, we haven't done it (would have made Panama and Nicaragua a hell of a lot simpler).

I'm suprised that you think Bush is so Machiavellian, yet you think he would do something that would be prima facie cause for impeachment.

We'd better start gas rationing right away. If things go very very well there won't be more of an oil shortage, but we'd be fools to expect it. Our technology is a whole lot better than the last time we tried to do rationing. Ideally every family would get a smartcard that would allow them so many gallons of cheap gas a week, and they could buy as much more as they wanted at free market prices -- with records of how much they bought and what the price was. That way poor people could meet their minimal needsbut there's still be a free market, and it wouldn't be a black market but a regulated and taxed one. Places that sold more gas at market would be taxed to subsidise those who sold more rationed gas, so they wouldn't have an incentive to cheat.

We endured the 1979 Oil Embargo with only minimal gas rationing. Since then we've expanded our supply base (Kuwait and the UAE were not fully devolped at that time. Prices will go up, but supply will remain nearly the same, even in the face of OPEC. OPEC's own rules state that temporary upticks in production by one or more nations are allowed to stabilize overall prices (another result of the 1979 Embargo).

We'd move to full censorship of the media etc. Maybe not block foreign websites or news that said unpatriotic things, but instead track which citizens wanted to look at them. No we wouldn't, and for a variety of reasons that should be so obvious that they don't need to be stated (we're not having simultaneous invasion of the ACLU). But I'd be willing to bet that the embed has seen its last use, since it obviously doesn't work in an occupation setting.

Is there any doubt of it? But are we planning to take out their whole army? Or just the particular battalions that we think are loyal to the ayatollahs? If significant parts of the iranian army are left intact, then they can pretty much decide which government they'll support. Unless we have occupation forces that control things, the iranian army will declare martial law and set up their own elections. Right? Or if they're disagreed they can fight each other. isn't that what we're talking about, about a revolution? Find enough generals who'll support it, and then bomb the others? Kind of like chile.

Chile is a bad example of the right idea, since the alternative to Pinochet was virulent Marxism. But that's beside the point. The Revolutionary Guard exists because the Iranian army can't be trusted by the mullahs. Why? Because most of the regular army was killed off between 1980-1988, and therefore the current army disproportionately gravitates toward the pro-West youth culture. Ahmadinnerjacket knows it. The mullahs know it.

My point is an insurgency is not a foregone conclusion. Reread Mao. Insurgencies thrive in environments where there is widespread lack of social order, and where they enjoy being the better political alternative (if only in perception). Giving an immediate open and transparent election (what we should do) is wildly more popular than a return to the former regime for most Iranians. The candidates, to date, are vetted by the Guardian Council, so the real reformists never get a shot. My suggestion is to give them a shot and let the Iranian people decide.

10% of all the oil in the world. Nobody but us wants us to control it. Either russia or china might agree to a deal provided it gave *them* control of it. Would we agree to that? But if we don't attack soon, iran will get nukes and some iranian government or other will control the oil forever. That's unacceptable to us, but would it be acceptable to russia or china? Yes, definitely to china. Iran wants to sell, china wants to buy. Neither of them wants us to control the deal.

The estimates are that Iran controls about one-fifth, or 20% of the world oil and natural gas supply. Your assumption that we want to "control" it stems from your dislike of Bush, rather than any factual basis. We have the assets in place, and are essentially still in control of Kuwait, to where if we wanted to "control" oil, we could do it on the Arabian Penninsula. Or we could "control" Nigeria or Venezuela who would put up less of a fight.

And don't think for a minute that China and India aren't looking to dominate the Iranian market. That's why they've followed a policy of engagement with Iran since the 1990s. They're already inside the system. What's really at stake for them is the distribution channels. Any conflict with the U.S. squeezes Iranian oil supply (it's currently all being run in tankers) to China and India, thereby squelching their economies. A prolonged conflict much more so. Both countries know this which is why they are so heavily invested in looking for alternative sources in Africa and South America (and in our other problem, Syria).

Now, since they can't overtly control what we do militarily (and we hope they won't try), any prolonged conflict is bad for them. Therefore, it serves their interests to either keep Iran running, or absent that, get it back up to speed ASAP. And that's the case we make to them, i.e. "We're going to do this thing for security reasons that are non-negotiable. Now you can either be part of the solution, or sit on your hands and let us take a lot longer to get to the solution."

Russia would be much more prosperous if the price of oil went up another $20 or more. So they'd do just fine if iranian oil went off the market. They might agree to sanctions that reduced iranian oil exports. (But china wouldn't.) Russia might be secretly glad of a war that destroyed iranian oil infrastructure. They can hardly lose. The best case for them, they sell iran lots of great defenses and make money, then we attack and their anti-air stuff gets precisely the right targets. We take military losses and lose status in the world, and we get overstretched with another failed state, and world oil prices go way high -- and every nation in the area that's scared of us has the russians to ally with. What's not to like, from their view? They do better to give us some rope. Veto any UN action (provided france or china etc don't), so we'll look like that much more of a rogue state when we do our pearl-harbor-style attack, but do nothing substantive to stop us, just sell iran all the defenses they can afford.

Russia has two interests in Iranian nukes: They don't like the idea of one going off on their border or finding its way to Chechnya; and about 2 million Russian Jews have relatives in Israel.

Russia would gain a short term advantage in Europe, but India and China would still be out in the cold. No pipeline exists (yet) between Russian oil and gas fields and China or South Asia. Again, distribution becomes a problem. Russia ia not equiped to handle tanking the stuff such a long distance, since they just nationalized the Yukos fields and rigs (not enough nationalized ships available, that was an oversight). They also don't have the contacts in place (gotta get paid). Most importantly, the high cost of tanking petroleum that far erodes their profit margin.

This isn't new stuff, if they could be doing it, they would already be doing it.

As for selling air defenses...

While we can't stop it, it will certainly affect US/Russian relations, as did the arms supplied to Iraq in 2003. The salesmanship for the Russians is to offer them an economic carrot to play ball and untie their hands in Chechnya.

Well, yes. But that won't happen. Bush and Rice have said repeatedly that they won't allow that. Waiting is not an option.

It depends on how you view what the Administration said. If you look at it like "We will not allow Iran to become a nuclear threat" that doesn't necessarily preclude letting production happen up to a critical point and then snuffing it. We still have 30-60 days before the IAEA turns Iran over (there will be an ultimatum), and nothing's going to happen before that. So however much pressure there is to do it immediately, there will be no bombing before spring. That gives us plenty of time to work on allies and let A. keep alienating the whole world.

Seriously J Thomas. You seem pretty reasonable. You gotta let the conspiracy crap go. As do the Democrats as a whole. This Iran problem is going to take all of us to solve, there is no corner on the market for ideas in either party, and GWB is secretly praying for a political solution that will not adversely affect the 2006 and 2008 elections.

"Are you starting to get that this is going to be a real war? Not like iraq or vietnam. War."

Those weren't wars?

The USA faced no threat in those actions. We pretended there was some sort of threat that required us to be there, but there was none. Our own actions affected our economy during vietnam. Johnson wanted to do "Great Society" and military spending at the same time, and he kept the military spending off the books. The Fed went by the official figures and we got some stagflation. By the time Nixon came in he was ready to do price controls. But that was our choice, we tried to fight an extremely expensive police action without paying for it.

The Gulf War was no problem, somebody else paid us to do it. We nearly made a profit.

The iraq war is causing us a dangerous self-inflicted economic wound but not like a real war.

We could be heading for something that affects the USA at home more like WWII than any war since.

Don't let your dislike for Bush get in the way of rationality. Short of a rescinding of Ford's Executive Order (which would be cause for bi-lateral freaking out), the Executive is forbidden to order the assassination of foreign leaders. That is why, since 1976, we haven't done it (would have made Panama and Nicaragua a hell of a lot simpler).

Since 1976? You mean, we haven't gotten caught doing it. Arguing that we actually have would be conspiracy theory stuff, there's no proof, we truly haven't been caught. No point arguing about what can't be known. Only ask any saudi who'll be honest about it, and see what they believe.

Anyway, we're talking about an actual war. Once iran declares war the US Congress doesn't have to. It will be an official war, and the President will get all his War Powers without any quibbling. Assassinating leaders of a nation we're at war with won't get him any impeachment or even censure. And if they get killed a few hours early, so what? "Hey, buddy! Don't you know there's a war on?"

We endured the 1979 Oil Embargo with only minimal gas rationing. Since then we've expanded our supply base (Kuwait and the UAE were not fully devolped at that time.

But demand has gone up even more.

Prices will go up, but supply will remain nearly the same, even in the face of OPEC. OPEC's own rules state that temporary upticks in production by one or more nations are allowed to stabilize overall prices (another result of the 1979 Embargo).

The reason there have been such big dislocations recently is there isn't any slack. All the oil producing nations are producing about as fast as they can. That's why when iraq's production went down, prices rose so much.

Then we had Katrina and the europeans sent us oil from their own strategic reserve to keep us from getting hurt, and we drew down our own strategic reserve too. So how high do you expect prices might go? We can keep prices relatively low by drawing down the strategic reserve more. That's what it's there for, right? To keep civilians from having shortages while we're at war? :/

The Revolutionary Guard exists because the Iranian army can't be trusted by the mullahs. Why? Because most of the regular army was killed off between 1980-1988, and therefore the current army disproportionately gravitates toward the pro-West youth culture.

My point is that if we leave an army intact, and we don't occupy, then that army is in control. They can and ought to declare martial law and run things their own way as long as they need to.

"Pro-west". In this context I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Giving an immediate open and transparent election (what we should do) is wildly more popular than a return to the former regime for most Iranians.

Sure, that would be good. But to do that, we'd need an extremely effective occupation. I don't think india will supply the troops. So, china? Russia? Doesn't the nation that supplies the occupation troops get to decide about the open transparent election?

The estimates are that Iran controls about one-fifth, or 20% of the world oil and natural gas supply. Your assumption that we want to "control" it stems from your dislike of Bush, rather than any factual basis.

Regardless whether that's our intention, can you imagine russians or chinese believeing that isn't our intention? And that's the point. Since we are in position to control the arabian peninsula already, and we could easily pick off venezuela and nigeria, how could they possibly agree to hand us iran too?

And don't think for a minute that China and India aren't looking to dominate the Iranian market.

You bet. They need it intact and they want to control it. So why would either of them accept a plan that might not leave it intact and likely would leave it under US control?

Now, since they can't overtly control what we do militarily (and we hope they won't try), any prolonged conflict is bad for them.

And no conflict at all is better than a short conflict.

Therefore, it serves their interests to either keep Iran running, or absent that, get it back up to speed ASAP. And that's the case we make to them, i.e. "We're going to do this thing for security reasons that are non-negotiable. Now you can either be part of the solution, or sit on your hands and let us take a lot longer to get to the solution."

Suppose that iran does become a nuclear power, and has a deterrent. China and india are then better off, we won't attack iran and disrupt their supply. China gets its pipeline and feels more secure. We can bomb the pipeline of course, but that's an act of war. They don't necessarily get the oil at the price they want, as they would if they had full control. But they don't get the headaches of keeping that control either.

They're better off if we don't lose too badly. They want us to be there as a threat, so they can be the defender against the threat.

If it gets right down to it, china can say "Your proposed attack on our ally is non-negotiable. War in iran would be total war with us." Would we fight a nuclear war with china to avoid the possibility we might someday have a nuclear war with iran? Would we assume the chinese didn't mean it?

Russia has two interests in Iranian nukes: They don't like the idea of one going off on their border or finding its way to Chechnya; and about 2 million Russian Jews have relatives in Israel.

Write off the jewish control of russia. They don't have much control there.

Russia would of course like us to severely damage ourselves while we delay iranian nukes by 5 years. But then there's the chance that we could pull it off and get control of iran. And there's the chance we'd create another failed state and iranian oil stays in the ground for the foreseeable future. Either of those would be worse for russia than an iran with a few nukes. Iran with nukes could counter us in ways that would be indelicate for the russians to do themselves. Note that we have airbases in a collection of countries that used to be in the USSR. That's got to rankle. Russians would probably feel better with a pipsqueak regional-power iran influencing those nations than their old enemy the USA.

Put yourself in their place. Which is more important, denying nukes to a friendly trading partner or tripping up the US hegemony?

Consider that we went through the same thing in reverse 35 or so years ago.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB49/sino.sov.10.pdf

As for selling air defenses...

While we can't stop it, it will certainly affect US/Russian relations, as did the arms supplied to Iraq in 2003. The salesmanship for the Russians is to offer them an economic carrot to play ball and untie their hands in Chechnya.

And of course the weapons we supplied afghans when the russians were there. But see, we're a lot weaker than we were 5 years ago. Us offer them economic incentives? Unless we win, it will be china offering us economic incentives. Our economy is in serious trouble, and unless we win iran it isn't clear how we can avoid great big problems. So here are the russians. If they let us take iran we give them a carrot provided we win. If they stop us, they get whatever they can pick up from our former hegemony.

So however much pressure there is to do it immediately, there will be no bombing before spring.

I haven't heard a recent estimated date that comes before March. That isn't plenty of time. What do you think could stop an attack short of an ultimatum by russia or china?

How is it that I ended up in the center arguing against both ends? As the saying goes, the middle of the road is where you're most likely to get squashed.

Kelley and J Thomas represent the opposite poles of at least fairly rational thought.

One side says we have to do it now, and do it completely. The other side suggests we may not have to do it at all, or at least not into the immediate future.

I hold elements of both ends correct. We're going to have to play out our diplomatic hand right now as best we can. Hopefully something will come out of it that we can leverage into opening up Iran in the future. My best guess is that nothing will, but you have to be hopeful.

We seem to have swayed China and Russia into a more agressive diplomatic stance:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/16/AR2006011600281_pf.html

Now what we have to do is get to selling them on the contingency planning.

What level of violence that entails, and who participates in it will need to be sorted out before we can start counting our Iranian chickens.

My best guess on this is that as negotiated settlement burns out (the Russian proposal isn't ever going fly if Iran really wants to make nukes, which they do), and as A. continues to shoot his mouth off, China, India and Russia are going to have to make some hard choices. The degree of salesmanship we apply to each will be proportional to the amount of support we get. Ultimately, we too will be forced to make some hard choices, i.e. between deterrence and overt military action.

And so I go back to my original thesis stated lo these many days ago: In the absence of good short-term choices, we must make good long-term choices.

How is it that I ended up in the center arguing against both ends? As the saying goes, the middle of the road is where you're most likely to get squashed.

Of course we both respond to you. We hardly have enough in common to talk to each other.

But it's just the luck of the draw that puts you in the middle. If we got a liberal here, and an out-and-out pacifist, then I'd be in the middle.

Or if instead we got a raving zionist and one of those guys who says the only good towelhead is a dead towelhead, turn the whole place into a parking lot then Kelley would be in the middle.

Anyway, I'm mostly despondent about it all. What has the Bush Administration done competently, that doesn't involve spin for the media?

The way I vaguely remember it, back when we were about to invade iraq and it was time for Bush to make one last ultimatum for Saddam to reject before we did it, Bush made his ultimatum, and then it looked like Saddam was about to accept! Bush had to go back and add more stuff onto it to make sure Saddam would reject it. Talk about careful diplomacy, this is the gang that doesn't even know how to make an offer you can't accept.

What have they done right in 5 years? Social Security? "I don't actually have a plan yet, but trust me, give me the SS money and I'll come up with a great plan." Tax cuts? Homeland Security? The exchange rate with china? Iraq? North korea? Getting turkey to let us attack from the north? These are people who don't know how to have allies. They don't know how to run bureaucracies. They don't know how to make a budget.

Given a choice between a possible nuclear war later, versus giving Bush $200 million of borrowed money to prevent it, I'll take the former. Too much chance we'll get the nuclear war now....

But I bet it's more fun to be optimistic. I envy you that.

Incidentally, we just lost 3 helicopters in 10 days in iraq. I hope that's a coincidence, and not a sign that something has changed.

Kelley and J Thomas represent the opposite poles of at least fairly rational thought.

One side says we have to do it now, and do it completely. The other side suggests we may not have to do it at all, or at least not into the immediate future.

It seems to me that you've mischaracterized my position to some degree.

Where we disagree is that I don't believe that we can negotiate with Iran since they have exhibited loudly-and-clearly a deep fanaticism coupled with a decades long program to exercise their demented dreams of destroying the US.

As for the mode of attack, I support the general outline you made earlier. So on that part we do agree. That agreement is a rather large in my mind, at least.

I don't think we have to attack now, but we do need to attack quickly...perhaps within two months if our intelligence evidence supports that. I do recall that el-Baredei said Iran could be going nuclear around March.

The attack needs to be "complete" in the sense that we need to take out the people who would be responsible for attacking us. This includes the leadership and the technical people.

It might also involve degrading the nuclear capability. How much, I don't know.

These are large undertakings...thank goodness we have a sophisticated military with unparalleled capabilities. Hopefully they will succeed.

My starting point is this: Iran will attack us with EMP nukes if they have the opportunity. They absolutely will not negotiate in good faith...rather they would use negotiation to cover up their real intentions. In a case such as this, negotiation with Iran is out of the question.

Peerhaps you've seen the photo of a presentation given by Ahmadinejad. It looks like a huge power point graphic behind him of an hourglass. It shows two balls fallen from the top half of the hourglass. One ball, already shattered represents the US. The other, in midflight and about to shatter is Israel.

Ahmadinejad's blatant message is all too clear. He wants to take out the US first, so that Iran can then wipe out Israel. Ahmad is the same character who 'sees' things such as a UN audience rapt in unblinking attention for 22 minutes.

BTW, hourglasses measure in hours. That ought to provide some indication what Iran's timeframe is.

China, India and Russia are going to have to make some hard choices. The degree of salesmanship we apply to each will be proportional to the amount of support we get. Ultimately, we too will be forced to make some hard choices, i.e. between deterrence and overt military action.

The outcome of the Iranian affair will depend upon these three nations. To be more precise, upon the degree to which they can be persuaded that the benefits to them of close economic cooperation with Iran-- and a concomitant shift in gravity further eastward, away from the US (and to the extent the term has any meaning anymore, the West)-- are outweighed by the risks to the beneficial aspects of a state system defined in terms of US leadership, nonproliferation, and a thwarting of any transnational muslim political ambitions such as though not limited to the mullahs' grand ambitions.

In other words, this is IMHO shaping up as a classical realpolitik contest in which rival powers must calculate whether their envy and loathing of the (US) hegemon outweighs the benefits they receive from such (US) hegemony. The challenge here is almost entirely a diplomatic one. Where the MSM and most commenters go wrong is in either (left-lib approach) applying idiotic and outdated notions of the EU 3 and the UN's central importance, or (right/neo-con approach) failing to recognize the central importance of Iran's three sympathetic rising powers to the north, south and east.

Note that Russia is rising again-- from an abysmally low point, but rising nonetheless, and determined to restore another Moscow-led bloc of satellites and greater co-prosperity sphere among the FSU states. Note also that India's support for our position is by no means assured. Despite its democratic nature, India's objective national interests here have far mroe in common with those of authoritarian China and Russia than with ours or Europe's. If I were Condi I'd make sure to expend on China-India-Russia at least 2x the amount of bandwidth that I expend on the EU3. Especially China.

The resolution of this crisis will indicate the likely path in which power will shift away from the US toward Asia during this Asian Century. It will either be a matter of China stepping up to a more mature and responsible strategic role, with some US tutelage and US concessions, or a more hapahazard process of one-off bargaining between the US and each of the three rising Asian powers.

J Thomas - there's the chance we'd create another failed state and iranian oil stays in the ground for the foreseeable future. Either of those would be worse for russia than an iran with a few nukes. Iran with nukes could counter us in ways that would be indelicate for the russians to do themselves. Note that we have airbases in a collection of countries that used to be in the USSR. That's got to rankle. Russians would probably feel better with a pipsqueak regional-power iran influencing those nations than their old enemy the USA.

Bingo (with one exception: Iranian oil staying in the ground only adds to Russian exports to Asia, and probably the oil price as well; nb each $1 rise in the oil price adds another $1B in hard currency reserves per month to the Russian treasury).

Given our media and political class's self-absorption and inability to pay attention to any nation east of Germany for more than about 5 minutes at a stretch, it's not surprising that Americans fail to grasp how extraordinarily has been our humiliation of Russia during the past ten years. "Rankle" doesn't begin to describe the burning desire of the Russian political elite-- really, the security services and other ex-sovki-- to restore Russian dominance to the regions on its western and Central Asian borders. There is every reason to believe that Russia like China would love nothing better than to see the US humiliated in Iran. A good way to do it would be to jump-start a Russian-Chinese-Indian bund with an attack on Iran that was not throughly vetted with and blessed by these three natural allies of Iran.

Ah so Thibaud...

You've struck upon something that I didn't think about: driving potential allies and economic partners into each other's arms.

That would be a most crappy situation indeed. Imagin a Russo-Indo-Sino Free trade zone competing with us. Or even worse, a military pact with China as the driving force. Automatic blue water navy for China by way of Russia.

All the more reason to approach this as the delicate diplomatic problem that it is.

Somebody get Condi on a plane!

Somehow when I first read that last post it looked like "Somebody get Condi on a planet."

I don't see a concerted effort by russia, china, and india this year, and probably not much between any two of them. I figure it looks to them like we're a declining power. They might figure that our iraq adventure was a last-gasp attempt to grab the oil. And with that failing, we might try a hold-your-breath attempt to get iran's oil. But all they have to do is make sure we don't profit, and all this flailing around will only drive us down faster.

So working out how they'll relate to each other is a big long-term issue, not something to settle quick while they deal with us. We aren't that important.

That makes it more likely that one of them attempts to reign us in while the others watch. The iranian government gets to choose which. I'd predict the most likely is china, because it's the farthest. Iran has had a long time with russia on their borders, they might not welcome them in. I have to admit my reasoning is simplistic and when I say most likely it might be something like 40:30:30.

So OK, let's say the IAEA announces that they don't know whether iran has nukes because iran hasn't cooperated enough. If they announce iran has no nuclear program and we continue, I have no idea what to guess from there, and that branch seems unlikely anyway.

So we take it to the Security Council, and we argue for -- sanctions? That doesn't work, it lets iran have nukes. And after iran gets nukes most of the world will argue to remove the sanctions, what good is it to reduce trade with a nuclear nation and antagonise them?

So we have to argue for -- invasion? But we don't have the troops, and we don't trust anybody who does. And what if china says, "OK, iran has agreed to have chinese troops stationed in iran to make sure everything is OK, They'll accept being occupied without a fight." We couldn't accept that.

Do we argue for airstrikes? That would hit civilians and make a lot of collateral damage? Spread radioactive debris? We'd be depending on our intelligence sources to tell us where to bomb.... It doesn't even sound reasonable.

Put the shoe on the other foot -- china announces that taiwan is developing nukes, and they want the world to let them bomb taiwan until they're sure they'd destroyed the nuclear program....

So I predict the UN will either do nothing, or will agree to ineffective sanctions, and will warn us not to take military action.

So our choices are limited. We can attack before the UN decides. Or we can attack anyway. Or we can pretend it's israel attacking. Or we can fake an iranian attack against us and then we attack.

And if china (or russia) threatens retaliation if we attack, and we ignoe them, and they don't back down, we could end up in a nuclear war. Iran would have a hard time doing an effective EMP attack in the next 5 years, but russia could do it tomorrow.

On the other hand, if iran has a coup before it heats up, then we're clear. We talk about promoting democracy, but promoting coups is what we're good at. Get somebody like Musharraf in pakistan or Mubarak in egypt, and we can work with him.

All the more reason to approach this as the delicate diplomatic problem that it is.

Diplomacy only works when the parties are civilized.

War works when at least one of the parties is not.

Kelley:

I was talking about diplomacy with Russia, China, and India. They all seem rational enough.

They're the ones who can either:

a. put economic pressure on Iran to straighten up, or

b. provide manpower for the regime change

Whichever way this turns out, R-C-I are to deeply involved to just ignore all together. The negotiation therefore takes the form of "We're willing to try it your way, provided that if your way fails, you agree that we do it our way."

Huskermet, can you imagine the Bush administration agreeing to let R/C/I provide manpower for regime change in iran?

That would be a bigger defeat than letting the current government continue.

J Thomas:

Short answer is yes. Because we still get what we want out of the deal.

Long answer is, all of the above, but probably not with a smile on their faces.

Huskermet, you seem to have the illusion that the Bush administration's primary goal is to prevent iranian nukes.

Do you have some particular reason to believe that?

Why would we care so much about iranian nukes and not about north korean nukes? Iran might threaten israel, which is a nuclear power and can take care of itself. North korean nukes threaten south korea and japan, both of them nonnuclear nations that are under our direct protection. In the old days we talked about our "nuclear umbrella" that protected them.

Why are we ready to spend many billions of dollars to attack iran, and we offered only empty threats to north korea?

Obviously, because stopping insane leaders from getting nukes is not the real point. That's something that sounds good to americans so that's what they stress.

I claim again, for these guys letting iran fall into somebody else's sphere of influence would be worse than letting them carve out their own niche. A pipsqudak iranian sphere of influence is far better than iran owned by russia or china.