We started the week talking about viable military options for halting Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But let’s turn this question around a bit, because the consensus among our experts seems to be that a U.S. strike against Iran is too costly, in terms of military force expended, as well as strategic consequences for the United States. And it’s highly doubtful that the strike would be all that effective. Indeed, some of our experts offer detailed plans about how a strike might be accomplished, but even Wayne White, who has laid out a number of options, concludes that any use of force would have to be “so extensive as to, essentially, place the US and Iran in a virtual state of war.”

I’d like to riff off of a point that James Carafano made. “The real issue is what will we do after Israel attacks Iran?” It seems a more likely scenario that Israel would strike on its own. So, assuming that this happened, how would the United States deal with the aftermath? Would we inevitably be drawn into the conflict militarily? It seems unlikely that any Israeli raids would accomplish the goal of subduing the Iranian nuclear program, since, as Joseph Collins notes, “the core of the program…[is] will and knowledge,” not so much sites and technology.

I would respectfully resign and counsel my former colleagues to look into group therapy.

cheers

Wrong Question, Right Problem

The issue is not whether or not that there should be an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

The US has no interest in this course of action- period. Seymour Hersh was just dead wrong when he claimed the Bush administration was seriously thinking about attacking Iran. The Obama White House has even less interest in the idea.

The real issue is what will we do after Israel attacks Iran? The Israeli calculus on this decision could be changing. The Iranian elections have put the hardliners who want a weapons program in a more powerful position. The Israelis know that the Obama charm offensive is going to fail, as will any subsequent efforts by the US to “turn-up” the heat on Iran. Meanwhile, they have to be panicking over the likelihood that Russia will beef-up Iranian air defenses to the point that an Israeli strike is no longer feasible.

What we need to be thinking about is what we are going to do if and when they take matters into their own hands.

Iran wants nukes, and it will have them. They live in a dangerous neighborhood, they are status hungry, and they worry about potential invaders. Moreover, they are sufficiently developed to master a technological process that matured in the 1940s. We should continue to try to talk and sanction the Iranians out of developing these weapons, but I just don’t think that we will be successful.

There are no sensible military options against the Iranian nuclear program. The center of gravity of this program is not facilities, many of which are underground and hardened. The core of this program ---no pun intended--- is will and knowledge, neither of which can be bombed away. Even if the center of gravity of their effort were facilities, it would take a massive air operation (not air strikes) to take out the key facilities. To make sure you took care of them all, you would probably need some ground operations, as well. Only the United States could do this; Israel has the will but not the capability to do the job on its own.

But let your imagination run wild: suppose the US and Israel together conducted an air war against Iran. Even if it were successfully to destroy the nascent nuclear capability, before you went kinetic, you would need good answers to some questions about the “day after”:

· What would the ecological effects of the air war be?

· How fast could an enraged Iran rebuild its program? How would we know we “got it all? ”

· What effect would an attack have on the Iranian population? Would it drive the youth back into the arms of the mullahs?

· Would you ignite a fire storm in the Middle East? What about Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinian areas as well? Would Iran begin to fire missiles with conventional warheads into Israel?

· What would Iran do in Iraq and Afghanistan? How would we respond to greater risk to US forces there?

The world will not be successful at stopping the development of Iranian nuclear weapons, but we can contain the ill effects of Iran becoming a nuclear power. The United States can extend its nuclear umbrella, declaring that any state threatened by Iran is under the US umbrella. This should dampen the desire for proliferation. We can spread missile defenses in the region and Europe, which may also bring us some healthy profits. We will be the beneficiary of added Iranian threat to our friends and allies, if we play our cards right and refrain from an attack.

Iran can be made to rue the day that it went nuclear. It too will find that nuclear weapons promise much but deliver little in the way of useable military capability. Nukes will buy them basic deterrence, but their size and sophistication already merits all the deterrence from attack that they need, but not as much as they want.

A longer version of this argument is in my December 2008 editorial in the Armed Forces Journal. See http://www.afji.com/2008/12/3809524.

The proverbial 400 pound gorilla in the room often not explored sufficiently in many discussions of how would the US take out militarily enough of Iran's nuclear capability that it could be neutralized for a considerable period of time is that the military action required to do so probably would be so extensive as to, essentially, place the US and Iran in a virtual state of war.

One must consider that to do the job as thoroughly as possible, a massive amount of sheer military power would have to be brought to bear against Iran. Aside from the complex target set involved (made more difficult to tackle by Iran's deliberate efforts at dispersal), one must factor in the aerial action needed to clear paths to the various targets in terms of taking out Iranian anti-aircraft defenses as well as portions of the Iranian air force that could well attempt to defend Iranian airspace in order to reduce potential US losses and enhance access to the desired targets. Additionally, in the face of this magnitude of US military action, professional contingency plans would have to take into account the very real possibility of Iranian retaliation against military or other shipping in the Persian Gulf with its aerial, naval and coastal anti-ship missile capabilities. In a prudent attack plan, a serious attempt probably would have to be made to take out these capabilities as well.

One can imagine the amount of military clout, both air force and naval, required for this level of military action against Iran. The number of aerial sorties required could easily surge well beyond 1,000, not to mention the need for at least two--if not three--carrier battle groups in or very close to the Persian Gulf. Additionally, to fulfill this demanding mission, even an unusually robust air campaign could extend over a period of many days

Also, in the course of military operations this extensive, one must seriously contemplate the loss of some US aircraft over Iran. This would likely mean US prisoners falling into Iranian hands, generating an ugly situation that the Iranians could exploit for maximum effect over a long period of time after the end of the military campaign against the various target sets attacked.

Iran could attempt to draw the Israelis into such a conflict by copying Saddam Hussein's 1991 gambit of launching conventional missiles against Israel. Such Iranian action would generate yet another task that probably would befall the US military in the course of such military action: destroying as much of Iran's ballistic missle capabilities as possible. This also would require quite a lot of strike missions, but could well be justified not only in the Israeli context but also as an adjunct to any Iranian interest in acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, as well as a measure that might well be requested directly by Arab Gulf state governments fearing Iranian retaliation against them in the course of a robust US air campaign against Iran. And it should be noted that there would be a significant possibility in this wide-ranging scenario that the US would almost certainly require the assistance of nearby Arab Gulf countries in terms of access to military facilities, airspace or both, making it very probable that Tehran would view them as complicit.

It might not be difficult to keep Israel out of such a conflict. A thoroughgoing US hammering of the vast array of Iranian nuclear targets would be an Israeli dream scenario: one in which Iranian nuclear capabilities would suffer far more than would be the case if a far more limited package of Israeli strikes was delivered from extreme long range. With the US effectively doing much of Israel's dirty work for it--and more--the Israels might well be content to stand aside, perhaps even in the case of Iranian missile strikes, if the US was viewed as making a good faith effort to take out Iranian missile capabilities. After all, despite considerable casualties, Israel was successfully restrained in the face of Saddam's missile attacks in 1991.

Finally, there is the disturbing problem of the end game. After inflicting such extensive damage on Iran, how does one bring an end to what, in effect, would have become an armed conflict with Iran? There is no easy answer to this question, and one could not rule out the possibility that such large-scale military action could initiate a period in the Persian Gulf (and in portions of the greater Middle East beyond) of far more intensive low-level conflict between the US, the Arab Gulf states and Israel on the one hand and Iran on the other. Such an ugly state of affairs could persist for some time, tying down considerable US military resources.