Somehow this slipped by me yesterday. Yesterday Glenn Reynolds linked to an interesting post on Iran from OPFOR. The short version of the post is that military options to stop Iran’s support of terrorism, development of nuclear weapons, and general destabilization of the region are unpalatable, Iran is economically vulnerable, the regime is politically vulnerable, we should support the opposition to the regime within the country. That’s not particularly novel: knowledgeable people like Michael Ledeen and unknowledgeable people like me have been saying it for years. I certainly hope we’re doing that right now. If we are you and I would probably never know it because open support by us for opponents to the regime would be the kiss of death for them.
As should be clear from my many posts on Iran, I believe that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and believe that we should be working actively to prevent this using as little physical force as is practical to achieve the objective. Unfortunately, events are proceeding quite rapidly. With the recent announcements of the state of Iran’s fuel cycle development program, people who are well-informed who were saying that it would be 8 to 10 years until Iran was building nuclear weapons at the beginning of the year are now saying 3 to 5 years.
In the current weak state of opposition to the current regime within Iran it would take longer than that to achieve regime change in Iran solely from within. The mullahocracy is not the Taliban.
I’m not particularly sanguine about the likelihood of face-to-face negotiations with the Iranians for achieving our objectives, either. For success we’d need to be in a greater position of strength than we are right now: either in a position to make good on threats or deliver on promises or both. What will we do? Threaten to stop trading with them? We haven’t traded directly with the Iranians for a generation. Promise to start? What?
I believe that the road to Tehran lies through Moscow and Beijing: our attentions should be focused on convincing the Russians and Chinese that the surest path towards ensuring the stability of a trading relationship with Iran is in regime change there. Without that we’ve got nothing.
We’ve got one thing: we can end the Iranian regime. We would have to make the calculation that we will break Iran, and not own the mess afterwards, which is not a way that modern Americans tend to think about war (though it would be familiar to our fathers).
More specifically, we could take the southwestern Iranian oil fields and the territory around the Straits of Hormuz, as well as the offshore oil terminals, and hold that perimeter against anything. In the meantime, we could destroy every bridge, road, government building of any kind, dam, aquaduct, electrical generation facility, port, airport, military unit and police unit in Iran. Then keep doing that over and over and over until the Iranian government surrenders. (If they don’t surrender, just keep going, so that they cannot pose a threat to us.) This would have to be coupled with a ban on Iranians travelling to the US (and probably to our allies) and possibly with concurrent attacks on Hiz’allah. The idea is to minimize the resulting terror attacks (and they would assuredly come).
Such a war would be more costly than we are used to – more costly than any war since Viet Nam, most likely – and would hardly make us loved in the world. It would, however, serve to encourage the others, and would be much less costly than allowing Iran to gain access to nuclear weapons. I don’t want to see us take such an option, primarily because of the civilian casualties, but in the end I would support this before I would support acquiesence to Iran governed by jihadis and wielding nuclear weapons.
Among the several problems with invasion are:
– reprisals against Iraqis and our assets in Iraq
– likelihood of the Iranians closing the Straits of Hormuz
– likelihood of the attack solidifying support for the regime
If I were recommending military alternatives, I think I’d be more likely to recommend a special-forces based strategy similar to some of the thing the Iraqi insurgency is doing against us in Iraq: attacking oil pipelines, going after vulnerable military assets, arming the Iranian Kurds and the Arabs in the south of Iran.
But I think a better approach is implementing the measures suggested by Reza Pahlavi: immediate implementation of sanctions that are highly focused on the regime itself. And to do that we need the cooperation of the Russians and the Chinese.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20060517a1.html
Russia and china have invited iran to join SCO as a full member.
Good luck on persuading them to support regime change.
I found te above link through Simon’s World.
http://simonworld.mu.nu/
When we start bombing iran, Jeff’s plan is one of two that might work. If we destroy all of iran’s industry and transportation and keep it destroyed for the foreseeable future, there won’t be much iran can do — including feed their people. No functioning hospitals, no functioning water works, no functioning agriculture, no functioning transport to move the food to cities. The rest of the world would consider it a humanitarian disaster. Maybe we could arrange not to bomb the humanitarian aid they send. So let’s say the iranians lose 20 million people. We’d have a certain number of fathers who lost sons and sons who lost mothers peeved at us. Not a good way to reduce the number of terrorists in the medium run. But we could be pretty sure iran wasn’t producing any nuclear weapons, or any oil.
The other plan is to start bombing, and then when iranian counterattacks of various sorts leave us convinced that our bombing isn’t effective enough, we invade. Presumably the invasion plans are in place now and we’ve already prepositioned most of the equipment, otherwise it might take us 6 months after we decide the bombing isn’t enough before we’re ready to invade. The invasion presumably goes quick and easy, and then we settle down for the occupation. Occupying iran would take at least 3 times as many troops as iraq but we could get them by calling up all the resting and retraining army plus all the reserves and national guard. Then we’d be occupying iran until something gave us the idea we could quit. Like, a strong US-friendly iranian government that promised never to build nukes, or something like that.
What do russia and china do while we’re doing either of these? Possibly they both lay low because we’re the superpower and they don’t want to risk offending us. If they do something else, what would it be? Threaten us with mutual nuclear suicide? Call for world sanctions against us? Send troops? Your guess is as good as mine.
J Thomas, in the absence of some more direct attack on the U. S. by Iran than we’ve already seen, we’re not going to bomb Iran.
First, it would be a mistake. We can’t achieve any of our objectives with bombing short of using nuclear weapons not to get rid of nuclear weapons development programs but to exterminate the population (and we’re not going to do that). We don’t know where their nuclear weapons development facilities are. We don’t have a large enough stockpile of non-nuclear weapons to deal with the nuclear development sites we know of let along the ones we don’t know about. If anything would be guaranteed to ensure a response with unconventional weapons, that would be it.
It would be likely to shore up the position of the mullahs both in Iran and in the world.
And it would motivate the activation of whatever terrorist cells they had in the West and throughout the region.
Bombing Iran would achieve precisely the opposite of what it might be intended to achieve: it would motivate their development of nuclear weapons with whatever facilities they had left, it would ensure the continued survival of the regime, and it would encourage them to promote terrorism.
Secondly, it’s politically impossible right now. What’s not politically possible is not possible period. In Bush’s current weakened state either bombing Iran or the invasion of Iran will result in his impeachment.
That’s why we’re embarked on the path we’re on now. I just think that it’s possible to get Russia and China on board for narrow, highly targeted sanctions of the sort that Reza Pahlavi has advocated, that would actually weaken the regime, and would put us in a stronger position either to overthrow the regime or to negotiate with it to achieve our reasonable objectives.
Dave, I hope you’re right on all points.
I hope the Bush administration believes that attack on iran would lead to impeachment. If they don’t believe it, they might go ahead regardless.
I hope they believe they can’t achieve their objectives with an attack. It seems like just a few months ago they were talking very very confidently about that. Then we started gettingi leaks that it was going to take tactical nukes. Six retired generals said to get rid of Rumsfeld. If they strongly believe the attack is useful, would they go ahead?
Would they plan an air attack followed by invasion? Tell us the air attack will be cheap and easy and successful, and then when it doesn’t look successful, when we get terrorist attacks or whatever, then they announce we have to invade? (When the invasion plans were fixed ahead of time….)
We don’t guarantee the survival of the regime when our ground troops take Teheran. We round up the mullahs and the high government officials and put them in Gitmo, the regime doesn’t survive. Then our 600,000 man occupation force helps install a new government. It should work better than iraq, we have practice in what not to do! [heh heh]
I’ve listened to the arguments why the attack is inevitable. If we don’t do it, the israelis will. Worse, if we don’t get rid of the iranian nukes the israelis will stage a pre-emptive nuclear strike. The only way we can possibly stop them is to get rid of the iranian nuclear program first, and the only way that can work is brute force. If the iranians do get nukes they will with 100% certainty use them on israel, unless israel nukes them first. Or maybe the iranians will instead give their bombs to terrorists who will smuggle them into the USA, and after we lose some US cities then we’ll nuke iran until they’re all dead. So the better alternative is to conquer iran right now for their own good. Furthermore, if iran gets nukes then every other unstable country in the world will get nukes too. But if we show the world what we do to countries that get a few nukes, then everybody else will be too afraid to try.
Somehow none of these arguments completely convince me. But if Bush is convinced, he might decide he must sacrifice himself for the good of the country by attacking and accepting impeachment. On the other hand he might feel that the nation can’t stand to be embroiled in partisan politics during a dangerous war and refuse to accept impeachment.
I have a lot of doubts about your idea that russia and china would go along with us for sanctions against iran. They have invited iran to join SCO. Here’s a security organization with four known nuclear powers — russia, china, india, and pakistan, out of eight members. What’s one more nuclear power among them? Why would they turn on their natural ally and trade partner, to side with their worst enemy? What would we offer them?
Ledeen and the word “knowledgable” do not go together mate. Rather like Medcalf and informed. Both go well with ideological loon though.
You may well be right, Lounsbury, but I still hold to the probably irrational hope that there can be a better regime in Iran than the current one and that we should do something (short of military action) to encourage that. Most discouraging to me is my, unfortunately, insufficiently informed intuition that the best action we could take to encourage regime change in Iran is “not much”.
I’m certainly open to suggestions.
I had a number of classmates, lo!, those many years ago who were Persians (that’s how they tended to refer to themselves)—children of the old regime. I’ve lost touch with them over the years and I suspect they’ve either landed here or are dead.
Well, hoping for a better regime in Iran is entirely rational.
My instinct with respect to Iran is in the short term cut a deal and build up intel. The magical thinkers and fabulists (Ledeen, Medcalf) may dream of magically changing the regime in the near term, but it is not going to happen. And further, clumsy ill-prepared attempts to destabilise, etc will have perversely inverse effects.
Short term cutting a deal – or negotiating with them to cool the air while one gets a better grip on the events in the neighbourhood would show some uncharacteristic wisdom.
I believe the US President Theodore Roosevelt had a wise saying: speak softly and carry a big stick.
Of late, the US seems to be inverting that saying, much to its own loss.
As to the Persians, well…. exiles are charming. Often terrible basis for policy, but charming. They tend to pimp spin against the regime that ousted their families that gets away from reality.
Understandable to be sure, but one should keep in mind the saying about Greeks and gifts.
My classmates weren’t exiles although they were without question children of privilege—the Shah was still ruling at the time and his ouster was well over a decade in the future.
Your point, however, remains valid: Timeo danaos et dona ferentes.
I think your instinct is sound, however, it’s not entirely clear to me what the substance of such a deal might be. I’m also chary of the trustworthiness of the Iranian regime—I don’t like the prospect of the U. S. being in the position where it had to support the current Iranian regime for fear of its nukes falling into the wrong hands.
But your point about our limited-to-nonexistent intelligence on Iran is very well taken. My understanding is that, whether due to the, shall we say, efficiency of the regime or our own incompetence, our reliable intelligence on Iran is poor.