ZenPundit
Sunday, March 05, 2006
 
UNPALATABLE OPTIONS [ UPDATED]

Colonel Pat Lang of Sic Semper Tyrannis and counterterrorism expert Larry Johnson have penned an article for In The National Interest on American options in Iran. Interestingly, as fairly severe critics of the Bush administration and the failures of the IC in Iraq they see Iran's nuclear program as a real and dire issue for which exists a paucity of good options.

What if grand diplomacy fails ( And diplomacy will only succeed if all the great powers, the UN and Iran's neighbors are solidly arrayed against a completely isolated Teheran - and we offer the Iranians a " good deal" - and even then this will only serve to delay the progress of the nuke program) ?:

Our real problem is the nature of the Iranian regime - particularly the faction that backs President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which represents the "permanent revolution" wing of Iranian Islamist hardliners. My view is if the consequences of striking Iran are as significant as projected and the nuclear facilities targets are as hardened, dispersed and concealed as described, that we might as well make a grand decapitation attack instead against Iran's hardline faction and organs of security, control and communication, depriving the survivors of effective levers of power over the Iranian people. Sort of an Operation Desert Fox on steroids and methamphetamines. Perhaps we can incite and arm the Baluchi tribesmen of Eastern Iran as well, though Pakistan would probably be rather jumpy about that kind of a covert-op. After we max out the decapitation option we can turn our attention to Iran's nuclear infrastructure and degrade it methodically.

Pull the arrows out of the Mullah's quiver before breaking their bow.

UPDATE:

"How we duped the West, by Iran's nuclear negotiator" in the UK Telegraph

(Hat Tip: Memeorandum)
 
Comments:
And that will achieve what exactly? Iran is at least a decade away from mastering enrichment and weaponizing their nuclear material--even when this occurs they will only be able to muster a handful of warheads. And there is nothing about an Iranian bomb that would negate the US's security or its bargaining position given our conventional and nuclear superiority. No one has yet provided a clear, well-reasoned argument for why an Iranian bomb would foil US interests in the region or around the world. When middle and weak power states acquire nukes they become less adventerous, not more...
 
Hi anon,

I said " if grand diplomacy fails" and ideally, I'd like to see it succeed. Iran's regime is not popular and it is deeply corrupt as well as economically incompetent. Demographics weigh against the survival of Khomeinism even in the medium term, which brings me to your question:

"When middle and weak power states acquire nukes they become less adventerous, not more... "

I don't think the historical record bears that statement out. Some examples.

The USSR was a " superpower" but it lagged so far behind the U.S. that parity was not even a question until about 1970-1972.

Stalin's foreign policy was generally very conservative. After the acquisition of nuclear weapons he gave permission to Kim Il-Sung to launch the Korean War. Khrushchev drastically increased the " adventurousness" of Soviet foreign policy by formally returning to "Lenin's" policy of supporting " wars of national liberation". And of course, then there was Cuba. This was when the ratio of deliverable nuclear weapons was in America's favor at approximately 100 to 1.

Mao's China was a military and economic basket case in the 1960's but China's acqusition of a few nuclear weapons gave Beijing the confidence to challenge the USSR militarily over the Damansky islands in the Ussuri river. Nuclear war was only narrowly averted by stern warnings from the Nixon administration to Moscow, whose Defense Minister Grechko had proposed in all seriousness a preemptive nuclear strike on China.

So, I think your assertion, which follows the Israeli, British, French examples well cannot be relied upon with Iran. India-Pakistan have run up to the nuclear brink several times already. I'm not confident an Israeli-Iranian dynamic would be better.

And no, a decapitation attack would not be a perfect panacea; it would however make Iranian retaliation more difficult to execute in some respects and punish our real enemies where it hurts. Such an attack though, has real costs. Better that diplomacy works.
 
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