If the White House ultimately decides to launch a war against Iran, we cannot predict with certainty whether the Boys in the Bunker would wish to start with merely "surgical strikes" (whether against Revolutionary Guard facilities or nuclear facilities) or wouild prefer to implement the much-bandied three day "shock and awe" campaign against 1,200 (or 2,000) targets. Neither do we know if they would incorporate a ground action to seize Iranian oil and gas fields in Khuzestan along the Iraqi border, though it is hard to imagine that Cheney would attack Iran without planning to seize a good portion of its energy resources. But we can at least raise questions about some of the potential consequences of an attack.
Here is one possible framework to order our thoughts; others in the blogosphere will certainly have more coherent outlines than this rapid off-the-top-of-the-head one. This framework is not analysis. It is simply a quick and dirty series of questions that any rational actor would want to ponder before making so momentous a decision as to launch a war and unleash large-scale death and destruction. Does anyone out there have some good answers? Consider taking a quick glance at this map of the Middle East before working through these questions.
THE QUESTIONS
I. Initial Iranian Responses: Limited and Calibrated? Or Swarming and Massive?
A. Immediate military capabilities for responses against U.S. forces (anti-ship missiles, ballistic
missiles, aircraft, submarines)
B. Capability of ground forces to cut off U.S. supply lines through Basra area in Iraq
C. Capabilities for immediate responses against key military facilities or infrastructure in regional states
enabling and supporting a U.S. attack
D. Immediate capabilities for sabotage and terrorist responses (assassinations of pro-U.S. leaders, etc.)
throughout the region. including various U.S. base facilities and Saudi oilfields (with a large Shiite
population)
E. Likelihood of active, escalating assistance from Shiite militias in Iraq, especially astride supply lines in
the Basra area
F. Ability to close the Strait of Hormuz to all commerce by deploying indigenously produced Noor anti-ship
G. Capacity to launch paramilitary or surrogate attacks on U.S. military, governmental, or commercial
facilities worldwide
H. Capacity to retaliate with asymmetrical cyberwarfare disruptions of the U.S. telecommunications
infrastructure, and perhaps even of the U.S. military's unclassified NIPRNet for logistics traffic
missiles or more advanced missiles (Yakhont? Moskit? Sizzler?) in its arsenal
I. Israel: varsity starter on the U.S. air assault team and therefore an immediate target for Iranian
retaliation? Or just a head cheerleader for the prewar pep rallies? Interested but not-so-innocent
bystander and spectator? What Israeli targets would be most vulnerable to Iranian Shahab
ballistic missiles? Perhaps the Negev Nuclear Research Center at Dimona?
II. Degree of Likely Intelligence and Ongoing Logistical Support and Resupply from Russia and
China
A. Providing early warning of U.S. (or Israeli) initiation of attacks
B. Providing satellite photography and coordinates of U.S. ships and ground forces in the region
C. Providing electronic jamming and countermeasures assistance
D. Replenishing SAMs, radars, anti-ship missiles, and anti-armor infantry weapons used or destroyed in
early stages of conflict
E. Possibility that Russia or China might provide weaponry directly to Shiite militias--or even to the Iraqi
Government, if it turns against the U.S. (note in this context Iraq's order this week for
$100 million worth of Chinese weapons)
III. Possible Iranian Regional Political and Paramilitary Responses
A. Iraq: would al-Maliki's Iraqi Army turn its weapons on U.S. troops in country?
B. Turkey: would the Turks join with Iran, Syria, and perhaps even with a suddenly unified Iraqi Shiite
coalition under al-Maliki, al-Hakim (Badr Brigades), and al-Sadr (Madhi Army) to try to crush the Kurds
once and for all? Would the Turks permit basing and overflights of U.S. aircraft for attacks on Iran?
(Unlikely: Turkey denied such permission for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.)
C. Kuwait, whose Defense Minister has declared that Kuwait would not allow itself to be used as a
launching point for attacks on Iran
D. Gulf States, notably U.A.E.
E. Bahrain: Shiite majority; major U.S. base; likely very nervous
F. Afghanistan: might Iran withdraw support from Karzai and switch sides to support Taliban, or perhaps
urge the Northern Alliance to behave more independently?
G. Pakistan: pay off tribal chiefs to create disruption in Baluchistan? Or perhaps collaborate with Pakistan
to throw support behind the Taliban--Pakistan's real preference--to squeeze the U.S. out of the region?
H. Syria: coordinate to step up pressure against Israel via Hezbollah?
I. Lebanon: promote all-out civil war via Hezbollah? Could Iran supply large numbers of anti-ship
missiles to Hezbollah for use against Israeli navy ships and commercial shipping bound for Israeli ports?
J. Saudi Arabia: offer modus vivendi and cooperation in oil pricing in return for Saudis' distancing
themselves from fealty to U.S.?
K. Egypt: funnel weapons through Egypt to Hamas in Gaza to help Egypt redirect rising domestic
pressures to a foreign focus?
IV. Possible Medium-term Iranian Military Responses in the Region
A. Flooding Lebanon, Gaza, and Iraq with man-portable SAMs, such as the Iranian-produced Mithaq?
Remember how U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles turned the tide against the Soviets in Afghanistan in
1986?
B. Flooding the region with guided, standoff anti-armor weapons, such as the Iranian-produced equivalent
of the Sagger anti-tank missile, thereby escalating the challenges to occupying foreign
forces and making their positions increasingly untenable?
C. If Israel (or U.S.) escalates to nuclear strikes on Iran, what is Iran's capacity to retaliate with chemical
or biological WMD against Israel?
V. Reponses--Political, Economic, Military (if any)--among Key U.S. Allies, Especially Europeans
A. Will the UK salute and join? Or hunker down and seek safe passage from the Iranians and their Iraqi
Shiite allies for withdrawal from their remaining base at Basra?
B. Will Germany edge toward the Russian and Chinese position?
C. What does French President Sarkozy expect to get out of supporting a U.S. attack? Just cheap oil
(unlikely to happen)? Or is Dassault complaining to him that Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics,
Northrop Grumman and the UK's BAE are scarfing up all the big arms contracts in Saudi Arabia
and the Gulf?
D. Will any other major players, notably Italy or Spain, support, or actively oppose an attack?
E. Impact of UN propaganda battles, especially considering likely resistance to U.S. military strikes from
Russia and China and the independent approach by Mohamed El-Baradei and the IAEA
VI. Likely Impact on Oil Prices and World Economy
A. Effects of sharply rising oil prices on U.S. economy, now teetering on brink of recession
B. Effects on already plunging U.S. dollar
C. Effects on economies of key allies in Western Europe and also on Japan (which depends on the Middle
East for 89 percent of its oil)
D. Effects on economies of geopolitical rivals, such as China and Russia. Key question: are the Chinese
likely to help finance an attack on Iran. as they have done with the invasion and occupation of Iraq, by
continuing to make massive purchases of U.S. T-Bills? If not, what will happen to the T-Bill auction
market?
VII. Likely Reactions by al Qaeda and its Affiliates
A. Would a U.S. "preemptive" war against Shiite Iran deliver an undeserved, unexpected strategic victory
to the radical Sunni movement of Osama bin Laden?
B. Would resulting public outrage throughout the Islamic World blur the age-old hostilities between
Shiites and Sunnis, as well as bring legions of new recruits to al Qaeda?
C. Might a U.S. attack on Iran even push Iran and al Qaeda into a strategic alliance of convenience,
perhaps to provide joint support to the Taliban in Afghanistan and radical Islamists in Pakistan?
(Remember: Pakistan actually has components for a few dozen nuclear weapons. The vast bulk
of Pakistan's fissile material is highly enriched uranium, which is suitable for the kind of gun-barrel
nuclear device that that even a non-state actor could engineer and assemble.)
D. If the Saudi Royal family decides to provide full military, diplomatic, and economic backing to a U.S.
assault on Iran, might Iran seek also to collaborate with al Qaeda to disrupt Saudi oilfields and pipelines
and step up internal subversion against the Saudi regime?
VIII. Likely Impact on U.S. Domestic Political Order
A. Censorship (even more than now) of media?
B. Censorship (using Chinese or Saudi methods of IP address filtering) of the Internet--including
blocking progressive blogsites--to tamp down potential dissent and organized resistance?
C. Surveillance (primarily electronic) and arrest of anti-war activists, perhaps as "illegal enemy
combatants" for refusing to support the new war against Iran?
D. Disruption (with unquestioning collaboration by telecoms) of e-mail exchanges and cell phone
communications among known political opponents?
E. Use of military forces or security contractors (Blackwater?) to maintain public order and suppress any
potential street demonstrations, just as the Pinkerton men did in yesteryear?
F. Implementation of secret provisions of Executive Orders and exploitation of openings in Homeland
Security legislation to suppress civil liberties and detain intractable political opponents, independent
journalists, and anti-war organizers--real or merely suspected?
G. Likely responses by the Democratic leadership--well, on second thought, not
much reflection is required on that point. We can expect Nancy, Steny, and Harry to declare:
My goodness! How dreadful! Oh, and here's the money you wanted for the war. Now don't you dare accuse us of not supporting the troops!
But we never intended for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment to authorize the President to launch a war against Iran. It was just a non-binding resolution! And we had no way of predicting that things would turn out this badly!
IX. Likely Cost in Blood, Treasure, and Time--for U.S. and Region
(Paul Wolfowitz once assured us, in effect, that the oil that we would grab from Iraq would pay for that
preemptive war. Doesn't seem to be working out that way, so far.)
A. Projected casualties: U.S., Iranian (military and civilian), and other (Iraqi, Israeli, Lebanese, etc.):
Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands, as already in Iraq? When all is said and done,
even millions?
B. Anticipated refugee flows, internal and cross-border; reserve capacity of UN and other international
aid organizations to respond to multiple new humanitarian crises in region
C. Cost projections, please. How much? How to finance? Chinese purchase of T-Bills?
D. Duration? A few weeks, as "planned" for Iraq?
E. What are the metrics for achieving and declaring "success" against Iran?
F. And what are the metrics for acknowledging failure? At what point must the
compulsive gambler be stopped from doubling down, compelled to gather up his remaining
chips, and dragged from the table before he loses everything?
SO WHERE DO THE QUESTIONS LEAD?
In a few minutes of similar reflection and outlining, each of us can do his own "blink" analysis. A moderately alert college freshman who follows the daily news online (or at least Jon Stewart's The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report at Comedy Central on cable TV) could probably do as well in an hour or two. While the purpose of this thought experiment is to raise questions rather than to provide answers, even this modest effort quickly demonstrates that there are so many unpredictable variables, many with obvious and substantial downsides for U.S. economic and geopolitical interests, that it would be beyond madness to expect a manageable "cakewalk" against Iran.
After cobbling together this quick outline of questions and trying to apply what Napoleon called the coup d'oeil to encompass reality at a glance, the truly tectonic scale of four potential Iranian reactions to a U.S. attack seems to leap out:
(1) If the Iranians are able to coordinate swarming, simultaneous salvos of anti-ship missiles from multiple directions against U.S. Navy vessels in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, two or three days of intensive combat could leave much of the U.S. fleet badly damaged or even sunk. Such a scenario would instantaneously vaporize the credibility of the long-feared U.S. carrier strike force as the ultimate, heretofore invincible tool for modern gunboat diplomacy and military intervention. A single major engagement in the Persian Gulf could thereby bring an abrupt, disorderly end to U.S. regional and global hegemony. And BTW, what would be the environmental implications of a nuclear reactor oozing radioactive material from a sunken U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf or the Strait of Hormuz?
(2) Iran's closing the Strait of Hormuz and sabotaging Saudi oifields, ports, and pipelines would likely bring most industrialized nations economically to their knees within months, if not weeks--despite rationing and the existence of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve with its current 56 days of import protection. Economic disruptions would surely be followed in many countries by political turmoil.
(3) Iran's provision of large numbers of man-portable SAMs and man-portable guided anti-armor weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza could switch the military balance substantially in favor of such resistance groups throughout the region. U.S. or Israeli invasions and occupations in the area suddenly would become even more costly in blood and treasure, and perhaps even untenable altogether. U.S. casualties and losses of vehicles and aircraft (especially helicopters and transport planes) in Iraq would soar. It is even conceivable that the Iraqi Government under Prime Minister al-Maliki and President Talabani could turn to Iran, Russia and China as primary patrons and switch overnight to oppose the U.S. occupation. From Abu Ghraib, to the Marine killings of civilians at Haditha, to the casual killing of civilians by Blackwater and other mercenary contactors, to civilian casualties caused by frequent U.S. air strikes in urban areas, to U.S. detention of Iranian officials present in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi Government, to the rapid spread of cholera (largely because the U.S. will not allow trucks carrying chlorine into the country for fear of their falling into the hands of insurgents), to Senator Biden's ill-advised resolution effectively calling for the three-way partition of Iraq, even America's Iraqi clients seem to be approaching the critical snapping point of: "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more!"
(4) If a U.S. attack pushes Iran's mullahs to go against historical precedents and ideological inclinations and instead negotiate a strategic alliance of convenience with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and its affiliates, such as the Taliban, the brittle regimes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia would quickly find themselves under enormous internal military and political pressure. This outcome would be supersaturated with irony, for in its wake the quickest path both for Iran and al Qaeda to acquire components for nuclear weapons--those currently under Pakistan's control--could emerge as an unintended consequence of America's launching a preemptive war against Iran. Such Iranian strategic flexibility is not inconceivable; after all, one current client, Hamas, is Sunni, not Shiite.
If we in the blogosphere can figure this out, why can't the few ideologues who, within the confines of their apparently windowless and soundproofed neocon echo chamber, make policy and decide to launch preemptive wars, do the same?
It is astonishing that such ever-loyal neocon apparatchiks as National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice seem not to have mastered this first step of elementary cost-benefit analysis, despite their many years in the neocon national security "Establishment." Their assigned task obviously is merely to implement by rote the received "unitary executive" policy, not to question it, much less inform its creators. Rice and Hadley seem to have clicked their heels and saluted. At least Rice still gets to have her photo taken often as she flies, waves, and smiles.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, on the other hand, surely is up to the task of asking tough questions. Unfortunately, he, a long-time loyal Bush family retainer, simply does not appear to be up to the task of insisting on credible answers or of putting a stop to the madness, although since April, 2007 he seems to have been putting up a stout effort.
And even if a member or two of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or perhaps CENTCOM Commander Admiral William J. Fallon, were to resign rather than carry out an arguably illegal and certainly irrational order to launch preemptive strikes (framed, of course, as "defensive" in nature) against Iran, there will be an ample supply of tail-wagging, eager-to-please sycophants in the mold of General David Petraeus to take their places.
The Boys in the Bunker will always be able to find enough ambitious apparatchiks who will say: "Yes, sir," with no irritating, troublesome questions asked.
And they can probably find and co-opt enough short-sighted and even complicit Democrats in Congress, too.
Is it possible that the Boys in the Bunker are asking questions like the ones in our outline? Not likely. Bush has repeatedly demonstrated that he is intellectually impaired, incurious, and millennialist. And what about Cheney? Isn't he smart enough to ponder such questions? Here is the reality check: even the incurious Bush managed to squeak through Yale with a "gentleman's C-minus average." Cheney flunked out of Yale not merely once, but twice. He lacked the intellectual capacity and discipline even to complete the work assignments and hang on with grades of C-minus or D. Cheney is not especially bright, but he is paranoid, authoritarian, and malevolent.
Displaying a relentless will in pursuit of corporatist, neocon interventionist, and "unitary executive" agendas obviously does not correspond to any particular ability to distill truth from facts or to reflect on the larger consequences of one's actions.
And remember that the Bush/Cheney White House team has a proven track record: a confirmed debacle in Iraq and an emerging debacle in Afghanistan. So does Israeli Prime Minister Olmert's Kadima-led coalition: the embarrassing 33-day invasion of Lebanon in 2006--with obvious U.S. encouragement--in a futile effort to crush Hezbollah.
By now we are compelled to conclude that the "deciders" both in Washington and Tel Aviv have learning curves coinciding with the X axis on the strategic graph.
Even if it is all really about the oil, at what point do the vast amounts of blood and treasure expended to secure the oil fields of Iraq and perhaps also Iran surpass the return on the investment? Could we not just let the Iraqis and Iranians run their own countries, manage state-run oil companies if that is their preference, and contract with them to purchase their oil, rather than occupy their territory for decades in an effort to force upon them production sharing agreements advantageous mainly to Big Oil?
Will the Boys in the Bunker give the order to try for a hat trick? Will they move beyond mere debacle to outright catastrophe? If a quagmire is the best that they can imagine in Iraq, imagine what they can accomplish in Iran, a nation of four times the size and three times the population, not to mention one possessing a disciplined and well-led military with high morale infused with willing acceptance of risk and martyrdom. And remember the threat posed by those anti-ship missiles in the Iranian arsenal.
A CONCLUDING RANT
Ken Burns' magnificent and profoundly moving The War series on PBS has reminded us how even an unavoidable, necessary, defensive war like World War II is marked by horrendous human blunders (even by the good guys) and by pointless destruction, death, maiming, and untold human suffering.
What words can we possibly summon to describe what launching an unnecessary war of "preemption" (i.e., a war of aggression under the precedents of the Nuremberg Tribunal) brings in its wake?
Who would launch such a war?
Simpletons? Check. X
Lunatics? Check. X
Fanatical neocon ideologues? Check. X
War profiteers, i.e., Big Guns, Big Oil, and Big Wartime Contractors? Check. X
Sociopathic, Nuremberg-caliber war criminals? Check. X
Are these "deciders" actively seeking Armageddon on the hill of Megiddo? Or are they yearning for a Wagnerian G+¦tterd+ñmmerung?