War with Iran? - 1

The chance of military action certainly seems to be growing. Some in the administration, led by the vice president, seem to want a confrontation with Iran before George W. Bush's term expires. A few days ago, I spoke with a person who is intimately familiar with the official debate on Iran. This person told me that the Pentagon has completed its targeting of hundreds of Iranian sites; and although he did not believe that a strike is imminent or inevitable, he does believe that the White House considers itself to have addressed and overcome all significant obstacles to a military strike.

So is a military confrontation with Iran coming?

Over the past few days, I've contacted a number of academics, think-tank analysts, and former government officials and asked them whether they think military action against Iran is or is not likely. I also asked them about the probable consequences of a military confrontation.

Today I'm running responses from independent analysts—experienced policy experts who study the Middle East. Tomorrow's responses will come from former members of the CIA, and on Thursday we'll wrap up with opinions from people working at major think tanks.

A. Richard Norton

A. Richard Norton, professor of international relations at Boston University, has been living in Cairo since September, where he has been discussing regional and internal politics with leading officials, academics, and activists. He was an advisor to the Iraq Study Group, which presented its recommendations in December. His new book, Hezbollah: A Short History(Princeton University Press), will be out in a few weeks.

In recent weeks, the Bush Administration has dramatically improved its capacity for striking Iran. It is doubtful that a decision to go to war has been made, but in the weeks ahead officials and war advocates will describe an attack on Iran as both “feasible” and “necessary,” particularly if Iran persists in developing its isotope-enrichment program. Even born-again critics of the Iraq war, notably Hillary Clinton, go to pains to emphasize that a nuclear-capable Iran is intolerable and that all options must be kept open to deal with Iran. Israel's concerns weigh significantly in Washington decision-making as well, and the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons capacity is understood in Israel to be an existential threat. Although a credible case may be made for deterring Iran's nuclear ambitions through non-military means, neither the Bush Administration nor the Israeli government has embraced that possibility.

Remember that in 1990–91 and then again in 2003 the very fact that the United States assembled a formidable array of forces in the Gulf region became an argument for using those forces and launching wars. The United States will soon have two carrier task forces on station, and perhaps a third carrier task force will soon be deployed. It will be difficult for the United States to step down from its combative perch without Iran accepting some fairly significant concessions.

While many leading Iranian officials fully understand the gravity of the situation, it is nonetheless possible to imagine a series of real or contrived clashes that lead, perhaps unintentionally, to a serious aerial and naval campaign against Iran. Or—to put it simply—to yet another U.S. war of choice.

This is the four-pronged U.S. strategy at present:

1. As the deadline for compliance with the latest Security Council resolution approaches, the United States assembles the capacity to strike Iran if the Iranian leadership continues to ignore the will of the UN.

2. The threat of Iran gaining hegemony over expanses of the region is used to bolster an alliance with “moderate” Arab states. The subtext is that friendly Arab leaders, such as Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, would be pleased to see Iran knocked down a peg or two.

3. Given evaporating domestic support for the U.S. venture in Iraq, the administration is working hard to change the subject and to blame Iran for meddling and for facilitating anti-Coalition violence. (The recent furor over Iran possibly supplying sophisticated explosive devices is somewhat hypocritical when one considers that America's armory enabled Israel's war in Lebanon last summer. But that is impolitic to note.)

4. Meanwhile, with Iran chastened, and with the tacit support of moderate Arab regimes, U.S. forces manage to get the Iraq civil war under some kind of control—thus converting that conflict from a catastrophic disaster to a manageable mess, a mess for which the Iraqis are fundamentally responsible because they failed to capitalize on the “gift” of liberation.

The idea that the U.S. could bomb Iran “surgically,” gain Iranian compliance, and then bolster the American position in the Middle East is risky in the extreme. A U.S. attack would undermine pragmatic voices in Iran, revive Iranian nationalism, provide incentives for Iran to make life extremely difficult for the U.S. in Iraq and elsewhere, and probably impede the international trade in petroleum. Support for the United States is already weak among Iraq's Shiite community. The idea that America could align with a majority-Shiite government in Baghdad and simultaneously attack Iran is delusional. If America loses mass support among Iraqi Shiite, then the movie is over.

Surveying U.S. history, one is hard-pressed to find presidential decisions as monumentally ill-informed and counterproductive as the decision to invade and occupy Iraq; however, a decision to go to war against Iran would arguably surpass the Iraq war as the worst foreign policy decision ever made by an American president.

See also: Six Questions for Augustus Richard Norton on Lebanon, July 19, 2006.

Wayne White

Wayne White, an adjunct scholar with Washington's Middle East Institute, was deputy director of the State Department's Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia until March 2005.

“Planning” in the sense of very active contingency planning is almost certainly underway and has been for some time. That said, if by “planning” one means preparation resulting from a decision already made, I do not think that is the case—at least not yet. With the February 21 reporting deadline approaching, and with all the risks involved in exercising the so-called “military option” against Iran's nuclear infrastructure, it appears that the White House wishes to give diplomacy at least one more shot before making a firm decision on whether it should embark on unilateral U.S. military action.

Since early 2006, there have been a number of leaks about contingency planning for a U.S. strike against Iran. The deployment of a second carrier battle-group to the Persian Gulf was probably meant to intimidate Iran into backing off with respect to its interference in Iraq—and also to threaten Tehran with the possibility of a strike on its nuclear facilities, should diplomacy reach a dead end in the context of the February deadline. However, that deployment also put an additional component of the military option into position, should that option be chosen.

I am extremely wary of a military campaign against Iran's nuclear infrastructure. If military action is taken against that infrastructure, there would be nothing “surgical” about the proceedings. The airstrikes associated with contingency planning suggest that such maneuvers, in addition to hitting a number of widely dispersed atomic-development targets, would have to take out much of Iran's air defenses in order to clear paths to the targets. It would be a very large operation, probably spanning many days. In addition, Iran would strike back with whatever it could—for example, by attacking U.S. fleet elements and commercial ships with any anti-ship missiles that escaped destruction during the first wave of air strikes. It might also launch whatever ballistic and medium-range missiles survive the U.S. assault at various targets in the Gulf region, countries Tehran would likely view as complicit in such an attack. This would generate a major crisis in the Gulf—and, perhaps most importantly, one without a clear endgame.

See also: Six Questions for Wayne White on the Bush Administration and the Middle East Crisis, July 7, 2006.

Bahman Baktiari

Bahman Baktiari is director of academic and research programming at the University of Maine's William S. Cohen Center for International Policy and Commerce.

If the United States attacks Iran, the consequences would be disastrous. It would produce a wave of patriotic solidarity with the theocratic regime in Iran, even among those young Iranians who are fiercely critical of the mullahs, and another tidal wave of reaction around the world, especially among Muslims. Within Iraq, Bush's policy has led to an increase in sectarian fighting, so an attack on Iran would be seen as anti-Shiite as well as anti-Iranian. As of last year, for the first time, a majority of Iraqi Shiites support armed attacks on U.S.-led forces,  and if the United States attacks Iran, Iraqi Shiite militias will direct their anger at American soldiers and military personnel. Beyond this, we need to recognize that Iran has a complex political system and a young, critical society. The half-crazed Iranian President, Mr. Ahmadinejad, is not the ultimate boss. The supreme leader of this theocratic regime is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and he himself is constrained by strong interest groups and powerful personalities like Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Yet there is a real possibility that George Bush will order a military strike on Iran before he leaves the White House. The signs include: the build-up of Navy forces in the Persian Gulf, the capture of Iranian diplomats in Iraq, and the appearance of Undersecretary of State Nick Burns and Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England at a security conference in Israel with pro-war elements of the Israeli military. Also, the administration has armed Iran's Arab neighbors with Patriot missiles. The Pentagon halted all sales of spare parts from its recently retired F-14 fighter jet fleet because of concerns they could be transferred to Iran. Moreover, the U.S. military has accused people at the highest levels of Iranian government of supplying increasingly sophisticated roadside bombs to Iraqi insurgents. All signs point to a coming confrontation between the United States and Iran.

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