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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran | ||||
| Pentagon plan to wipe out Iranian military in 3 days | ||||
| 2007-09-02 | ||||
THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the IraniansÂ’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.
Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”. President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late”.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week reported “significant” cooperation with Iran over its nuclear programme and said that uranium enrichment had slowed. Tehran has promised to answer most questions from the agency by November, but Washington fears it is stalling to prevent further sanctions. Iran continues to maintain it is merely developing civilian nuclear power. Bush is committed for now to the diplomatic route but thinks Iran is moving towards acquiring a nuclear weapon. According to one well placed source, Washington believes it would be prudent to use rapid, overwhelming force, should military action become necessary. Israel, which has warned it will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, has made its own preparations for airstrikes and is said to be ready to attack if the Americans back down. Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which uncovered the existence of Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, said the IAEA was being strung along. “A number of nuclear sites have not even been visited by the IAEA,” he said. “They’re giving a clean bill of health to a regime that is known to have practised deception.”
Bush noted that the number of attacks on US bases and troops by Iranian-supplied munitions had increased in recent months “despite pledges by Iran to help stabilise the security situation in Iraq”. It explains, in part, his lack of faith in diplomacy with the Iranians. But Debat believes the Pentagon’s plans for military action involve the use of so much force that they are unlikely to be used and would seriously stretch resources in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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| Posted by:lotp |
| #17 Sounds like a plan, 2x4. Maybe take in a few tourist sites, too.* ;-p *Assuming there are any left. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2007-09-02 23:19 |
| #16 Barb, mop up the misses during the 1st and hunt down any IRG or BigTurban Mulla that may have slipped through the net. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-09-02 23:11 |
| #15 Take out the refineries, POL storage, electrical generation and distribution and watch Iran drop back to a pre-industrial society. Modern militaries run on diesel. No fuel and nothing moves. No electricity and everything else stops. Those are big, static targets that can be taken out with cruise missiles. After that, the military and nuclear targets are just icing on the cake. |
| Posted by: RWV 2007-09-02 19:34 |
| #14 3 days? What are our guys planning to do for the last 2? |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2007-09-02 17:45 |
| #13 Years ago the Mullahs imported subway digging machines to construct huge tunnels. How many tunnels & underground emplacements are there now, where are they & what's in 'em? Iran's nuclear R&D facilities. It's why America has placed such emphasis upon development of conventional and nuclear "bunker buster" weapons. We have made quantum leaps in "burrowing" missiles and can likely defeat even the most deeply buried Iranian facilities. After all, they have to have electrical power, ventilation and water enter somewhere. Those utility feed-throughs are vulnerable to attack. Imagine the effect of detonating a properly staggered sequence of thermobaric "vacuum" bombs near major ventilator shafts. We could pump down the interior of any connected facility to the point where its occupants' lungs would emerge from their throats. And that suits me just fine. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-09-02 16:21 |
| #12 I see no way that the USA can prevent the Mad Mullahs from closing down oil shipping in the Persian Gulf right after hostilities start & perhaps from damaging the giant oil fields of Saudistan. The world and US economy is in precarious shape at the moment & probably for the next year, at least. Even if the Mullahs power structure is completely rubbed out in 3 days, such an interruption in oil exports from the Gulf will have severe, bad, & lasting effects on the non-Islamic world. Years ago the Mullahs imported subway digging machines to construct huge tunnels. How many tunnels & underground emplacements are there now, where are they & what's in 'em? |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-09-02 15:23 |
| #11 “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” Just as how a woman cannot be "a little bit pregnant", neither can there be a "small" war with Iran. If we strike at all, it is to totally disable their entire military structure. Once all major IRG bases and missile sites are demolished, Iran's army should be given 15 minutes to surrender unconditionally or face similar destruction. Much like with Islam overall, start by clearing out the top tiers and see if opposition continues. Keep sweeping the ranks until they sit down, shut up and surrender. “They’re giving a clean bill of health to a regime that is known to have practised deception.” Which is why Mohammed El-baradei must be brought up on charges of criminal collusion with Iran. It goes beyond all imagination how the fuck we ever allowed a Muslim to run inspections of another Islamic country's nuclear program. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-09-02 14:16 |
| #10 If the Iranians try to counter with an Israeli strike simply for GP, then Israel should be invited by the US to join in the offensive! None of this ' just stand by and be placid', crap such as what the US wanted in the first Gulf War! The US should start by cleaning out the MOAB stores during that first three days also! |
| Posted by: smn 2007-09-02 14:01 |
| #9 I am not hopeful of revolution. If it happens, then good, but it should be of little consequence to our main objectives. And I should add that such a partition also has the added benefit of denying Iran the ability to either profit by or to menace the oil the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, or the Arabian Sea. I see the basic strategy as the USAF reducing as much of the Iranian military and IRGC as possible, then the US divisions quickly enter Iran, and begin a 'T' slicing maneuver North, and South then East. It would be of great help if the Pakistani army then annexed Iranian Baluchistan. This would amount to eight or nine approximate provinces (though we would be inclined to slice according to geography, not tradition): Azerbayjan-e Gharbi; Kordestan; Kermanshah; Lorestan-Llam; Khuzestan; perhaps Yasuj; Bushehr; Hormozgan; and Baluchistan. Map: http://tinyurl.com/6tpmp The Kurdish Peshmurga would be the occupying power of the three provinces of Iranian Kurdistan; and the Iraqi army would occupy from Lur province to Bander Abbas. Iraq would be given control of the Bushehr reactor, which might or might not be allowed to remain in operation. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-09-02 13:32 |
| #8 The numerous, modern |
| Posted by: gromky 2007-09-02 13:28 |
| #7 Iran is big country, Army Targets, and opportunity. After the peopl know the IRG is gone the Mullahs probably couldn't run fast enought to escape. |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2007-09-02 11:57 |
| #6 Let me once again reiterate what I believe is the only successful plan for Iran: Destroy their nuclear infrastructure; annihilate their military; and partition their nation. The #1 reason for doing this is that we CANNOT assume that they do not already have one or more nuclear weapons. Were the North Koreans to have provided them weapons grade uranium and plutonium long ago, then all they would have to do is assemble a bomb. As cover for this, creating their own enrichment operation, as a false front, would be brilliant. It would give them the time they needed to both build weapons *and* enlarge and improve their delivery systems. Then, if the US just destroyed their enrichment operations, then forgot about Iran, they would have perhaps a decade to become a *substantial* nuclear power, not just the owner of a few bombs. Their ballistic missile program would be mature, and they might even have missiles capable of reaching the US. By destroying their nuclear infrastructure, we assure that they cannot use their locally enriched uranium to build bombs. By annihilating their military forces, they are severely weakened as a nation. But only through partitioning, slicing off Iranian Kurdistan, Khuzestan, and all the way bordering the Persian Gulf through Baluchistan, can we deny them the money and resources to rebuild. Fortunately, George Bush has directed an enormous amount of anti-missile defenses to the region, in case they are far ahead of schedule, and launch either conventional or nuclear missiles. But we cannot dilly-dally, nor play around as we did with Iraq. This will have to be full scale war. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-09-02 11:51 |
| #5 I think the IRG would have to go. AFAIK they are the rabid fanatics of the mullocracy there. The regular army guys sound like they'd be OK though. Are my instincts correct? |
| Posted by: gorb 2007-09-02 05:52 |
| #4 You could leave the army, what you would need to hit though is the navy and air force. We cannot have the Iranians interrupting shipping in the Gulf. |
| Posted by: bernardz 2007-09-02 04:17 |
| #3 gorb, there is really no need to march across the border. Just target nuclear facilities, the known locations of IRG and IAF (army to a lesser degree, perhaps), level Qom and localities known to contain target rich environment (bancha mulla) and let Iranians sort things afterwards. If after some time problem spots remain, remove them... rinse and repeat. One day, Iranians will get it right. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-09-02 03:52 |
| #2 Why three days? Don't want the EMPs of one nuclear device going off interfering with the next? >:-} I don't know how Iran is going to fill a power vacuum if they have to keep their troops where they can defend the homeland. Unless their mullahs are enough to do the trick. And I would guess that a massive attack is going to garner an entirely different reaction than a bunch of pinpricks. If their military and logistics are screwed up completely, they won't be able to supply Iraq what the boneheads there need to continue their false insurgency. We should also be able to depend on quite a few Iraqi forces to go along with us on a march across the border to Tehran. And give them a $100 bonus for each recognizable head of one of the ruling class bad-guys, be he Iraqi or Iranian. |
| Posted by: gorb 2007-09-02 01:54 |
| #1 Debat's beliefs are debatable. 3 days is not that long to pull off logistics of manpower and equipment rather well. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-09-02 01:32 |