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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| What 'bomb Iran' really means |
| 2008-07-17 |
| By Ralph Peters My greatest worry on Iran's nuclear threat to civilization isn't the military option. It's trying that option on the cheap. If there's any way to block Tehran's pursuit of nukes short of warfare, I'm all for it. Maybe yesterday's dispatch of the No. 3 US diplomat to observe the European Union's talks with the mullahs about their nukes will work a miracle (don't hold your breath). Military strikes must be the last resort. Even a successful attack would panic oil markets, interrupt supplies to an unknown degree and make enemies of the Iranian people for another generation. But the fanatics in Tehran may leave us no peaceful alternative. In that case, the most disastrous thing we could do would be to launch an economy-model attack. If forced to strike, we have to do it right. When safe-at-home ideologues bluster, "Just bomb 'em," they haven't a clue how complex this problem is. Nor is there any chance that the Israelis could handle Iran on their own (their recent air-force exercise was psychological warfare). As skilled as their pilots and planners may be, the Israelis lack the capacity to sustain a strategic offensive against Iran - or to deal with the inevitable mess they'd leave behind in the Persian Gulf. Israel's aircraft could do serious damage to Iran's nuke program, but the US military would face the potentially catastrophic aftermath. Without compromising any secrets - the Iranians already know what we'd need to do - here are the basic requirements for smacking down Iran's nuke program: * Take out Iran's air-defense and intelligence network to protect our attacking aircraft. Screw up the effort, and today's oil prices will double or triple, with severe downstream shortages showing up in a matter of weeks - every oil tanker's insurance will be canceled immediately, even if the Straits of Hormuz remain open (unlikely). And we'll be in the global doghouse. Gimme-my-war chumps of the sort who believed "dissident" Ahmed Chalabi on Iraq insist that, if we weaken the Tehran regime by attacking, the Iranian people will overthrow it. Utterly wrong. Yes, many Iranians detest their killer-bumpkin president. But plenty of Americans despise our president - yet, if our homeland were attacked tomorrow, most would rally behind him. And we'd fight back. The Iranians would respond the same way. If a war did spark regime change, the new government might well be even harder-line. Nobody likes to be bombed - and serious attacks on Iran's nuclear program would kill a lot of Iranians. Yet it'd be even worse if we tried to hit Iran on the cheap, in some think-tank-concocted Shock and Awe Part II. "Precision" attacks - limited to air-defense sites and nuclear facilities - would draw a swift and painful Iranian response against the Gulf's oil exports. And one last worry: If we decide we have no choice but to attack, we're so casualty-averse that our civilian leadership is apt to put critical targets off-limits to spare Iranian lives. We still want to win wars without hurting anybody, by just breaking the other guy's toys. And that's never going to happen. If we have to fight, we have to fight to win. Take down Iran's nuke program? I'm damned certain of one thing: If we start this one, we'd better get it right from the first shot. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #16 Oh and that also takes out broadcast and telecom as hard targets if needs be. If the Mullahs cannot reach the masses, they cannot rally the masses. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-07-17 18:59 |
| #15 Seems like most of the items on the list are doable. I don't know whether you can accomplish all this without causing the price of oil to go up. As we have seen, the price of oil is volatile and often the price is based on psychology as much as anything. Bush lifted the ban on drilling and the price of oil went down immediately. The item on the list that is problematic is the last one: Expect three to six weeks of intense air and naval fighting, followed by months of skirmishing and asymmetrical warfare. And Iraq will heat back up, too. Don't look for Obama to do what Peters outlines. Best to elect McCain at this time. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2008-07-17 18:59 |
| #14 What Im thinking, other than HE on the main targets (nuke facilities and targets that need a hard kill, like leadership and radars), the most effective initial weapon would be aluminzed mylar. Take out the entire power grid. No power to pump water or sewage, nor to pump gasoline either. There go all the cities. Food distribution, medical care, all the modern things, gone. Cholera rampant within weeks. Starvation within months. Keep hitting hard targets with HE and the power grid with non-permanent damage. They will surrender, or die in large numbers, eventually. Which one happens is up to them. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-07-17 18:58 |
| #13 There is no such thing as the Iranian people, as there was no such thing as the Yugoslav people. A strike agaisnt Tehran would likely trigger a bloodbath against ethnic Persians. And I doubt we would stand aside and let the government slaughter civilians to reassert control, like Saddam was allowed to do after Gulf War 1. Otherwise, Iran is unusual in that has a small number of communication chokepoints due to its topography. Knock down a couple of dozen major bridges and you will stop the government (quickly) redeploying its forces to counter trouble hotspots. I'd isolate Tehran from the rest of the country. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2008-07-17 17:17 |
| #12 It's high time we entered our Imperial Era. That means we KEEP Iran for ourselves and distribute it's assets as we see fit. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2008-07-17 16:48 |
| #11 Nuking Iran, as deliciously ironic as it sounds (oh you want nuclear weapons? Here ya go!), would really be uncalled for. I think that Peters is pretty much right. Massive percision strikes that will remove Iran's nuclear refinment capability and their capability to make war at the same time are what is called for. The only problem with that is how many insurgents they will pump into Iraq. If we are going to do this, we need to have a full commpliment of troops ready to invade. We break Iran's face, they give us a bloody nose and we finish wiping them off the map, then rebuild them as we did Iraq. Or we could do it right the first time. Mass the troops for an invasion, tell Iran to kill the nuke program now. If they don't we do the air strikes outlined above and send the troops in in overwhelming force to clean and disinfect that toilet at the same time. We have the lessons we learned in Iraq, we should be out in two years if we use what we learned. Maybe less since there won't be some jerk sending hostile insurgents across the border and financing civil war. |
| Posted by: DLR 2008-07-17 13:38 |
| #10 One of the few times I agree with Peters. The attack should be by nuclear missiles only, no troops. Death from the sky. Over with in 30 minutes What're the words I'm looking for? Oh yeah -'radiation', 'fallout' and 'wind currents'. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2008-07-17 12:54 |
| #9 I don't know, I should think that if we picked one or two nuke sites that they must have to make nukes and then hit them in one all night raid using our stealth bombers to blast the crap out of them and then denied everything the next day.... Instead report a series of explosions at such and such site, Iranian dissident's are suspected. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2008-07-17 12:30 |
| #8 Strike dozens of dispersed nuclear-related targets - some of them in hardened underground facilities You don't really need to destroy the deep facility, just screw up all entrances/exits and they're out of the picture. In a bad way. Besides, I hear W ordered the development of a nuclear bunker buster. More than sufficient for anything they could put out there I would think. And don't we have some pretty cool unmanned undersea vehicles that probe for mines and submarines and report back to base? That ought to help a lot with their subs, especially if they use active sonar. And I would think that a few water-filled old tankers with several phalanx systems on them and piloted up and down the straits to flush out the guys with missiles hiding in the weeds ought to help a lot, too. Heck, put an anti-missile system on every tanker running up and down the straits with a few marines to guarantee that the systems don't fall into the wrong hands. As for "intense air fighting", perhaps some loitering bombers would be all that would be necessary. Be ready to drop bombs at all the vulnerable points along the straits as soon as any missile activity is detected. It's probably resource intensive, but cheaper than the alternative. Heck, sell opt-in "protection packages" for $1M each. Whiners need not participate! :-) This one will be tough because sleeper cells could wait for years before they decide to go wreak havoc. |
| Posted by: gorb 2008-07-17 11:56 |
| #7 "The blow must be a shattering one." I agree with this and not with Peters on this one. A conventional strike modology is what we can't afford. We need to hit them with mass nuclear strikes so large as to totally paralyze what remains of its citizenry. This needs to be discussed and OK'd by Congress. Let the Mullahs know that we have warned them and that utter destruction is their only other alternative. The attack should be by nuclear missiles only, no troops. Death from the sky. Over with in 30 minutes. |
| Posted by: Woozle Elmeter 2700 2008-07-17 11:12 |
| #6 If Obama wins, look for Israel to force out hand and Bush will be the one ordering in ths strikes in late November. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-07-17 10:50 |
| #5 So, Supreme Commander Obama is going to do all this next year? Impossible. Voters need to know what the real stakes are if we elect BO. Bush doesn't have time to finish the job, so the next guy has to take it on. I have confidence that McCain can do a good job, but do I trust the voters to make a sane choice? Some days I do, some days not. |
| Posted by: Richard of Oregon 2008-07-17 09:18 |
| #4 Peters is frequenly wrong. But in this instance he is spot on. The military command control and intelligence systems and leadership targets and their infrastructure, inclduing power water telecom and broadcast facilities, must be eliminated. The blow must be a shattering one. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-07-17 08:56 |
| #3 Ralph Peters is a national treasure. Just my opinion. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2008-07-17 08:19 |
| #2 We still want to win wars without hurting anybody, by just breaking the other guy's toys. And that's never going to happen. Hear, hear! The best way to deal with Iran, or any other ROP country, is to take out their entire infrastructure. Reduce them to indigenous tech, so to speak. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2008-07-17 07:07 |
#1 I agree with Peters in most respects: If we hit them at all, we have to hit very hard indeed. I think he overstates the challenge in one respect though: * Strike dozens of dispersed nuclear-related targets - some of them in hardened underground facilities, with others purposely placed in populated areas.This is true of "nuclear targets" in general but the really critical ones, the uranium enrichment centrifuges, can't really be dispersed to any practical degree. You have to have a lot of them close together to complete the process. You can't put one in every other garage or mosque, then go shuttling partially enriched uranium hexafluoride gas all over the countryside like so many bolts of cloth. The stuff is almighty dangerous and corrosive. To transport it, you would have to condense it back to a solid each time it was removed from a dispersed centrifuge unit, then vaporize it again before it is fed into the next one. This would reduce progress to a snail's pace even without the obvious hazards of constantly trundling batches of corrosive and radioactive poison around a backward country. The Iranians will have hardened the centrifuge facilities as well as they and their European contractors know how, but I really don't think that will be good enough. Beyond that, however, this is every bit as difficult as Peters says. The campaign against Iranian maritime facilities must be as thorough and as ruthless as any since the Second World War. Every missile site, ship, boat and coastal RG hovel must be blasted off the face of the Earth in as little time as possible if we are to have any hope of keeping the Strait of Hormuz open. Every Iranian warship at sea, especially submarines, should have an SSN assigned as far in advance as possible, with orders to trail it and be prepared to sink it literally at a moment's notice. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2008-07-17 06:27 |