A Single Strike Would Be Stupid
Commander Salamander got around to commenting on a post by one of the posters at the very popular Officer’s Club. The post in question suggests a “Desert Fox” strike as an option for dealing with Iran’s incipient nuclear capability.
The question of whether or not Iran will play diplomatic ball has been answered, they won’t. Now we have to ask “what next?”
As I’ve made clear before, I support a preemptive strike against any and all Iranian nuclear facilities, from their reactors right down to their heavy-water processing facilities. Before people get hysterical about invading another Middle Eastern nation and screaming “empire” until they are blue in the face, this is what I mean when I say “preemptive strike.”
The United States, striking from carriers in the Persian Gulf, bomber bases in Guam, and air bases in Turkey (long-time adversaries of the Iranians) should initiate a 3-4 day air campaign similiar to Operation Desert Fox against Saddam in 1998. The objective would be two-fold: knock the Iranian nuclear capabilities back to the stone age, and sting their military to the point where the Ayatollahs understand that their own bomb “just ain’t worth the effort.”
Commander Salamander doesn’t like the idea at all.
Iran is not Iraq. Iran has mitigated the ability to have their nuke program knocked out from the air. Like DF, we could make some great video out of it – and we might get lucky and not loose anyone (I wouldn’t be on it though) — but you will only make the problem worse. Everyone needs to face the facts that the only way you will destroy Iran’s nuke program is to have some guy with US flag on his shoulder, putting C4 around a door to get access to it. Oh, make that a few hundred guys doing that….supported by a few hundred thousand. If we are not willing to do that – then it is back to the future. My nukes trump your nukes. Pick you choice.
I didn’t like the idea back in January when I saw the original post, and commented:
If a single short campaign as you recommend is executed it had better not be as effects-free as DF was upon its intended Middle Eastern target. You want blown up things, not scorch marks–you want effects better than their own Air Force has had over the last month.
I think this suggestion is interesting but ignores that the effects can be interagency. DF didn’t do anything to banking systems or engineers. It didn’t do anything for recently fired or reassigned bad country diplomats. No satellites lost their terrestrial feeds, no young folks got “A Force More Powerful” CDs in Farsi, few Senior People got interesting phone calls in the middle of the night, no escape pod palaces mysteriously burned to the ground, no extended family interesting things happened, no Kalashnikovs wound up in hands not encouraging for supporters of stability.
And there’s a well we could send a message down, if you get my drift. We can parse the message right, in such a way that an not-evil imam would know and tell others that the twelfth imam got the message.
My comment about “their own Air Force” refers to a series of air disasters that in one case killed the ground commander of the IRGC and senior staff to include the senior intel officer and in another killed reporters and staffers as well as a Tehran apartment building–odd coincidences, that.
After thinking about the Officer’s Club post a little more, the more dumb a single strike-ex becomes.
- Israel’s Osirak strike, where they used TACAIR to destroy the Chirac-provided reactor, counterintuitively resulted in an acceleration of the Iraqi nuclear capability in ways that were more difficult to detect. The political effects were useful, but the stated effect wasn’t achieved.
- It is not stupid on the face of it to assume that we do not know where all the nuclear weapons generating capability is located. The stuff we do know about might well be in places that were designed with Osirak in mind–meaning a simple TLAM will not have an effect.
- The strike will not have the effect the United States actually wants. We want to avoid having an apocalyptic madman with nuclear weapons. This is not necessarily going to happen merely from a military strike; all aspects of national power and capability must be aligned towards a common goal, and just bombing someone with no other coordination outside DoD will not cause that alignment to magically occur.
Important Caveat Goes Here
Military action in support of a more integrated and long term effort is most emphatically not stupid. Violence in support of national objectives makes sense in certain frameworks, including frameworks that sound suboptimal on their face such as invasion and occupation. What I advocate is to consider use of military force as a tool in a bigger toolbox, and to consider the application of that force in a broader context than merely bombing certain known and sufficiently soft facilities.
It may well be that we have to respond to Iran’s stated intention, and their ongoing acts of war against Americans and their interests, in an overwhelmingly military manner. It’s just that we’ve learned that short duration bombing campaigns will no longer have the effect we desire against an enemy who learned its warfighting style by observing, absorbing, and exploiting such shocks.
14 Responses to “A Single Strike Would Be Stupid”
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February 28th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
Caveat: I have never been to war… never been a staff officer… never been a commissioned officer… simply an IT Geek with 3 years active duty in the US Army and 3 years duty in the Flordia National Guard. That said…
It seems to me that the DF type attack is the easy way out… the stick your toe in the water and see what might happen plan. Not a well thought out, coordinated and supported (multi-country / multi-cultural) action.
If I had my druthers (which I do not…) I would see the current leadership of my country build a coalition of like minded strategic partners and deliver a very clear message as to what we think of the situation. I would see us go to battle as a part of a larger entity, although as a leader of that entity. I think that it has the capacity to further damage our international relations to act unilaterally or with just a small group. We need to find a way to bring the largest and most influential together in opposition to an Iran with Nukes…
However… if the choice is act unilaterally or not at all… with the not at all resulting in Iran developing and deploying a nuclear arsenal, then I think I would have to vote for unilateral action.
John
February 28th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
Concur–with the caveat that the action can be mutifaceted and take many forms.
February 28th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
“No satellites lost their terrestrial feeds, no young folks got “A Force More Powerful†CDs in Farsi, few Senior People got interesting phone calls in the middle of the night, no escape pod palaces mysteriously burned to the ground, no extended family interesting things happened, no Kalashnikovs wound up in hands not encouraging for supporters of stability.”
Exactly. This is what we should have been doing 5 years ago. I’m afraid that now it is too late and that the best we can do is limit the amount of time that the nukes are in the hands of a madman by pursuing this course of action now.
Also, I noticed the original commenter stated that the air campaign should “sting” the Iranian military. No, if we decide that an air campaign is necessary, it will be something on par with the air war phase of Desert Storm, only more intense. The Iranian military will cease to be anything approaching an effective force (although as you alluded to, their Air Force is doing a pretty good job of that on its own), anything remotely related to the nuclear program will be taken out, leadership decapitation will be actively pursued, and we’ll probably have to strike some infrastructure, although we don’t want to wipe that out because that would be counterproductive when considering the other aspects of the war. Assuming, of course, that we pursue the war on our terms, instead of letting it come to us.
The war is coming either way.
March 1st, 2006 at 1:22 am
A more sophisticated play could be a psychological game -escalated in a series of plausibly deniable accidents that send clear messages of cessation. Iran’s leader, its generals and scientists travel by air. Disasters often happen (as you mentioned regarding “their own Air Forceâ€), and it is not difficult to see a few over the next 24 months. Obviously, key players would be Iranian dissidents, but more importantly to nuclear ambitions would be the public perceptions of technical incompetence.
What might have been the impact on U.S. development of the A-bomb if a few key scientists and generals had been lost in air disasters?
March 1st, 2006 at 9:10 am
and of course with a DF scenario, we won’t see any retaliatory action. No civil oil tankers sunk, regardless of whose flag is flying from the stern. No aircraft carriers (or subs) lost in Hormuz (remember all the Chinese SSMs Iran started buying in the late 80s? remember those pesky Kilos they bought in the 90s? remember how cheap mines are?). And those are the easy pickin’s. We also won’t see increased secondary attacks in Israel (courtesy our democratic friends in Hamas), including against any ships of ours making port call at Haifa. We won’t see IRGC attacks against oil platforms controlled by our friends and allies in the Gulf. We won’t see massive demonstrations across the Islamosphere, shutting down our embassies and consulates (or worse, taking them over). We won’t see anything like this, because the nature of the opposition is to simply roll over and beg for terms. Right? This is the sort of thinking that really gets me hot when we’re war gaming. These sorts of things simply are deemed “outside the realm” of game play and would just distract the theater commander from his important decision making.
Of course, I like Vigilis’ idea of slowly whittling down the brains behind the effort. But that would be heinous, and I doubt the lawyers would allow it. After all, the lawyers stopped us from killing Osama from a drone.
March 1st, 2006 at 11:08 am
Yes, to be successful any action must be multi-faceted (sp?). Personally, I support a campaign of denial.
You can have the nicest nuke in the world, but if you have no means to deliver it on target it gains you nothing. As previously noted, the Iranians have gone to great lengths to protect their nuclear program from either a DF or Osirik type of strike, so why should we accomodate them by fighting to their strength? I would prefer to see a limited but sustained strike campaign of denial supporting an indiginous revolutionary effort. Politically and practically it would best of we could play the role of Lafayette rather than MacArthur in Iran. The biggest problem is that while there is general dissatisfaction and several anti-regime groups, there is no dominant central unifying force for these groups and efforts that I can see.
In short, leave the nuclear facilities intact but unusable and let the next landlords, who should have less interest and motivation for nuclear ambitions, close them.
March 1st, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Call my submission GW-1 (-) or DF (+). How about Kosovo (+) ?
All seem to agree about the realities:
1. Doing nothing is criminal
2. Embargoes, trade wars and diplomacy get us much the same- no change in status quo.
3. We do not have the ground forces to do two simultaneous (# if you count Afghanistan) ground actions that take, hold and occupy (nation building) territory. At minimum- not yet.
So what do you do? When you have to do something.
1st thing we must have- UN paperwork and at least 1/2 ass approval of the world- biggie
Let ‘em stand at GQ for a awhile to sensitize ‘em.
Hit them with a major air campaign. In my view, you call air and you bring it on hard and pre-emptorily (is that a word?). (BTW Desert Fox was B.C.’s way to C.H.A. vis vi Monica Lewinski) You attrite the obvious threats (roll back air campaign) and of course, those pesky nuc nodes, the leadership nodes (note- I did not say leadership itself- nothing personal about this war).
Phase 2- Close the power grid around major population centers and concurrently blind ‘em electronically. Any response to fight or redeploy leads to destruction. (the Iranians had it hard during the war with Iraq in ’80′s but I do not think Teheran went without power/water long)
Phase 3- Give ‘em 90 days for an attitude adjustment. Not forthcoming? Well, at least they’ll have less stuff than what they started with , plus how much more can they hate us? Any response to fight or redeploy leads to destruction.
Endstate- Non-nuclear Iran. If we do nothing endstate- nuclear Iran.
If you really contemplate 1-3 above, what other options do we have?
Yup- are you saying we should do nothing because they might get off an attack on our ships or they will shut down our embassies regionally? These two things versus national survival? I know you can’t believe that.
B2
March 2nd, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Ok, it’s my own ignorance but:
Let’s presume that we go about some form of military action that disables/renders unusable the nuclear facilities – with or without UN support. Now besides having clearly bolstered the worst public opinion of the US in the middle east EVER (maybe not I guess if you were one of those countries FACING a nuclear Iran….), unless a decapitation strike were also to take place, wouldn’t the attack do more harm? Is it out of the realm of reasonable thought that the seemingly unstable current President of Iran could then decide that since he can’t go after the US in conventional warfare, he’ll go unconventional – further supporting terrorist activities, training, etc. against the west, and maybe even purchasing a boom-boom briefcase to be delivered to US soil? Maybe too complicated- so just stay local and go to Israel?
It seems that the current goal of “peaceful” nuclear pursuits by Iran have come about with the new president. Wouldn’t a swift (maybe too late!) move eliminating him from the equation not only cool the program and its pursuit but also have a chilling effect on the next president? “Hmmm..you like to make big bombs. So did your predecessor. Shame he’s no longer with us…..” Again, it may be my own ignorance and my not having double-secret-swear-on-your-momma’s-pinky clearance – it could be that the pursuits are only now being -vocalized- by the new president.
Besides, from what I’m gleaning from the thread, the facilities are well-prepared for an attack and any attempt to disable the program in that respect (actual reactor facilites, heavy water, etc.) would be hard-fought. Sure, we can disable the infrastructure to allow our planes to go for as many runs as we want, but watch out for “Ol’ Jeb” with his shoulder fired missle launcher. So the argument could be “Yeah, we lose some good people, but maybe it’s worth it”? No – clearly not. Not when another option (decapitation strike) allows for deniability, solves the problem short-term, and may have a lasting long-term effect – with minimal risk to force numbers on our part. And as for the lawyers – has that ever REALLLLLY stopped us before when a matter of national security is at stake? Osama is an indirect threat – he trains people who can hurt us. Nuclear Iran could hurt us or our interests directly. The whole clear and present danger thing. We may not have to worry about deniability, however, if he keeps putting his finger in Israel’s eye. They have their own capabilities. The icing on the cake would be a mutli-national, multi-agency participation- but then how do you work out deniability? Plus too many cooks….
Plus, the exposure of non-military ships (tankers and the like) would be significantly reduced, and the ability of the Iranian military to observe, absorb, and exploit the situati0n would be lessened. As long as there is plausable deniability…..
In my limited knowledge- I agree that a single strike on the facilities would be folly. But perhaps a single strike at a different target could result in more targets hit with less ammo.
-Tu
March 5th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
Iran has the highest percapita opiate addiciton rate in the world. Isnt it comforting to think that heroin addicts, who hate us-the Great Satan, will have nukes in the not too distant future?
March 9th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
B2: Nope. What I’m saying is we shouldn’t hit them sorta hard but not like we really mean to put them out of business, then walk away from the debriefing patting ourselves on the back for showing them who’s boss. There must be a follow through, and there must be a more widespread pattern of attack (as you describe) than just the nuc bunkers. Of course, you also have to consider the morality of your efforts ala taking out the power grid, because then you gotta worry about CNN/Al-J broadcasting all those pictures of suffering little children and the effects that will have on the French and Germans v-a-v their erstwhile support of our attacks. And we HAVE to be prepared for the ripples to spread beyond just a tight little sphere of operations bounded by a 12 Nm line surrounding “Iran,” because the Iranians have too much invested (and too much sympathy around the globe) to just sit back and groan about it like Saddam did to the Israelis. And let’s not forget how lucrative the Iranian-Chinese friendship vector is; China is already jumpy about our presence in the ‘Stans, and would certainly see any significant military action against Iran as another means to subvert their sphere of influence. They already have their blood boiling over ‘little’ Chen over on Taiwan, and know that our military is stretched. Ask yourself what viable action we might be able to take in the Far East is we are embroiled in operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. What if Syria decided to play along with Iran on this one? How will elections in Egypt fare? Will Chavez decide to cut off our oil supply (1/5 of our imports) to sell it elsewhere?
I contend that a “we’ll launch a round of air strikes and call it a victory” will not do the trick. We have to be willing to pay a high price for Iran’s nuclear capability. It’s either gonna be paid now to prevent them from getting the bomb, or later when they decide to use it. (Hmmm, Pakistan is the only “Islamic” nuclear power but they are not a fundamentalist state and are adequately balanced by nuclear India. Fundamentalist Iran would not be so constrained…. and their bomb could easily reach Israel.)
March 12th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Yup,
You point out the pratfalls and the expected negatives created by propaganda and that segment of Blame/ Hate America first crowd. All predictable and all highly likely occurences in the event of any level of action taken in Iran. Good predictions.
I still say they all pale when one contemplates a nuclear Iran. Sure you agree. Collapse and isolate- blockade and impoverish. No we do not have enough force right now to occupy and democritize but I think we can accomplish the above.
Eventually this brief will come out on the net. After you read it you will understand my take FORAC approach to Iran:
“Iranian President Ahmadinejad, Islamic Eschatology, and Near Term Implications” by Chuck Vollmer of VII Inc., 26 Jan 2006.
B2
March 12th, 2006 at 11:56 am
Yup:
Google find. Here is a link for the Vollmer brief:
http://leake-campbell.info/iranian.pdf
May 21st, 2006 at 2:29 pm
[...] You know, this isn’t the first time I’ve taken issue with an OpFor analysis on Iran options. I don’t know if this is a trend or not. Thoughts? [...]
May 22nd, 2006 at 1:25 am
The first phase would be most important: letting the Iranian people know who is responsible for the action, i.e. their leaders and how they can resolve the situation. It could be done in stages with each day passing into a stronger phases: first their air-force and navy, then nukes sites, then power, then water, etc.
But I’d like to consider the blow-back. What if it doesn’t work? What if the population is recalcitrant and backs the mullahs more than ever?
It would be nice to have some sweeteners in the ultimatum, but what would work?