If Push Comes to Shove on Iran

Two and a half years of European Union negotiating and United Nations monitoring have availed nothing but to buy Iran the time it needed to develop its nuclear program. Sanctions would be a good-faith effort to resolve the Iranian matter peacefully, but they may have little effect on a determined nation flush with oil money and ruled by democratically-unaccountable theocrats, assuming the UN Security Council could agree on and enforce a sanctions resolution in the first place. So, absent some drastic intervention, Iran seems on course to be a nuclear Islamist theocracy, and sooner than later.

Iran is often said to have one of the most anti-Western governments, but one of the most pro-Western populations, in the Muslim world, and Iran-watchers frequently report that the Iranian people are ripe for a democratic revolution. Efforts to support would-be democratic reformers in Iran could conceivably nudge along a new Iranian revolution which would render the question of a nuclear-armed Iranian government close to moot. The U.S. government is now pursuing such a policy, but it would seem to require more time than Iranian President Ahmadinejad's accelerated-Armageddon scenario will allow.

So what if push comes to shove on Iran?

Iran has apparently learned from some of Iraq's mistakes. An Iraqi nuclear program housed in a single, above-ground plant at Osirak was destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in 1981. Iran instead has spread its nuclear production over numerous sites, some in populous areas to maximize the risk of civilian casualties in any attempt to destroy then, some buried to maximize their invulnerability to air strikes .

Military intelligence on the true state of Iran's nuclear development, the locations and vulnerabilities of its nuclear plants and air defenses, possible Iranian retaliations, etc. would be absolutely crucial, and U.S. and Western intelligence today is far from confidence-inspiring. But the United States has been reforming its intelligence services, and American forces have been just over the border from Iran, in Afghanistan and Iraq, for several years now and may well have been able to gather a reliable level of intelligence on this case.

Israel could be the dragon-slayer. It incapacitated Iraq's nuclear program in the 1981 strike and undeniably has an interest in the Iranian situation, namely its continued existence. But Iran may be too big a job for Israel alone, and Iran is not a problem for Israel alone.

Americans do not exactly relish the prospect of undertaking yet another invasion, occupation, reconstruction, and counterinsurgency, let alone in a nation more populous than both Afghanistan and Iraq combined. A more limited military intervention may be another matter.

At the very least, Iran might be contained somewhat by a missile defense wall. Those American forces surrounding Iran might deploy anti-ballistic missile systems to detect and destroy any Iranian missile launches. In fact, a U.S.-Israeli BMD system is already operational and calibrated for the Iranian Shahab-3 ballistic missile which is capable of reaching Israel. But the margins are exceedingly narrow. Iran for instance claims the ability to mass-produce Shahab-3s, and very many lobbed simultaneously could overwhelm Israel's defenses. For even one nuclear warhead to meet its mark would be catastrophic for a nation as tiny as Israel.

A military option might include air strikes, special forces operations , or both. American forces are on Iran's eastern border in Afghanistan, on its western border in Iraq, and to its south-west in Kuwait. The United States has airbases in half a dozen countries in the region, and could fly sorties against Iran directly from bases in Europe and the United States itself. And a missile-armed U.S. aircraft carrier group is on hand in the Persian Gulf.

Air strikes may be an unnecessarily blunt instrument if American ground forces could slip across the border and more discreetly sabotage Iran's nuclear facilities, and the Pentagon has in recent years been concentrating on precisely the sort of special operations forces that such a mission would demand.

If America did strike Iran, Iran would presumably strike back, or at least try. Iran might attack or block Persian Gulf oil shipping, it might launch ballistic missile, conventional military, or terrorist attacks against Israel and American forces in the region, and it might activate terrorist agents in Israel and America. Already Iran is supporting Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and elements of the insurgency in Iraq, with impunity. A military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities might also target some of Iran's capacity to retaliate, and further action might be threatened in hopes of deterring retaliation.

The Bush Administration has thus far given no indication that military action is in the offing, beyond the obligatory "all options are on the table" statements. But as Arizona Senator John McCain recently put it, "There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option and that is a nuclear-armed Iran."

Andrew W. Smith, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia and Tulsa, Oklahoma

Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia