After the big kerfuffle at Columbia over Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit, the issue of Iran’s nuclear program has once again come to the fore of media attention (though it hasn’t seemed to make in onto Mr. Ahmadinejad’s blog recently). Besides the utterly bankrupt position of hiding your head in the sand and pretending it isn’t so (much like Mr. Cline on Obama’s run for the presidency), the number of options remaining on Iran have dwindled tremendously. Here they are, as I see them and why they’re all bad. In our long standing tradition of multi-part series on complicated issues, I’ll be looking at America’s options in four parts. Unfortunately for us in America, they range from bad to worse…
Option #2: Invade Iran.
The neo-conservative blowhards like Norman Podhoretz have their own solution for Iran: invasion. We can repeat invasion of Iraq, only this time Iran really has WMDs! Wait a minute, the National Intelligence Estimate says they probably don’t. Nevermind. As the Angry Political Optimist pointed out, the NIE can be conveniently ignored because we know Iran’s history as a bunch of very bad people.
The irony is that the neo-conservatives aren’t the only one to be rattling their sabers. Even Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister and avoid socialist (and founder of Doctors Without Borders) has come out in favor of preparing for war with Iran. Mr. Kouchner said, “We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war.” His boss French president Nicholas “Look-at-my-supermodel-mistress” Sarkozy, noted that the world faces a choice between “an Iranian bomb or the bombardment of Iran.” You know, when Mr. Sarkozy isn’t hitting the bottle at the G8 summit. Over in London, the ex-prime minister Tony Blair has refused to take the option of invasion off the table.
The problem is that this option is a non-starter. Since it’s suspected that Iran has a secret nuclear program and we have no idea where those facilities are (assuming they exist at all), there’s no way a Israeli-style air campaign could eliminate Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Likewise, no matter how bad-ass the British SAS is compared to those pussies in the US Army Rangers (so the Brits’ claim), without accurate intelligence on the location of Iranian SNM (that’s special nuclear material), all of the Richard Marcinko’s in the world aren’t worth a hill of beans.
This means that any invasion of Iran would need to involve lots and lots of ground troops. According to our friends over at globalsecurity.org Iran has about 350k troops in their army. Now granted, 200k of those are conscripts who probably can’t fight for shit, but that leaves them with about 150k serious professional soldiers. This is no third world bunch of thugs with guns like in Somalia, the Iranians are well-trained and outfit with *lots* of kit — medium tanks, main battle tanks, sophisticated anti-tank weapons, missiles combat helicopters and aircraft. Most frightening is that the upper ranks of the Iranian officer corps knows how to conduct a serious fight — after all, they were all junior officers in the war against Iraq. Any ground invasion of Iran will be very, very messy, and lots of young men will be coming home in flag-draped coffins.
So, despite the saber rattling that’s been coming out of London and Paris, the UK and France cannot credibly threaten Iran by themselves (especially with the British forces tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan). US involvement is required to invade Iran. And with the US Army and Marine Corps also tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the only way the US can invade Iran is to abandon Iraq to the militias, insurgents and al-Qaeda. While the irony of the neo-conservative Iraq hawks endorsing “cut and run” for the purpose of throwing down with Iran is amusing, the utter chaos that would be unleashed on Iraq as a result of such a policy would not be.
The 12 Angry Men Blog 
February 25, 2008 at 1:25 pm
. [T]he Iranians are well-trained and outfit with *lots* of kit — medium tanks, main battle tanks, sophisticated anti-tank weapons, missiles combat helicopters and aircraft. Most frightening is that the upper ranks of the Iranian officer corps knows how to conduct a serious fight — after all, they were all junior officers in the war against Iraq. Any ground invasion of Iran will be very, very messy, and lots of young men will be coming home in flag-draped coffins.
This is, of course, word for word what was said about Iraq in 1991 (and, for that matter in 2003). And it’s no more true of Iran than Iraq. In fact, it’s far less true. The Iranians haven’t conducted serious operations since the Iran-Iraq war and their air force will be swept from the skies by our overpriced nasty-ass F22s.
The terrain of Iran is far less favorable, of course, and casualties might well be higher because of that, but Iran’s army is not to going to stand against us in open warfare.
And they don’t need to. Iran supplies 5% of the world’s oil, the fourth largest producer and the fourth largest exporter. Invading Iran would be like dropping a few tons of bombs on Japanese and Chinese industrial cities. Not too friendly, and the Chinese especially might take it the wrong way.
And that’s why invading Iran is a really bad idea. It’s also why assassinating Iran’s leadership, fomenting a bloody revolution, or detonating a few EMPs above Iran are also bad ideas. Anything which disrupts the flow of oil from Iran will be devastating to the world economy, and therefore a Bad Idea(tm) completely apart from the military issues involved.
February 26, 2008 at 8:07 am
[…] https://12angrymen.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/bad-to-worse-americas-options-on-iran-part-ii-invading-ir… […]
February 26, 2008 at 3:15 pm
AOC is correct. There are virtually no national forces in the world today that can compete on the classic battlefield with US troops. China and North Korea believe they can, but many are skeptical. You may remember that after Gulf 1, most national armies revamped their thinking. Gulf 2 insofar as conventional warfare was concerned, was even more successful than Gulf 1. This is why opposition in Iraq had to resort to asymmetrical warfare, suicide tactics, and guerrilla urban tactics. And with the adoption of the new FM 3-24, “Counterinsurgency Field Manual”, lessons learned first in Vietnam (and subsequently forgotten) then relearned in Iraq, the US Military is going to be even a tougher nut to crack. And with continuing technological improvements, solutions will be found for suicide bombers and roadside IEDs removing a powerful weapon from the counterinsurgent.
Again, as AOC suggests, the problem is really that with the world economy interconnected to the extent that it is, you cannot attack traditional military targets without damaging yourself or your allies.
Hugo Chavez has this same problem. He would dearly love to wield his oil katatna at the US, but the US has the only refineries capable of processing his stinky oil. Cutting the US off would hurt the US true, but would also completely dry up his oil revenue. He would be shooting himself in the foot, or perhaps higher up and more to the centerline.
The way to successfully attack Iran (and all the other oil despots) is to eliminate oil as a source of energy (cf. lightsaber).
January 13, 2009 at 11:07 pm
I have a novel idea. We relied on the Sunny powers, Egypt, Saudi and Pakistanis last few decades. In return, we got 911 and a nuclear Pakistan that led to a nuclear Iran.
Let us change the game plan. Let us get Israel on board and offer Iran a deal. A no war pact, a nuclear umberella just like Japan and total non-interference. In return, Iran abandons Nuke plan, allows permanant US/NATO base, gives up army like Japan, gives up terrorism. Most importantly, lets us take out Pakistani nuckes either by giving US forces the platform to attack Pakistan or covert denuking Pakistan.
Pakistani nukes are financed by the Saudis and technology transfer from the Chinese. Eversince, Pakistan made their first nuke they started experiencing delusions of grandeur. They think they are the protectors of Islam by virtue of possession of what they proudly call ‘Islamic Bomb’. The evidence for this:
1. Al Queda was created by Pakistani army/ISI intelligence agency right at the time they made their nukes.
Real Al queda is Pakistani army and their Intelligence agency (ISI).
2. They proliferated nuke technology to anti-western dictators in muslim world (except N.Korea where it was in exchange for missile tech). Here, you can see their agenda to destroy infidels.
You clean up Pakistan or you face Pakistani nuclear blackmail and later IRAN will copy the Pakistani playbook to bring down Israel and West just like Pakistan blackmails India. They got away with Mumbai attacks (2006, 2007 and 2008), Parliament attack (2001), Indian embassy attack in Afghanistan (2008) and many more attacks.
I may be biased being Indian, but there is no denying the facts that Pakistan is the epicenter of terrorism, nuclear proliferation and islamic fundamentalism.
Next nuclear attack, dirty bomb or even World War will be initiated by Pakistan. All roads lead to Pakistan. Denuke them now when they are vulnerable.