Contrary To Republican Opinion, Attack On Iran Would Be Really Unwise!

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Worries Mount Over Blowback of Israeli Attack on IranBarbara SlavinInter Press Service / News AnalysisPublished: Thursday 19 January 2012
“While the Obama administration has repeatedly called Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon ‘unacceptable’, senior officials have also stressed the potential downsides of a U.S. or Israeli military attack on Iran.”

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SHARE Email A for­mer se­nior ad­viser on the Mid­dle East to the last four U.S. pres­i­dents says that "the neg­a­tives far out­weigh the pos­i­tives" of war with Iran and the United States should aug­ment Is­rael's nu­clear weapons de­liv­ery sys­tems to dis­suade it from at­tack­ing the Is­lamic Re­pub­lic.

Bruce Riedel, who served on the White House Na­tional Se­cu­rity Coun­cil and dealt ex­ten­sively with both Is­rael and Iran, told an au­di­ence Tues­day at the At­lantic Coun­cil, a Wash­ing­ton-based think tank, that while an Iran with nu­clear weapons would be a sig­nif­i­cant strate­gic set­back for the United States and Is­rael, de­ter­rence and con­tain­ment were prefer­able to mil­i­tary force.

He crit­i­cized those, in­clud­ing all but one Re­pub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, who dis­cuss an at­tack on Iran's nu­clear in­stal­la­tions as though it would be "over in an af­ter­noon or a cou­ple of weeks".

"I don't use the term 'mil­i­tary strike,' " Riedel said. "We will be at war with Iran. Once we begin it, the de­ter­mi­na­tion of when it ends will not be a uni­lat­eral one… This could be­come an­other ground war in Asia."

The global econ­omy would suf­fer a huge blow from spik­ing oil prices, and U.S. per­son­nel in Iraq and Afghanistan would be likely tar­gets of Iran­ian re­tal­i­a­tion, Riedel said.

The con­se­quences would be es­pe­cially dire for Afghanistan be­cause Iran could be­come a sec­ond sanc­tu­ary, after Pak­istan, for Tal­iban mil­i­tants. In

that event, "the chances of suc­cess in Afghanistan on the time­line the (Barack Obama) ad­min­is­tra­tion has laid out is vir­tu­ally nil," he said.

While the U.S. mil­i­tary and in­tel­li­gence es­tab­lish­ment ap­pears solidly against a war with Iran, Is­rael's at­ti­tude has been am­biva­lent. A major con­cern for U.S. pol­i­cy­mak­ers is that Is­rael might at­tack Iran with­out giv­ing the United States warn­ing – and thus the op­por­tu­nity to try to veto the ac­tion.

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Gen. Mar­tin Dempsey, chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in De­cem­ber that this was a pos­si­bil­ity. Dempsey was due in Is­rael Thurs­day for dis­cus­sions about Iran.

The U.S. and Is­rael were to have staged this spring a mas­sive new joint ma­neu­ver to prac­tice in­ter­cept­ing in­com­ing mis­siles, Aus­tere Chal­lenge 12, but have put off the ex­er­cise. Is­raeli De­fense Min­is­ter Ehud Barak Wednes­day said he had asked for the delay, but it is also pos­si­ble that the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion made the de­ci­sion to con­vey U.S. dis­plea­sure over Is­rael's more ag­gres­sive pos­ture to­ward Iran.

Michael Eisen­stadt, a spe­cial­ist on Iran and nu­clear pro­lif­er­a­tion at the Wash­ing­ton In­sti­tute for Near East Pol­icy, told the At­lantic Coun­cil ses­sion Tues­day that while a war is risky, so is a pol­icy of con­tain­ment and de­ter­rence when it comes to Iran.

Both men pre­dicted that 2012 would be "the year of de­ci­sion for Is­rael" on Iran, as Iran steadily amasses en­riched ura­nium and moves en­rich­ment into a hard­ened site at For­dow near Qom.

At the same time, Eisen­stadt sug­gested Iran might be dis­suaded from build­ing nu­clear weapons by con­tin­u­ing a covert cam­paign that in­cludes as­sas­si­na­tions of Iran­ian sci­en­tists and sab­o­tage of cen­trifuge parts and com­put­ers.

These ac­tions, he said, have shown Iran that its pro­gram has been pen­e­trated by for­eign in­tel­li­gence and that Iran would have a hard time build­ing a nu­clear weapon with­out being caught.

Eisen­stadt said the U.S. would have to strike a "del­i­cate bal­ance", keep­ing pres­sure on Iran but not push­ing Tehran so hard that it de­cides to break out and rush to build nu­clear weapons. He con­ceded that Is­rael might take uni­lat­eral ac­tion against Iran de­spite U.S. op­po­si­tion, not­ing that "it's eas­ier to ask for for­give­ness than per­mis­sion."

Riedel said that a nu­clear-armed Iran would not be an ex­is­ten­tial threat to Is­rael as some Is­raelis have claimed and that the bal­ance of power would "re­main over­whelm­ingly in Is­rael's favor" even if Iran ac­quired nu­clear weapons.

Is­rael, he noted, not only has "the finest con­ven­tional mil­i­tary in the Mid­dle East" but has had nu­clear weapons since at least the late 1960s and is be­lieved to pos­sess more than 100 bombs. It also has de­liv­ery sys­tems from three coun­tries – the Jeri­cho from France, U.S. F-15's and Dol­phin sub­marines from Ger­many.

Is­rael nei­ther con­firms nor de­nies that it has nu­clear weapons – a pol­icy of opac­ity that may have out­lived its use­ful­ness.

To re­as­sure Is­rael that it could deter a nu­clear Iran, the United States should en­hance Is­rael's naval and sub­ma­rine ca­pa­bil­i­ties, Riedel said. This would "en­sure that the bal­ance of ter­ror is over­whelm­ingly in Is­rael's favor."

The com­ments by the two men added to the grow­ing de­bate here over what to do about Iran's nu­clear pro­gram, which West­ern and Is­raeli of­fi­cials con­tend is de­signed to build a nu­clear weapon.

If the cur­rent strat­egy of ever-tougher eco­nomic sanc­tions and sab­o­tage fails to halt the pro­gram in the near fu­ture, all but one of the Re­pub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, among oth­ers, have called on the ad­min­is­tra­tion to pre­pare mil­i­tary strikes against Tehran's nu­clear fa­cil­i­ties or, in any case, stand with Is­rael if it de­cided to carry out an at­tack.

Last week, Re­pub­li­can Sen. Lind­say Gra­ham and In­de­pen­dent De­mo­c­ra­tic Sen. Joe Lieber­man an­nounced they will in­tro­duce a res­o­lu­tion to put the Sen­ate on record as rul­ing out a strat­egy of con­tain­ment against a nu­clear-armed Iran which they said would be "cat­a­strophic mis­take" on Wash­ing­ton's part.

While the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion has re­peat­edly called Iran's ac­qui­si­tion of a nu­clear weapon "un­ac­cept­able", se­nior of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Dempsey and his boss, Leon Panetta, have also stressed the po­ten­tial down­sides of a U.S. or Is­raeli mil­i­tary at­tack on Iran.

In his re­marks Tues­day, Riedel called the Gra­ham-Lieber­man ap­proach "stu­pid".