[Peace-discuss] How the US would attack Iran

[C. G. Estabrook]

[This seems to be a plausible scenario for a US attack on Iran. The 
paper here described stresses that the attack would have to be mostly 
from the air, with the possible exception of some ground action in the 
west, such as Khuzestan.  (UK withdrawal from what the US sees as the 
British sector around Basra is the reason that the exchanges between 
Bush and UK PM Brown have been so testy.)  It also envisages a massive 
assault that would preclude Iranian counter-attacks against US military 
assets on land or sea, and against US allies in the Gulf (and Israel). 
But there's an even more chilling possibility: the US launches a limited 
attack, say against the Quds force, justified by Iranian "interference" 
in Iraq; Iran retaliates against US ships in the Gulf, US troops in 
Iraq, and/or US allies in the region; and then "in response" the US 
attacks Iran full-out, perhaps even with tactical nuclear weapons, 
pleading that they couldn't do anything else.  Are the Cheneyites 
cold-blooded enough to sacrifice US military personnel for a casus 
belli? Do we need to ask?  --CGE]


	Study: US preparing 'massive' military attack against Iran
	08/28/2007 @ 11:04 am
	Filed by Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane

The United States has the capacity for and may be prepared to launch 
without warning a massive assault on Iranian uranium enrichment 
facilities, as well as government buildings and infrastructure, using 
long-range bombers and missiles, according to a new analysis.

The paper, "Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in 
the Middle East" -- written by well-respected British scholar and arms 
expert Dr. Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies 
and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at 
the University of London, and Martin Butcher, a former Director of the 
British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and former adviser 
to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament -- was 
exclusively provided to RAW STORY late Friday under embargo.

"We wrote the report partly as we were surprised that this sort of quite 
elementary analysis had not been produced by the many well resourced 
Institutes in the United States," wrote Plesch in an email to Raw Story 
on Tuesday.

Plesch and Butcher examine "what the military option might involve if it 
were picked up off the table and put into action" and conclude that 
based on open source analysis and their own assessments, the US has 
prepared its military for a "massive" attack against Iran, requiring 
little contingency planning and without a ground invasion.

     The study concludes that the US has made military preparations to 
destroy Iran’s WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state 
apparatus and economic infrastructure within days if not hours of 
President George W. Bush giving the order. The US is not publicising the 
scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation 
more likely. The US retains the option of avoiding war, but using its 
forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran’s actions.

         * Any attack is likely to be on a massive multi-front scale but 
avoiding a ground invasion. Attacks focused on WMD facilities would 
leave Iran too many retaliatory options, leave President Bush open to 
the charge of using too little force and leave the regime intact.

         * US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 
10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours.

         * US ground, air and marine forces already in the Gulf, Iraq, 
and Afghanistan can devastate Iranian forces, the regime and the state 
at short notice.

         * Some form of low level US and possibly UK military action as 
well as armed popular resistance appear underway inside the Iranian 
provinces or ethnic areas of the Azeri, Balujistan, Kurdistan and 
Khuzestan. Iran was unable to prevent sabotage of its offshore-to-shore 
crude oil pipelines in 2005.

         * Nuclear weapons are ready, but most unlikely, to be used by 
the US, the UK and Israel. The human, political and environmental 
effects would be devastating, while their military value is limited.

         * Israel is determined to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear 
weapons yet has the conventional military capability only to wound 
Iran’s WMD programmes.

         * The attitude of the UK is uncertain, with the Brown 
government and public opinion opposed psychologically to more war, yet, 
were Brown to support an attack he would probably carry a vote in 
Parliament. The UK is adamant that Iran must not acquire the bomb.

         * The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to 
deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely. The US retains 
the option of avoiding war, but using its forces as part of an overall 
strategy of shaping Iran’s actions.

When asked why the paper seems to indicate a certainty of Iranian WMD, 
Plesch made clear that "our paper is not, repeat not, about what Iran 
actually has or not." Yet, he added that "Iran certainly has missiles 
and probably some chemical capability."

Most significantly, Plesch and Butcher dispute conventional wisdom that 
any US attack on Iran would be confined to its nuclear sites. Instead, 
they foresee a "full-spectrum approach," designed to either instigate an 
overthrow of the government or reduce Iran to the status of "a weak or 
failed state." Although they acknowledge potential risks and impediments 
that might deter the Bush administration from carrying out such a 
massive attack, they also emphasize that the administration's National 
Security Strategy includes as a major goal the elimination of Iran as a 
regional power. They suggest, therefore, that:

     "This wider form of air attack would be the most likely to delay 
the Iranian nuclear program for a sufficiently long period of time to 
meet the administration’s current counterproliferation goals. It would 
also be consistent with the possible goal of employing military action 
is to overthrow the current Iranian government, since it would severely 
degrade the capability of the Iranian military (in particular 
revolutionary guards units and other ultra-loyalists) to keep armed 
opposition and separatist movements under control. It would also achieve 
the US objective of neutralizing Iran as a power in the region for many 
years to come.

     "However, it is the option that contains the greatest risk of 
increased global tension and hatred of the United States. The US would 
have few, if any allies for such a mission beyond Israel (and possibly 
the UK). Once undertaken, the imperatives for success would be enormous."

Butcher says he does not believe the US would use nuclear weapons, with 
some exceptions.

"My opinion is that [nuclear weapons] wouldn't be used unless there was 
definite evidence that Iran has them too or is about to acquire them in 
a matter of days/weeks," notes Butcher. "However, the Natanz facility 
has been so hardened that to destroy it MAY require nuclear weapons, and 
once an attack had started it may simply be a matter of following 
military logic and doctrine to full extent, which would call for the use 
of nukes if all other means failed."

Military Strategy

The bulk of the paper is devoted to a detailed analysis of specific 
military strategies for such an attack, of ongoing attempts to 
destabilize Iran by inciting its ethnic minorities, and of the 
considerations surrounding the possible employment of nuclear weapons.

In particular, Plesch and Butcher examine what is known as Global Strike 
– the capability to project military power from the United States to 
anywhere in the world, which was announced by STRATCOM as having initial 
operational capability in December 2005. It is the that capacity that 
could provide strategic bombers and missiles to devastate Iran on just a 
few hours notice.

     "Iran has a weak air force and anti aircraft capability, almost all 
of it is 20-30 years old and it lacks modern integrated communications. 
Not only will these forces be rapidly destroyed by US air power, but 
Iranian ground and air forces will have to fight without protection from 
air attack.

     "British military sources stated on condition of anonymity, that 
'the US military switched its whole focus to Iran' from March 2003. It 
continued this focus even though it had infantry bogged down in fighting 
the insurgency in Iraq."

Global Strike could be combined with already-existing "regional 
operational plans for limited war with Iran, such as Oplan 1002-04, for 
an attack on the western province of Khuzestan, or Oplan 1019 which 
deals with preventing Iran from closing the Straits of Hormuz, and 
therefore keeping open oil lanes vital to the US economy."

     "The Marines are not all tied down fighting in Iraq. Several Marine 
forces are assembling in the Gulf, each with its own aircraft carrier. 
These carrier forces can each conduct a version of the D-Day landings. 
They come with landing craft, tanks, jump-jets, thousands of troops and 
hundreds more cruise missiles. Their task is to destroy Iranian forces 
able to attack oil tankers and to secure oilfields and installations. 
They have trained for this mission since the Iranian revolution of 1979 
as is indicated in this battle map of Hormuz illustrating an advert for 
combat training software."

Special Forces units – which are believed to already be operating within 
Iran – would be available to carry out search-and-destroy missions and 
incite internal uprisings, while US Army units in both Iraq and 
Afghanistan could mount air and missile attacks on Iranian forces, which 
are heavily concentrated along the Iran-Iraq border, as well as 
protecting their own supply lines within Iraq:

     "A key assessment in any war with Iran concerns Basra province and 
the Kuwait border. It is likely that Iran and its sympathizers could 
take control of population centres and interrupt oil supplies, if it was 
in their interest to do so. However it is unlikely that they could make 
any sustained effort against Kuwait or interrupt supply lines north from 
Kuwait to central Iraq. US firepower is simply too great for any Iranian 
conventional force."

Experts question the report's conclusions

Former CIA analyst and Deputy Director for Transportation Security, 
Antiterrorism Assistance Training, and Special Operations in the State 
Department's Office of Counterterrorism, Larry Johnson, does not agree 
with the report’s findings.

"The report seems to accept without question that US air force and navy 
bombers could effectively destroy Iran and they seem to ignore the fact 
that US use of air power in Iraq has failed to destroy all major 
military, political, economic and transport capabilities," said Johnson 
late Monday after the embargo on the study had been lifted.

"But at least in their conclusions they still acknowledge that Iran, if 
attacked, would be able to retaliate. Yet they are vague in terms of 
detailing the extent of the damage that the Iran is capable of 
inflicting on the US and fairly assessing what those risks are."

There is also the situation of US soldiers in Iraq and the supply routes 
that would have to be protected to ensure that US forces had what they 
needed. Plesch explains that "firepower is an effective means of 
securing supply routes during conventional war and in conventional war a 
higher loss rate is expected."

"However as we say do not assume that the Iraqi Shiia [sic] will rally 
to Tehran -- the quietist Shiia tradition favoured by Sistani may regard 
itself as justified if imploding Iranian power can be argued to reduce 
US problems in Iraq, not increase them." [That seems highely unlikely. 
--CGE]

John Pike, Director of Global Security, a Washington-based military, 
intelligence, and security clearinghouse, says that the question of Iraq 
is the one issue at the center of any questions regarding Iran.

"The situation in Iraq is a wild card, though it may be presumed that 
Iran would mount attacks on the US at some remove, rather than upsetting 
the apple-cart in its own front yard," wrote Pike in an email.

Political Considerations

Plesch and Butcher write with concern about the political context within 
the United States:

     "This debate is bleeding over into the 2008 Presidential election, 
with evidence mounting that despite the public unpopularity of the war 
in Iraq, Iran is emerging as an issue over which Presidential candidates 
in both major American parties can show their strong national security 
bona fides. ...

     "The debate on how to deal with Iran is thus occurring in a 
political context in the US that is hard for those in Europe or the 
Middle East to understand. A context that may seem to some to be 
divorced from reality [Really?!], but with the US ability to project 
military power across the globe, the reality of Washington DC is one 
that matters perhaps above all else. ...

     "We should not underestimate the Bush administration's ability to 
convince itself that an 'Iran of the regions' will emerge from a 
post-rubble Iran. [The Balkanization of the Muslim world has been a 
neocon dream from early on. --CGE]  So, do not be in the least surprised 
if the United States attacks Iran. Timing is an open question, but it is 
hard to find convincing arguments that war will be avoided, or at least 
ones that are convincing in Washington."

Plesch and Butcher are also interested in the attitudes of the current 
UK government, which has carefully avoided revealing what its position 
might be in the case of an attack. They point out, however, "One key 
caution is that regardless of the realities of Iran’s programme, the 
British public and elite may simply refuse to participate -- almost out 
of bloody minded revenge for the Iraq deceit."

And they conclude that even "if the attack is 'successful' and the US 
reasserts its global military dominance and reduces Iran to the status 
of an oil-rich failed state, then the risks to humanity in general and 
to the states of the Middle East are grave indeed."

[Larisa Alexandrovna is managing editor of investigative news for Raw 
Story and regularly reports on intelligence and national security 
stories. Contact: larisa at rawstory.com. Muriel Kane is research director 
for Raw Story.]

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Study_US_preparing_massive_military_attack_0828.html

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