Iran War: A look at the options

Experts doubt expediency of attacking Iran by Anna Badkhen San Francisco Chronicle 01/25/06. The experts cited by Badkhen bring up the following significant points.

Israel is unlikely to attack Iran itself, but is encouraging the United States to consider such an action. The nuclear-program targets in Iran are not nearly as concentrated as the single Iraqi facility at Osirik that Israel bombed in 1981 (when the Reagan administration was backing Iraq in its war with Iran). Iran's facilities are widely distributed and some may be "hardened" (heavily fortified) against bombing attacks.

Air strikes against them would take up to two weeks. The US does not have the number of troops necessary to invade and occupy Iran at this time, not even close. An American strike against Iran is likely to reinforce support for clerical hardliners in Iran. Iran has the capacity to hit back at American targets in a number of ways, including an escalation of attacks on US soldiers in Iraq. And they can be expected to make use of that capacity in the event of an attack.

Dark Lord Dick Cheney is quoted as saying, "No president should ever take the military option off the table". This is actually a good statement of the Bush administration's view that military force and the threat thereof as the primary instrument of foreign policy.

John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, reminds us of one of the lessons of the Iraq War:

But Pike said it is possible that the Bush administration has already made up its mind to launch strikes against Iran - the same way it had made up its mind to attack Iraq months before the war began in 2003.

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