Just published by Dan Plesch and Martin Butcher of SOAS, an open-source analysis of the prospects of war with Iran. In a nutshell: a large air and missile attack is likely if not imminent.
Conventional Wisdom concerning any US attack on Iran:Read the whole thing.
a) Any attack will be limited to suspect Weapons of Mass Destruction sites and associated defences.
b) Iran will then have options to retaliate that include:
-interference with the Straits of Hormuz and oil flows, destruction of Gulf oil industry infrastructure;
-fire missiles at Gulf States, Iraq bases and Israel;
-insurrection in Iraq;
-attacks by Hizbollah and Hamas on Israel;
-insurrection in Afghanistan;
-use of sleeper cells to carry out attacks in the Gulf, Europe and the US; and
-destabilisation of Gulf states with large Shi’a populations.
c) This analysis is not convincing for the following reasons:
-Elementary military strategy requires the prevention of anticipated enemy counter-attacks. Iranian Air Force, Navy, Surface to Surface Missile and Air Defence systems would not be left intact. Although one option may be to leave regular Iranian armed forces intact and attack to destroy the regime including Revolutionary Guard, Basij and religious police. In this way regime change might be encouraged.
-President Bush will not again lay himself open to the chargeof using too little force.
-US policy is regime change by political means and prevention of nuclear weapons acquisition by all means. The only logic for restraint once war begins will be continued pressure on Iran to acquiesce to US demands through intra-war deterrence.
-Long term prevention of Iranian WMD programmes may require regime change and the reduction of Iran to a weak or failed state, since all assumptions concerning attacks on WMD sites alone conclude that Iran would merely be held back a few years.
-US military preparations and current operations against Iran indicate a full-spectrum approach to Iran rather than one confined to WMD sites alone.
3 comments:
Your points are very convincing. There is only one problem with the assumption that President Bush is able to learn from his faults...he may not even have recognised them.
-President Bush will not again lay himself open to the charge of using too little force.
This administration has persistently taken the wrong decisions. The idea to pump 65 billons for weapons into the region is the most recent one. There are more to come, I'm affraid.
cheers
Personally, I find it reassuring that the United States is not the only country with illiterate tenured nutters ensconced in the universities. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford
Hey who are you calling a tenured nutter?
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