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August 09, 2010

Bombing Iran Is A Bad Idea, No Matter Who Does it
Posted by Patrick Barry

Abrams_cheney Should Israel bomb Iran?  That's the question outlets like the Weekly Standard and the National Review have been asking lately. The most recent entrant to the conversation is former Bush NSC official Elliot Abrams.  In today’s Wall Street Journal, Abrams - after spending an inordinate amount of space discussing how regional politics in the Middle East are more complicated than they appear - reaches a simplistic conclusion: Arab countries would support an Israeli attack on Iran.

Perhaps the enemy of my enemy is not my friend, if he is an Israeli pilot. In that case, all gestures of friendship will be forsaken or carefully hidden; there will be denunciations and UN resolutions, petitions and boycotts, Arab League summits and hurried trips to Washington. But none of that changes an essential fact of life well understood in many Arab capitals this summer: that there is a clear coincidence of interests between the Arab states and Israel today, in the face of the Iranian threat.

The major problem with this argument is not that it’s wrong (though I suspect it is). It’s that it only makes sense in a world in which a military attack on Iran - whether by the U.S., Israel, or even an Arab state – is a reasonable option. It is not.  Judging from the most commonly cited implications of military action, they would be just as severe whether a strike was launched by the IAF, the USN or the Rebel Alliance.

Iran’s asymmetric response: Ambassador Nicholas Burns, former Bush administration Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, offered the Senate Foreign Relations Committee grim summation of how Iran might respond to an attack: "Air strikes would undoubtedly lead Iran to hit back asymmetrically against us in Iraq, Afghanistan and the wider region, especially through its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas. This reminds us of Churchill's maxim that, once a war starts, it is impossible to know how it will end."

Inability to eliminate nuclear program:  A military strike would not substantially set back Iran’s nuclear program, and may even incentivize Iran to build a weapon. In February, Brookings Institution Fellows Michael O'Hanlon and Bruce Riedel wrote, “even a massive strike would not slow Iran's progress towards a bomb for long. We cannot be sure we know where all existing Iranian facilities to enrich uranium are located - as the revelation of yet another previously unknown site near Qom last year reminded us." Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East Colin Kahl took this a step further, suggesting that a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities might “incentivize the Iranians to go all the way to weaponize.”

Consequences for Iran’s opposition movement: Fareed Zakaria recently cited noted Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji, who wrote: “Even entertaining the possibility of a military strike, especially when predicated on the nuclear issue is beneficial to the fundamentalists who rule Iran.  As such, the idea itself is detrimental to the democratic movement in my country."  Similarly, when he was CENTCOM commander, General David Petraeus warned that the military option risks unleashing a popular backlash that would play into the hands of the regime.  “There is certainly a history, in other countries, of fairly autocratic regimes almost creating incidents that inflame nationalist sentiment,” said Petraeus. “So that could be among the many different, second, third, or even fourth order effects (of a strike),” he added.

Having failed to persuade anyone to support a U.S. military strike on Iran, American war hawks now are trying to re-locate the campaign for ‘war with Iran’ to a third-party.  Yet, the consequences of military action remain just as severe.  A venue change won’t alter that.


 

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The major problem with this argument is not that it’s wrong (though I suspect it is). It’s that it only makes sense in a world in which a military attack on Iran - whether by the U.S., Israel, or even an Arab state – is a reasonable option. It is not. Judging from the most commonly cited implications of military action, they would be just as severe whether a strike was launched by the IAF, the USN or the Rebel Alliance.

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