Early Warning by William M. Arkin - washingtonpost.com

Early Warning by William M. Arkin - washingtonpost.com

William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security
Attacking Iran Even Without Good Targets

The Cheney-Bolton threats to Iran this week have fueled speculation in the press and on the Internet that the United States (and Israel) are planning imminent military action.

The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose meaningful consequences," the Vice President said yesterday. "We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."

The Iranians "must know everything is on the table," Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said last week.

Everything is on the table. Meaningful consequences do mean military action.

But just because the hip-shooting duo are conveying threats as part of the ongoing diplomatic pressures doesn't mean that the United States is about to strike. It is not.

But also just because an attack on Iran seems so dangerous, and just because the consequences seem so catastrophic, that doesn't mean that if push came to shove, this administration wouldn't take action.

To understand what Washington could do to Iran militarily if it were to defy the international community and develop a nuclear weapon, one has to first purge the mind of any "expert" cautions associated with the task.

"Most Western intelligence agencies will tell you that they're not even certain that they know where every single Iranian nuclear site actually is," Brookings scholar Ken Pollack said on NBC Nightly News last night.

"The most essential condition -- surprise -- is lacking," Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld tells USA Today. "The Iranian sites are numerous, well-camouflaged and hardened."

I'm sure Pollack and Van Creveld believe what they say, that an attack on Iran's nuclear capabilities would be difficult and complicated, that there isn't good enough intelligence and that it might contradict all of the traditional military and even political rules.

But the Bush administration has been clear on the question of preemption: It is not going to wait for the possible mushroom cloud, and terrorist states with weapons of mass destruction are the NUMBER ONE national security concern of the administration.

So if the worst came,

* The Bush administration would not care about nor seek a "strategic" surprise attack and thus would not be stopped by the lack of surprise of because Iran is presumed to already be making preparations to protect its assets.
* The Bush administration would not seek a ground war or regime change, at least not initially or immediately, so the difficulties associated with both tasks and the ongoing operations in Iran or Afghanistan would not stop it from attacking Iraq's weapons of mass destruction infrastructure.
* The Bush administration would not be impeded by a lack of knowledge about Iran's weapons of mass destruction or by Iranian deception or by its going underground in terms of targeting. According to the Guardian (UK), Ambassador Bolton told visiting British parliamentarians in New York last week that it was well aware of the expert cautions. "We can hit different points along the line," Bolton said. "You only have to take out one part of their nuclear operation to take the whole thing down."
* The Bush administration would not be stopped by the protests and vetoes of the international community nor would it hesitate to use force merely because there were dangers of escalation into a full-scale war.

I've already written about the Bush administration's war plans to pre-empt development of weapons of mass destruction and its specific thinking on Iran -- how the administration has directed the military to prepare a multi-dimentional "global strike" attack on Iran and North Korea's WMD capacity, how it views the task and its difficulties.

Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said at a National Press Club appearance last month that "We are a long way away from needing the military option" on Iran. But if push came to shove, the administration would select the best targets that it could to set back the program, to impede the delivery of WMD, and to express U.S. resolve and threaten additional military consequences.

It would be better for the news media to stop speculating about an imminent strike and stop providing expert warnings of the difficulties associated with such a strike. It should focus instead on the administration's and the military's thinking on the subject. The reason is because even if the administration's "triggers" appeared tomorrow for "global strike" to be implemented, that is, if Iran announced it possessed a nuclear weapon, it would still a terrible and dangerous course of action for the United States to immediately attack.

I'd hate to have the experts still saying "but we didn't even have good intelligence!"