Muslim, Arab and Persian culture all respect strength, which is not necessarily the same as the ability to kill. What they don’t respond well to is threats, because giving in to threats shows, in their mind, weakness. In that regard, threats without a face-saving compromise are hopelessly counterproductive. I’m continually amazed the Bush administration seems ignorant of this very basic tenet of regional culture.

I actually don’t believe there is a military option that could work. The only real option I see is to play Iran’s game and actively support proxy forces hostile to them – in other words, get us our own Hezbollah. Unfortunately, there aren’t many to choose from, the primary ones being Kurd groups we have already labelled terrorist groups.

You’re right that we need the ability to negotiate through strength. Unfortunately, our position in Iraq and dependence on the free flow of oil through the stait of Hormuz means that we are strategically vulnerable in those areas. We do hold the edge in military strength, but it’s largely meaningless because of those vulnerabilities and the Iranian’s know it. They realize the cost of attacking them will carry a very high price for us and they really don’t believe we would do it.

So coercing the Iranians will take much more than military strength, but strength on all fronts, particularly political and economic. Unfortunately, we have few political and economic tools left unless we can get more support from other nations, particularly those with friendly relations to Iran. Our coercive strategy must also leave them a face-saving way to acquiesce to our desires.

Our first goal, though, should be to drive a wedge and break-up the Iranian-Syrian alliance. They are unnatural allies for a number of reasons and we should make more effort to split them apart. This will have the added benefit of weakening Hezbollah.

America already has plenty of resources in the region. Would it really be all that hard to add to those, and wouldn’t that then act as a real deterrent to the course that Iran is currently following? I would think that would give America the ability to negotiate through strength.

I’m no expert, which is why I never try to add on in these discussions, but it seems to me that the Muslim culture only respects the ability to kill. Maybe I’m wrong.

Just kidding, NPP. ;-)
Nicely done.

Myth #1 provided by Tony:

George is right, MAD doesn’t work with Ahmahjihadist because he WANTS war.

It may come as news to you that Ahmadinejad has little executive power in the Iranian government. The office of President of Iran is not the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces nor can he declare war. Those primary powers are held by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. There is a reason his title is “Supreme Leader.” What Ahmadinejad says and does has little meaning without the consent of Khamenei. More than once in recent history Khamenei has told Ahmadinejad to shut up and color. What Ahmadinejad says means little because the real power lies elsewhere. The western media persistently portrays the Iranian government as a unitary actor under Ahmadinejad’s leadership which is not the case at all. Like most governments, there are factions and infighting. It may also surprise you to learn that Ahmadinejad was not Khamenei’s favorite pick for President.

Myth #2 again provided by Tony:

Yup, just like in the first Gulf War, liberal “military experts” and arm chair generals predicting 200,000 dead G.I.s and 2 years to get Iraq outta Kuwait.

Just like Iraq, Iran uses the same soviet made junk. T-55 and T-72 tanks, MiG-21s and 29s. A useless navy. About the only decent weapon they have is the few Tomcats we sold them way back when and they don’t have any parts for ‘em. Ask any U.S. Navy aircraft mechanic what a nightmare that plane was to maintain.

First of all, the relative quality of military equipment is less important than training and tactics. Secondly, you haven’t been keeping up on current events if you think the F-14 (a model, btw) is their best aircraft. Instead of guessing what their best aircraft are, you’d be better served by determining which aircraft their best pilots fly. Their Navy is no equal to ours, but it is hardly useless. For is primary purpose, it is very effective. Let’s see if you can guess what the Iranian navy’s primary objective is in the event of war – as a hint I’ll tell you it’s not the obvious.

Leaving that aside, if you think Iran will be a cakewalk like Gulf War I, then you have little understanding of actually military operations. If you remember, it took months to put the forces in place to attack Iraq in 1991. And by forces, I mean equipment. Personnel are easy to move about, but equipment is not. It would take us time to build forces for an attack on Iran. We have people in Iraq, sure, but not the equipment we need to take on Iran. Now, we have to stage our forces and logistics somewhere before we attack. In 1991 we had Saudi; for OIF we had Kuwait; for OEF we didn’t need a staging area because we only used light forces and used indigenous ground troops. For Iran we have two possibilities: Iraq and Afghanistan. First Iraq: Assuming the pro-Iranian Iraqi government allows this, do you really think Iran will let our ships sail unmolested up to Basrah and unload? Considering Basrah is in the heart of Shiite territory, building forces will be much more difficult, especially since Iran will be using its proxies to disrupt our staging. The other option is Afghanistan. How do you propose to get an armored division, much less a brigade, to Afghanistan? Here’s a hint – we don’t have the airlift capacity to fly that kind of tonnage in and Afghanistan is landlocked so we can’t use MSC ships. Let’s assume Pakistan is nice and lets use their ports and allow us to pass through. Then what? Afghanistan has no rail system, so all those tanks would have to drive hundreds of miles over mountainous terrain to get the Iranian border – not gonna happen. Even if all this were possible, there’s no way to resupply them once they drive into Iran.
That pretty much leaves an amphibious assault. Although Iran is prepared for this it won’t be Iwo Jima or Omaha Beach, but it won’t be a cakewalk either. And such an assault could only happen with a lot of preparation to destroy the Iranian navy and coastal defenses. Guess where Iran has spent the majority of it’s money for the armed forces in the past decade? If you guessed the Navy and coastal defense, then you get a gold star! While we are busy taking out all those targets, what do you think is happening to the flow of oil through the strait of Hormuz? This brings me to:

Myth #3: We can crush Iran by destroying their oil.

Actually, we could crush Iran by doing that, but Iran could prevent everyone else from exporting Gulf oil as well for at least a few weeks and perhaps as long as a couple of months. Since 90% of middle-east oil production passes through the straight which accounts for 40% of the world’s tradable oil, the disruption this would cause the global oil market and global economy is pretty obvious. Oh, and did you know that 23% of US oil comes from the Gulf too? Are you willing to commit economic seppuku to invade Iran? And if so, how many other countries, particularly our best allies, do you think would stand by and let us spill their economic entrails as well? Have you figured out the primary wartime objective of the Iranian Navy yet?

Myth #4: Iran wants to attack and start WWIII to bring the hidden Imam back and begin the Shiite apocalypse.

Tony again:

He thinks war is gonna bring back their messiah and lead to ultimate victory for islam. He doesn’t care how many of his people die because, in the end, it is worth every drop of muslim blood to have islam rule the world. THEN we’ll have ‘peace’

The hidden Imam theories are pretty fascinating but don’t have much basis in reality. If Iran wanted to start a war on that scale and invite reprisals (which is part of the prophecy) they could do that now. All they’d have to do is fire some chem and/or bio warheads on some Isreali cities. The Israelis would respond with nukes then, poof, the hidden Imam would appear, save the Shiites and vanquish all enemies. Why haven’t they done this yet? Why did Iran provide us assistance during our invasion of Afghanistan and promote and recognize the government we installed there? Why would they cooperate with us if they were on the verge of attacking us to fulfill their messianic prophecies? Hmm?

Ok, that’s all the myth-busting I have time for right now, but I’ll leave you with one more thing to consider. If we invade, and we’re successful in taking out the regime and nuclear facilities, then what? Iran is much larger than Iraq and has three times the population. How do you propose to deal with 68 million pissed of Iranians many of whom are well trained and prepared for asymmetrical martyrdom warfare? If you think Iraq is a mess, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

Hopefully some of you will do some research before you comment in the future.

Goodnight.

Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert M. Gates have written a book together — Maxx

…what a cotton-pickin’ second! Brzezinski can write?!

Credentials aside, Brzezinski can write? He’s a walking Pollock joke!

Brzezinski as National Security Advisor, Stansfield Turner at CIA, Andy Young at the UN…the Carter Administration was to national security and international leadership what Clinton was to abstinence…and prompt dry cleaning….

…what next…a Sec/State with Tourettes?

“Welcome to Camp David, President Putin…BITE ME!”

…maybe a Transportation Secretary with a thing for covered wagons? Maybe Geraldo Rivera for Dir/NSA? Rosy O’Donnell for Pope?

…somewhere last Monday night, I think I must’ve stepped through a looking glass….

Riehl World View

The NY Times has an editorial mostly confirming their Bush Derangement Syndrome. Not only are they a worthless source of opinion on Iraq, they’d like nothing better than for the Dems to tie up Bush with subpoenas and investigations. …

We’re getting a Sec/Def who’s actually worked in concert with *ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI*! This is the guy — under that savant of wishful international relations, Jimmy “National Malaise” Carter — played the Khmer Rouge and their Chinese allies off of the Russians, to the tune of hundreds of thousands if not millions of dead Cambodians? This is the architect of global peace which gave us…us…er….

This guy’s the “anti-Kissinger”! …and Gates buddies up with him? Tell me it was as a “counter-point” guy…”Zbigniew, you ignorant slut!…”

What? Wasn’t Jane Fonda available? Couldn’t figure out which of the Keystone Kops would look best in the official DOD photo? (Fatty Arbuckle, surely.)

I knew that the Democrats took both houses of Congress…you have to give them the Administrative branch too…department at a time?

Having to deal with Powell and Armitage was one thing…this will bring ‘em on home….

Just like Iraq, Iran uses the same soviet made junk. T-55 and T-72 tanks, MiG-21s and 29s. A useless navy. About the only decent weapon they have is the few Tomcats we sold them way back when and they don’t have any parts for ‘em. Ask any U.S. Navy aircraft mechanic what a nightmare that plane was to maintain.

NPP, I don’t know about your background and I can only speak for myself here, but while I was in the USAF I learned enough about OUR military and the forces of our enemies and allies to know that there is nothing out there that can beat us. We’ve proven that nobody can even put up much of a fight when we have the strong civilian political leadership to do it. It’s when we have WEAK political leadership that we might lose (think Somolia, even though our guys kicked ass, Klinton pulled out and it appeared as a retreat, hense bin laden calling us a paper tiger. Thanks Billy boy).

So, before we start the same old tired b.s. about how we can’t win, remember that we just RETIRED our F-14 Tomcats because they’re too old for us. We now have the F-22 and NOBODY will take to the skies to challenge us with HIM up there. Even without him, our F-15s can still can shoot down anything dumb enough to fly. We will sink their entire navy in about three hours, they know it and they won’t even challenge our Navy in blue water. I don’t think there’ll be a ground war, but if so, the Army and Marines will destroy their army in a matter of weeks.

I get so tired of hearing libs cry “We can’t win!” No, we can’t, not with libs in charge. Anybody remember what they said about Afghanistan? “OOOOOOOhhhhhhh the Taliban’s gonna kick our ass! They kicked the soviet’s ass, they’ll kick ours too!” Well we’re not the soviets, bitch! One Army Ranger was wounded during a raid on an airfield the first night of the war and the libs cried “It’s a quagmire!”

We can do Iran in one month, God forbid we have to, let’s all pray that the people of Iran overthrow their mullacracy and become our allies in this war on islamicnaziism, but if we hafta do it the hard way, we can, and will.

Once Afghan and Iraqi troops reach a degree of proficiency high enough to defend themselves, we MUST relocate our troops to the Iranian border. Let the mullahs watch it on CNN. They will move their troops to the other side of the border, then the A.F. can wipe ‘em out. There’s a lot more to it then that, securing nuke facilities, oil infrastructure, dams, bridges etc etc. But to make a long post a little shorter, we can do it, we MUST do and we WILL do.

Sadly, some American troops will die. None of them are expendable. All of them are special to somebody and we will mourn their lose. But if we don’t do Iran, IRAN WILL DO US! How many American cities will we allow Iranian terrorists to radiate before we fight back? I want our liberal friends to pick a city they think we can live without. It’ll be a port city, attacked by jihadists in a boat with a radiological weapon. Which one libs? Baltimore? New York? Philly? Miami? Seattle? L.A.? SAN FRANCISCO???? “NNOOOOOO!!! Not San Franscisco!!!! Bush better do SOMETHING to stop this!”

It is time to encourage Dems to inpeach and convict Bush, so we can have Cheney as president. Bush has now decided he is going to lead as a liberal if his choice of Gates is any indication.

januarius on November 12, 2006 at 10:17 AM

Spot On!

I understand your point about the maneuvering short of total war with the Soviets with respect to Iran. However, you, I think, missed the point about how fundamentalist Islam makes things different.

There was no undercurrent of suicide/martyrdom prevalent in Soviet society or even Russian history. The Soviet Union did not raise children to grow up to become suicide bombers. The Soviets were, after, a mostly EUROPEAN country with a shared culture with us, including a heritage of Christianity (the Russian Orthodox Church).

It is true that some “Republics” had a Muslim heritage. However, Communism renounces religion, and the Soviet Union was formally “atheistic” and both Christianity and Islam were suppressed.

Iran, on the other, has a government run by religious fundamentalists whose precepts include martyrdom as a major component of religious and civil life. The fact that Iran places the Koran as the ultimate foundation of their laws and society makes them entirely different from our opponent in the previous Cold War.

And this difference makes a US-Soviet style “Cold War” (as an alternative to a hot war) with Iran very unlikely.

The point I was trying to make is that MAD was the “leash” that kept the two “big dogs” from directly fighting post WWII. However, MAD has no effect when one side is willing to sacrifice a million conscripts in battle for martyrdom to their God. Iran has a proven track record in the Iran-Iraq war of doing just that.

The Iranian leadership, political and religious, have publicly stated that the destruction of Israel and The Great Satan (the USA) is their goal. MAD has no deterrent value here, because their God tells them to go to war to achieve dominance for Islam.

Enlighten us oh all knowing one.

NPP probably would have clapped at this. After all that was his ‘intent’ afterall.

Wow, it’s amazing the level of ignorance commenters here have on Iran in general as well as assumptions underlying Iranian intent. Those calling for us to attack really have no clue about US capabilities nor those of Iran, to say nothing of the consequences such an attack would bring.

NPP on November 12, 2006 at 12:17 PM

You sound just like a typical liberal, underestimating OUR military capabilities while overestimating an opponent’s. I bet you were one of those who stated we would lose ten of thousands of Americans–just in the invasion phase of occupying Iraq.

Also, what are the “assumptions underlying Iranian intent” and how are they different from the truth? I bet you are one of those who believes that Iran simply wants nuclear power. If they don’t simply want nuclear power and instead want bombs, why not take them out now?

The NY Times has an editorial mostly confirming their Bush Derangement Syndrome. Not only are they a worthless source of opinion on Iraq, they’d like nothing better than for the Dems to tie up Bush with subpoenas and investigations. As…

We better get off our asses and start demanding answers. Not to who did what and when or what went wrong, but answers to what are we going to do to protect us HERE on our soil.
We have just put a huge bullseye on our asses…. what are we going to …..

Yes it is amazing NPP….time will fix that.

Mutually assured destruction was not the sole feature of the Cold War. As I pointed out in my post Arab hubris makes very predictable leadership, as any dictator would be. What we want is to put the jihadists on simmer instead of boil.(I.E. calm down Israel we’ll keep them at bay, in return we give Israel defensive weapons like the Patriot missile system) This will make them oh so predictable, not stable enough to handle nuclear weapons, just predictable. Do we not have the ability to put CIA operatives in that country and sabotage their nuclear efforts? Do we not have the ability to feed them misinformation? Do we not have the ability to destroy them should it come to that? Do we not have the ability to hurt their oil based economy by pumping large amounts of oil out of Mexico and collapsing the price? Can we not goad them into spending what litle resources they have on military equipment that is all but useless? Can we not leave Iraq with a foothold in Kudistan? We cannot support Kurdistan, and help develop their country complete with pebble bed reactor which are near impossible to use as nuclear fuel, and juxtapose their prosperity against the rest of the impoverished Middle East? These are all Cold War strategies. This is how we wear them down, this is how we take the fight to them with there own weaknesses. Do you think we were selling wheat to Russia because we wanted the Societ to defeat us? We sold it to them for gold, we drained their economy slowing over decades. This is our game this is how we can influence the Middle East without firing a shot.

Do I want a nuclear armed muslim world? Heck no. Do I want them wasting a generation in a futile effort? Yes. Should Iran actually have a nuke, erase them. Until then let them spin their wheels, raise their rhetoric, and waste the petro dollar/euro. Jihadists that promise this great victory while keeping their country in ruins will become unpopular rather quickly. This will lead to a secularized Middle East. Look at the problems Hamas and Hizbollah are having coming to terms forming a unity government. They know that a pro-jihad stance means economic isolation. If Iran could replace Western money to fund Lebanon and Syria they would but they cannot. What they can do is supply Hamas and Hizbollah with weapons and further destabilize the region. Which is already getting old with the populace. This a trend that we can exploit. This is Iran, WE cannot outflank Iran with subterfuge, policy, and economic strategy? C’mon George.