However, what Cotton is forgetting is that Iraq’s WMD facilities weren’t buried under 200 feet of rock — Iran’s Fordo facility is. Indeed, Tehran has gone to great lengths to shield its facilities against precisely such an attack. At the very minimum, notes James Kitfield of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, any significant erosion of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would require weeks, not days, of bombardment. Even if a war-weary American public resigned itself to such a campaign, it would at best set Iran’s nuclear program back by four years, according to a 2012 report signed by multiple generals.
Military strikes might also generate negative unintended consequences. Iran could lash out against Israel or American facilities in the area — either directly or through proxies like Hezbollah, the report warns, destabilizing an already unstable region even further. The strikes could even trigger an all-out war — hardly what a region that is already dealing with multiple civil wars and the rise of barbaric outfits such as ISIS needs.
More to the point, military strikes might increase Iran’s resolve for a nuclear weapon on the theory that America is far less inclined to mess with countries that have one (think Pakistan and China).
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