The Iran decision: the pros and cons of the military option -- I

thousands of soldiers in the region, position substantial naval and air assets – including nuclear weapons – in the area, and bolster its intelligence capabilities to keep a close eye on the Iranian arsenal. As has been the case in Europe and east Asia, the United States should be ready to engage in this costly and burdensome containment and deterrence regime for a few decades.

An attack on Iran is militarily possible
Those who support military action against Iran also say that such an attack is possible and will achieve its goals:

1. Most, if not all, of Iran’s nuclear facilities are known and the United States has the weapons to destroy or seriously disrupt them. Moreover, most of these facilities are not located near population centers so an attack using precision-guided weapons may result in relatively small collateral damage to civilians and civilian infrastructure.

2. Even if an attack on Iran does not destroy every last node in the nuclear weapons production chain, such an attack will certainly be destructive enough to delay Iran’s program by years. The 1981 Israeli attack on Iraq’s nuclear facility at Osiraq prevented Saddam from making Iraq into a nuclear-armed state, and the 1991 military campaign foreclosed Iraq’s nuclear weapons option. The Israeli destruction of a Syrian nuclear reactor in September 2007 put an end to that country’s nuclear weapons ambitions.

Iranian retaliation can be mitigated
There is little doubt that Iran would retaliate to an attack on its nuclear facilities. Among the retaliatory measures Iran may take:

• Attack American soldiers in Afghanistan
• Order Hezbollah and Hamas to attack Israel
• Attack Israel with mid-range missiles
• Attack countries in Europe with long-range missiles
• Close the Straits of Hormuz and disrupt the supply of oil from the Gulf in other ways
• Launch a campaign of terror in the United States and other Western countries

Iran can do many other things. Kroenig argues, though, that the risk of retaliation may be mitigated in two ways: first, pre-attack measures can be taken to reduce the cost of retaliation; second, the United States would make clear to Iran that the purpose of the military campaign on Iran is not regime change, but rather the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran would be made to understand that there are certain red lines which, if Iran crossed them in its retaliatory campaign, would cause the United States to up the ante and escalate the war to include additional targets in Iran (during the cold war they used to call this “intra-war deterrence”).

In short, those who support a military attack on Iran argue that the choice is between two very bad options: a nuclear armed Iran or a war to prevent it from going nuclear. Each of these options has its costs, but the costs of allowing Iran to become a nuclear weapon state far outweigh the costs of using a military attack to prevent it from becoming one.

Tomorrow: the case against an attack on Iran.

Ben Frankel is the editor of the Homeland Security Newswire