A U.S. attack on about a half-dozen nuclear facilities would "defang" Iran

when asked on “Meet the Press” whether the military had a plan for attacking Iran.

“We do,” Adm. Mullen said, adding that striking Iran “is an important option, and it’s one that’s well understood.”

“Adm. Mullen’s answer indicates that Pentagon strategists have updated and finalized a war plan for Iran,” Scarborough writes.

The fact that an attack on Iran nuclear facilities is militarily feasible does not address the question of whether or not it would be wise – strategically, politically – to attack those facilities. There are two reasons for hesitation. First, Iran might launch a series of retaliatory attacks against economic targets in the Gulf area, while encouraging its Shi’a supporters in Iraq to destabilize that country. Additionally, it might instruct its regional agents, Hezbollah and Hamas, to attack Israel, leading to a wider regional conflagration. Iran may also activate terrorist cells in Western countries, which it has planted and supplied for this purpose. Second, an attack on Iran may lead to a “rallying around the flag” domestic dynamic, thus strengthening the current regime.

Thus, both options — allowing Iran to acquire the bomb and denying it this option – have potentially considerable negative consequences. “I talk to unintended consequences of either outcome,” Adm. Mullen said, “and it’s those unintended consequences that are difficult to predict in what is an incredibly unstable part of the world that I worry about the most.”

George W. Bush administration held a series of discussions about Iran. No chief, including Adm. Mullen, who then led the U.S. Navy, recommended launching strikes. The prime reason was that the top brass feared the Iranian population would rally behind the regime and abandon a fledging democracy movement.

This is why it is important, said Gen. McInerney and other advocates of the military option, to have a covert plan in place to try to destabilize Iran’s mullah-run government.

Scarborough notes that with the retirement of the F-117 Nighthawk, which flew the first bombing run over Iraq in 2003, the U.S. Air Force has two stealth strike aircraft: the B-2 and the F-22 Raptor. The F-22 has not been deployed to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. The Pentagon did dispatch it to Asia last month as a show of force against North Korea.

A strike on Iran would fit the F-22, if the war plan calls for putting piloted aircraft over the country. Its forte is penetrating heavily defended airspaces to put bombs on target. “It’s pretty well known if we were going to go after the sites, we would have to go after underground facilities, and we could probably do that. The B-2s could do that,” said retired Air Force Gen. Charles A. Horner, the top air commander in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. “It would be the key system.”