Arthur Herman: We’re Already at War with Iran
[Arthur Herman grew up in Wisconsin and received his bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Minnesota in 1978. He went on to earn his Masters and Ph.D. with the Johns Hopkins University History Department. He taught at several universities in the Washington DC area, including Georgetown and George Mason University, before becoming Coordinator of the Western Heritage Program for the Smithsonian’s Campus on the Mall from 2000 to 2005.]
The multitude of proposals regarding what to do about Iran and its nuclear ambitions fall into two main groups. The first group, which grows daily, sees some sort of military option as inevitably necessary. The other group still insists that the United States going to war with Iran would be a major mistake. Its proponents hold out for some more moderate solution involving either negotiations with the mullahs in Tehran or international sanctions, or both.
Unfortunately, this second group is out of touch with events. The truth is: we are already at war with Iran, although until now it has been a one-sided conflict, with Iranians doing the killing and Americans doing the dying. Since 2004 Iran’s proxies in Iraq, including Muqtada Al Sadr’s Madhi militia, have been routinely attacking American soldiers in Baghdad and elsewhere. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ clandestine Quds Force has been supplying both Shia and Sunni insurgents with increasingly sophisticated Improvised Explosive Devices or IED’s that have killed or maimed thousands of American soldiers in Iraq.
In February 2007 forensic evidence directly linked the deaths of at least 170 American soldiers to Iran-manufactured or supplied weapons. That number continues to climb as Iran’s bankroll of terrorist operations in Iraq has grown to $3 million a month. In July this year, Senator Joseph Lieberman told Face the Nation that Iran is operating three training camps near Tehran giving mortar, rocket propelled grenade, and IED instruction to Iraqi recruits sixty at a time, “training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers.” Just this week General David Petraeus blasted Iran as one of the main contributors to the reign of death taking place in Iraq and accusing Iran’s own ambassador in Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi (above), of being a Quds Force terrorist.
So there should be no mis-perception of whom is using the “military option” against whom. The Americans killed by Iran’s Quds Force in Iraq, and also in Afghanistan by an Iran-funded Taliban resurgence, need to be added to the list of 240 Marines who died in the Beirut barracks bombs in October 1983, and to the victims of the Kobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996, which killed 17 American air force personnel and wounded 372. Both attacks were planned and executed by Iran and its overseas agents, including Hezbollah.
Nor is it just the United States in the line of fire. Moments after the 1983 Marine barracks bombing, another bomb killed sixty in a similar French compound.
Iranian agents planned and carried out bombings of Jewish centers in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 that killed 29 and 85 people respectively. Even the fiercest opponents of taking military action have to take note of Iran’s arming of the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon for attacks against Israel; its encouragement and financial support for Hamas (left) as it wages a civil war against the Palestinian Authority; and Iran’s supplying of Syria with money and missiles in order to dominate Lebanon and thwart democratic forces there–just as Iran is the leading enemy of democratic forces in Iraq.
In short, Iran’s ambition to become a nuclear power forms part of a larger pattern of global terrorism and murder, violation of international law, and building Iran’s power by destabilizing its neighbors, even as that nuclear ambition has raised the stakes involved. And it is no longer the Bush administration, or wild-eyed neoconservatives, who raise the alarm. Even one of the fiercest critics of Bush’s Iran policy, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (right), admits that a conventional war on Iran can no longer be ruled out. Last month France’s president Sarkozy told the United Nations that a nuclear-armed Iran is “an unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world.” Sarkozy has gone on record as supporting bombing Iran’s nuclear development sites as a last resort, rather than let the most radical theocratic regime in the Middle East acquire the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.
The issue therefore ceases to be whether the United States fights a war with Iran – the Iranians have already started that conflict– but how the United States best brings that conflict to a safe and decisive resolution. No one wants military action that would cause great loss of life or trigger a larger regional conflict–or forces Iran’s key supporters, Russia and China, into the arena. For that reason, some argue that the best solution is to encourage regime change within Iran itself, even though the world has been waiting for Iran’s democratic and pro-Western forces to make their stand against a deeply corrupt and unpopular regime for more than a decade, in vain.
Others like Senator John McCain argue that the time to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites may be now, ignoring the fact that such an attack by itself can only retard, not halt, the regime’s relentless search for regional hegemony and would trigger a public-relations backlash with Iranian officials displaying the inevitable “collateral damage” on CNN, Al Jazeera, and other international media outlets. This option allow leaves the Tehran regime in place and free to plan retaliation through its terror networks across the Middle East and around the world.
Is there a military option against Iran that goes beyond bombing but does not require a Iraq-style invasion and occupation – in other words that avoids another “quagmire” in the Middle East? In fact, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, a realistic war scenario with Iran would involve an extensive air and naval campaign without a single American soldier having to set foot on Iranian soil:
1. The first step would be a United States naval blockade of the Straits of Hormuz backed by anti-missile Aegis class cruisers and destroyers, together with a guarantee of free passage for all non-Iranian oil shipping (thus reassuring the world that energy supplies will continue to flow).
2. At the same time, American Stealth fighters and bombers would target Iran’s air defense and anti-ship missile sites scattered around the Gulf, followed by what military analysts call an “Effects Based Operation,” as Air Force and Navy warplanes took out Iran’s extremely vulnerable military and economic infrastructure, including its electrical grid, transportation links, gasoline refineries, port facilities, as well as suspected nuclear sites.
3. Finally, American Special Ops and airborne forces would seize Iran’s main oil pumping station at Kargh Island and capture or neutralize its offshore oil facilities.
Far fetched?
Although the American public never noticed, the United States Navy managed to accomplish much the same thing during the so-called Tanker War in 1987-8, when Iran tried to widen its war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq by attacking foreign oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. Our navy managed both to destroy the Iranian navy and protect shipping through the Hormuz Straits in order to keep the world economy stable, while Navy Seal teams blew up and neutralized key Iranian oil platforms in the Gulf....
Read entire article at Britannica Blog
The multitude of proposals regarding what to do about Iran and its nuclear ambitions fall into two main groups. The first group, which grows daily, sees some sort of military option as inevitably necessary. The other group still insists that the United States going to war with Iran would be a major mistake. Its proponents hold out for some more moderate solution involving either negotiations with the mullahs in Tehran or international sanctions, or both.
Unfortunately, this second group is out of touch with events. The truth is: we are already at war with Iran, although until now it has been a one-sided conflict, with Iranians doing the killing and Americans doing the dying. Since 2004 Iran’s proxies in Iraq, including Muqtada Al Sadr’s Madhi militia, have been routinely attacking American soldiers in Baghdad and elsewhere. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ clandestine Quds Force has been supplying both Shia and Sunni insurgents with increasingly sophisticated Improvised Explosive Devices or IED’s that have killed or maimed thousands of American soldiers in Iraq.
In February 2007 forensic evidence directly linked the deaths of at least 170 American soldiers to Iran-manufactured or supplied weapons. That number continues to climb as Iran’s bankroll of terrorist operations in Iraq has grown to $3 million a month. In July this year, Senator Joseph Lieberman told Face the Nation that Iran is operating three training camps near Tehran giving mortar, rocket propelled grenade, and IED instruction to Iraqi recruits sixty at a time, “training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers.” Just this week General David Petraeus blasted Iran as one of the main contributors to the reign of death taking place in Iraq and accusing Iran’s own ambassador in Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi (above), of being a Quds Force terrorist.
So there should be no mis-perception of whom is using the “military option” against whom. The Americans killed by Iran’s Quds Force in Iraq, and also in Afghanistan by an Iran-funded Taliban resurgence, need to be added to the list of 240 Marines who died in the Beirut barracks bombs in October 1983, and to the victims of the Kobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996, which killed 17 American air force personnel and wounded 372. Both attacks were planned and executed by Iran and its overseas agents, including Hezbollah.
Nor is it just the United States in the line of fire. Moments after the 1983 Marine barracks bombing, another bomb killed sixty in a similar French compound.
Iranian agents planned and carried out bombings of Jewish centers in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 that killed 29 and 85 people respectively. Even the fiercest opponents of taking military action have to take note of Iran’s arming of the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon for attacks against Israel; its encouragement and financial support for Hamas (left) as it wages a civil war against the Palestinian Authority; and Iran’s supplying of Syria with money and missiles in order to dominate Lebanon and thwart democratic forces there–just as Iran is the leading enemy of democratic forces in Iraq.
In short, Iran’s ambition to become a nuclear power forms part of a larger pattern of global terrorism and murder, violation of international law, and building Iran’s power by destabilizing its neighbors, even as that nuclear ambition has raised the stakes involved. And it is no longer the Bush administration, or wild-eyed neoconservatives, who raise the alarm. Even one of the fiercest critics of Bush’s Iran policy, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (right), admits that a conventional war on Iran can no longer be ruled out. Last month France’s president Sarkozy told the United Nations that a nuclear-armed Iran is “an unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world.” Sarkozy has gone on record as supporting bombing Iran’s nuclear development sites as a last resort, rather than let the most radical theocratic regime in the Middle East acquire the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.
The issue therefore ceases to be whether the United States fights a war with Iran – the Iranians have already started that conflict– but how the United States best brings that conflict to a safe and decisive resolution. No one wants military action that would cause great loss of life or trigger a larger regional conflict–or forces Iran’s key supporters, Russia and China, into the arena. For that reason, some argue that the best solution is to encourage regime change within Iran itself, even though the world has been waiting for Iran’s democratic and pro-Western forces to make their stand against a deeply corrupt and unpopular regime for more than a decade, in vain.
Others like Senator John McCain argue that the time to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites may be now, ignoring the fact that such an attack by itself can only retard, not halt, the regime’s relentless search for regional hegemony and would trigger a public-relations backlash with Iranian officials displaying the inevitable “collateral damage” on CNN, Al Jazeera, and other international media outlets. This option allow leaves the Tehran regime in place and free to plan retaliation through its terror networks across the Middle East and around the world.
Is there a military option against Iran that goes beyond bombing but does not require a Iraq-style invasion and occupation – in other words that avoids another “quagmire” in the Middle East? In fact, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, a realistic war scenario with Iran would involve an extensive air and naval campaign without a single American soldier having to set foot on Iranian soil:
1. The first step would be a United States naval blockade of the Straits of Hormuz backed by anti-missile Aegis class cruisers and destroyers, together with a guarantee of free passage for all non-Iranian oil shipping (thus reassuring the world that energy supplies will continue to flow).
2. At the same time, American Stealth fighters and bombers would target Iran’s air defense and anti-ship missile sites scattered around the Gulf, followed by what military analysts call an “Effects Based Operation,” as Air Force and Navy warplanes took out Iran’s extremely vulnerable military and economic infrastructure, including its electrical grid, transportation links, gasoline refineries, port facilities, as well as suspected nuclear sites.
3. Finally, American Special Ops and airborne forces would seize Iran’s main oil pumping station at Kargh Island and capture or neutralize its offshore oil facilities.
Far fetched?
Although the American public never noticed, the United States Navy managed to accomplish much the same thing during the so-called Tanker War in 1987-8, when Iran tried to widen its war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq by attacking foreign oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. Our navy managed both to destroy the Iranian navy and protect shipping through the Hormuz Straits in order to keep the world economy stable, while Navy Seal teams blew up and neutralized key Iranian oil platforms in the Gulf....