Our political calendar and one of our nation’s greatest threats have synchronized. In the upcoming year, the American people will render their judgment on Barack Obama’s presidency. Meanwhile, if the International Atomic Energy Agency’s November report is accurate, Iran will soon join the ranks of the world’s nuclear powers. Because of the Obama administration’s reluctance to confront this looming threat, others — such as the Republican presidential candidates — must begin preparing the case for a military strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.
Republican frontrunners have seized upon the threat. In last month’s South Carolina debate, Mitt Romney promised that Iran “will not have a nuclear weapon” under his presidency. Economic sanctions and aid to internal opposition come first, said the former Massachusetts governor, but “if all else fails . . . [and] there’s nothing else we can do besides take military action, then of course you take military action.”
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Newt Gingrich, the frontrunner in several early states, heartily agrees. In the South Carolina debate, Gingrich proposed covert operations, including “taking out their scientists” and “breaking up their systems,” and a Cold War–style strategy “of breaking the regime and bringing it down.” But the former House speaker “agree[s] entirely” with Romney that, should pressure fail, “you have to take whatever steps are necessary” to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
In this game of diplomatic poker, the Republicans would go all in where the last administration and the present one have checked. Though he declares that “we don’t take any options off the table,” President Obama avoids explicit military threats. Instead he seeks to “isolate and increase the pressure upon the Iranian regime.” He naively hoped to negotiate a settlement with Tehran (and Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea!), but he has ended up in the same place as his predecessor. George W. Bush declined to attack Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. He also passed on striking a suspected Syrian nuclear facility (the Israelis destroyed it in 2007). Like Obama, he pursued economic sanctions and applied political pressure to foster Iranian regime change.
President Obama has done more than merely delay the inevitable day of reckoning with Iran. He has left the public uninformed about the nature and possible consequences of military action, which must be serious and sustained enough to destroy complex, protected, and dispersed facilities — pinpoint bombing of a single facility will not end Iran’s nuclear program. Iran might respond by attacking Israel, Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia, and oil shipments in the Persian Gulf. President Obama has also failed to explain the heavy costs of containment, which would involve a constant, significant conventional and nuclear military presence on Iran’s perimeter.
Obama has compounded this political negligence by failing to build the legal case for attacking Iran. Instead, the administration has tethered American national security to the dictates of the United Nations. In Libya, Obama delayed launching the air war until the Security Council approved the intervention, allowing a popular revolution to metastasize into a prolonged, destructive civil war. The same craving for international approval may lead the administration to put off military action against Iran until it is too late.
The U.N. Charter guarantees the “territorial integrity” and “political independence” of each member nation, and prohibits the use of force except in self-defense, which many scholars and international officials interpret to mean that force is prohibited except when an invader has attacked across a border or is about to do so. It does provide an exception for war to prevent threats to international peace and security, but only if approved by the Security Council (where the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, and China all have a veto). Not surprisingly, U.N. authorizations to use force are rare. China and Russia, both Security Council members, generally oppose intervention in what they consider “internal” affairs, including policies that repress political and economic freedoms. They can usually be counted on to protect other oppressive regimes by blocking U.N. approval for war, as they did in Iraq in 2003.
Iran's aspirations could easily be blocked or contained if the US had military crediblity. However, just as was the case after VietNam, the Iranians and other assorted bad guys know that the American left has veto power over our response and that nothing useful can presently be accomplished by the US threatening force of arms. This is most unfortunate, because Iran is a more real, meaningful and formidable opponent than Iraq ever was made out to be, yet simultaneously one more susceptible to the application of fine military tactics.
the price of gas will not matter if Iran makes an EMP attack on the US. For which they have been practicing. Testing SCUD launches from containerships is not for attacking Israel(the LESSER Satan),and then there's their missile base in Venezuela.Or if they decide they are safe under their nuclear umbrella and close off Hormuz,so they can take Iraq and it's oil fields.(and solving their Kurd problem)
Okay, EMP might be as silly as paranoia about foreign agents engaged in water fluoridation. I don't know much about the EMP debate. But an Iranian nuclear weapon could be handed off to a proxy to try to detonate it in New York City. The Iranian government is a fanatically religious actor, not a rational one deterred by the threat of retaliation. For decades they have been calling huge rallies crying "Death to America." They want to destroy us for fanatical religious reasons of their own that aren't going to go away, not unless we suppress our global pop culture and elect an Islamic government.
A covert U.S. war, perhaps through non-U.S. proxies, is necessary to stop the Iranian government's nuke program asap.
Sarcastic Answer:
You're completely right! We should definitely let a country that has very clearly stated its intent to destroy Israel and the US obtain nuclear weapons. It's completely not worth paying more money at the pump!
Obvious Answer:
A quick internet search shows that Iran isn't even in the top 15 countries that the US imports oil from. The only major importer is Saudi Arabia and their entire economy would collapse if they just stopped exporting oil to America. So, I'm going to have to say that we really wouldn't experience to bad of a gas pump price jump.
Don't think you seem to understand markets. The US has sanctions against Iran, and you're expecting it to be a major provider of oil to the US?
A war in Iran would disrupt GLOBAL supply, and raise prices, regardless if they're the US's supplier or not.
I love know-it-alls that know nothing. Here it is nice and simple, when demand exceeds supply, prices go up. Oil is a globally traded commodity - and the same suppliers that are supplying the US, are also supplying other countries, which may get oil from Iran. Sooooo, If Iran is no longer supplying, there becomes....SCARCITY....
"The surgical nature of such strikes would make them proportional to the military objective, which would be not the overthrow of the Iranian regime but the destruction of its nuclear capability."
Get a clue Yoo. The real objective needs to be taking out the regime, by degrading its nuclear capabilities and military infrastructure. Otherwise,
we are just delaying the inevitable.
Exactly. The problem is not a France or an England having nuclear weapons, the problem is the world's leader sponsor of international terrorism and political extremism throughout the Islamic world getting them. There is no reason to tolerate this regime. I get that the prof thinks international law makes military action against a military threat more palatable than judging regimes, but so much the worse for international law. Because in the real world, there is no peace as long as these violent thugs rule Iran.
Yes, exactly. The problem is the regime, which is a security threat even without nuclear weapons. They have been at war with us for 30 years, and sooner or later we're going to have to start fighting back.
It's strange that Yoo, who mentioned the plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador on our soil and who must certainly know that this act, if carried out, would by itself have constituted an act of war against the United States, imagines that a surgical strike would be a sufficient response. A nuclear Iran would kill vastly more Americans (and other innocent people) than a non-nuclear one, but that doesn't mean we should tolerate Iran as it stands today. And should we make such a strike without decapitating the regime, they will be only more determined to retaliate with a reconstituted nuclear program, probably followed by a nuclear sneak attack if they ever did get the bomb.
If we want to put an end to the danger of this snake, we have to cut off its head once and for all.
Our party led this nation into two wars of which one was necessary. We have shown that we are quite capable of screwing things up as bad as the Democrats. We need to listen to voices such as Ron Paul who advocate less not more intervention. If you don't trust Ron Paul, maybe men like Georege Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson will do because they all advocated staying away from foreign conflicts. And not just because we were an infant nation.
Our military is stretched to the limit. Talk to those inside the military and soldiers are leaving at a rapid pace. We must build our military back before engaging in another war. Surely Libya is a good example of how we should proceed with Iran.
This author has presented a very biased view and most of the Republican base does not support yet another military confrontation, especially a land based war.
Only ONE war was necessary? Which? AF or Iraq? Evidently,you did not read Jim Lacey's article here External Link about Saddam and WMDs,or the other reasons he (and Bush) listed for the Iraq invasion.
Iran is a united country of 78 million people.. 3 times Afghanistan, that will take another generation says Patreus. 3 times Iraq that the necons are saying we lost.. How many divisons and how many years do you need to dominate Iran?
Fellas speak softly carry a big stick,.
But Iran? Forgetaboutit.
And what should we care about Iran? Brazil doesnt. Like us theyre a big country, near us, and 6000 miles from Iran, bordered by weak neigbors and the ocean, with plenty of oil. Wake me up when Brazil gets nervous about Iran.
Brazil has never lost a war, never been invaded, never worreid about atomic atttack, doesnt need bases, or body bags. They mind theyre own business, and so they only need to spend 4% of what we do on the military, So theyre not broke like us.
Everyone cannot rely on someone else to keep order, or there is no one keeping order.
As for the endgame, you ask a legitimate question. I suspect the pie-in-the-sky endgame dreamed by most neocons is that the constant, costly game of whack-an-evil-mole will lead to less and less moles over the long haul (and eventually to zero? lol). Supposedly the populace of these nations will inevitably reject their tyrannical rulers for a more peace-loving and free existence.
However, I see little evidence that this is the case.
Yoo with all the pedigree in juris prudence, working with big wigs on a national level etc, is nothing more than a fool. This whole notion of Iran "nuclear power" is an old adage that still gets traction from phobes like him. Iranian ruling powers are on it's last legs and what started as Arab Spring is going to reach Persian imagination for sure. The Iranian governing powers can't even supply gas for their domestic constitutency for less than $5 a gallon let alone stem the inflation that is currently rising out of control. In the midst of the Iranian mullah dominated paranoid govt's convulsions, pundits like Yoo want to legitamize their bull horns by posturing for military interventions for which currently U.S. neither have the full resources nor has political will. War weary citizenry is the reason for inaction, not left leaning leaders. NRO should stop publishing crap like Yoo's or administer simple tests on current geo political trends to these pundits before accepting their drivel.
The most effective time to attack was long ago and has passed. We identified the danger but did not have the will. Now we are faced with a reality that forces us into action but with much worse consequences. Unfortunately, the west never learns and will suffer much from lacking the will to survive. Our enemies have that will and will seek to destroy us as they have said many times before.
As the old saying goes, when your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Is there any problem the Republicans (or Democrats) can solve, that does NOT involve attacking nation after nation, on one pretext or another?
The reason I believe, is that the influx of immigrants (legal or otherwise) in recent decades means that government jobs are the only reasonably secure, well-paying employment for those of us who are not geniuses or who do not wish to work 60-hour weeks all the time. The government jobs are the only ones that new immigrants cannot readily obtain. And, at least for males, what is a good entry point to those government jobs? Why, it is the military, itself a government job. That, and there are numerous parts of the country where the non-government employer base is small or low-paying, making the nearby military base the foundation of the local economy.
"If casualties result because [military/nuclear] facilities are located beneath cities, the fault rests with the Iranians for deliberately using civilians to shield its military — a move long forbidden by the laws of war."
An excellent point, and I agree. But we have not been able to sell this view to the leftists in this country or abroad.
In the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the Israelis target military facilities and even avoid those that have Palestinian human shields. The Palestinians intentionally target and kill Israeli civilians.
The Israelis are charged with war crimes in courts IN WESTERN EUROPE for killing civilians. The Palestinians are not criticized.
That same dichotomy held in the VietNam War.
If we strike Iran, we must be prepared for a firestorm of criticism, domestic and international. No reference to the laws of war will serve as a defense.
Mr. Obama is probably taking covert action against Iran already. I don't expect him to ever do more.
