Iran Mocking U.S.

Iran Calling U.S. Bluff

The U.S. can’t attack Iran, and Iran knows it.  The population of Iran is approaching 80 million people.  The land mass is about four times the size of Iraq.  The Persians have a very large secular and liberal population. Iran, while being demonized by the U.S. media as a Muslim nation, is actually a multi-religious nation that populations of Christians and Jews whom are protected by the rule of law.    Any attack on Iran would only solidify any divisions among Iranians and ensure dissidents are as demonized and discredited as anti-war Democrats are on Fox News.

Iran now has more modern military equipment than at any time in its history, although no match for force-on-force battles with the U.S.  But, force-on-force battles matter only if the U.S. intends on attempting to invade and occupy a country that in every respect is four times as large as Iraq, but with a competent military.  While Iran enjoys few advantages over the U.S. military, those advantages could end up being so critical as to make war unfeasible.  We are already in two unwinnable and self-defeating wars that hamper U.S. political and military objectives.  To continue to do the same things and expect different results is the height of stupidity.  We are talking about invading an Iran that has not been through a decade of pulverizing sanctions preceded by a 7-year war.  We will be fighting a population that cannot be lied to and bought off with weapons and money in the short-term, as was Saddam’s Sunni military establishment, aka Sons or Iraq, aka Awakening Counsels.  There will not be divisions like the Madhi Army, Badr Brigades, Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, al Qaeda,, SCIRI/SIIC, the Iraqi Provision Authority, or an Iraqi Provisional Government.  There will no soldiers left with which to have a “surge” as things deteriorate for the U.S.

Although Iran has developed some defense industry capacity, its advantages lay in unconventional and asymmetrical warfare against a slow-moving, inept, super-power that is over-leveraged militarily and economically.  Using 4^thGeneration Warfare against a U.S. military that is fighting with 2^ndGeneration Warfare tactics creates a situation where “information superiority” does not lead to a tactical situation whereby the U.S. can outpace the enemy’s decision-making process.  When you fight 80 million people who hate you for 80 million different reasons, all of them acting independantly, you will have no one with which to bargain.  If we occupy Iran for fifty years, you can be sure that fifty years from now there will still be Iranians in Iran. 

The U.S. center of gravity has always been economics.  This has been bin Laden’s focus all along.  He is succeeding beyond his wildest imagination.  If we attack Iran, you can bet, as sure as Brock Lesnar fighting against a kid just finishing a stint at a fat camp, that it will be a war cited in history books as the cause for the fall of the American republic.

Except for the ideologues that were hand-picked and installed at the very highest levels of the military, most people, except for those who are being paid by the government specifically to be stupid, know that any attack on Iran will end in absolute disaster for the U.S. These people know that a war will have to culminate in nuclear strikes for the U.S. to be able to impose its will.  The U.S. will be required to sow destruction, but that destruction will reap blowback that will make the 1979 Islamic Revolution look like a birthday party and probably end in acts of nuclear terrorism that would be just retribution for any nation seeking to impose its will through the use of WMDs.

The counter-terrorism adviser for three administrations, Richard Clarke, revealed in an interview with the New York Times four years ago that the Clinton administration war-gamed a bombing campaign against Iran, and it concluded with the military professionals advising against it.  “After a long debate, the highest levels of the military could not forecast a way in which things would end favorably for the United States.” Clark stated.

The U.S. may wreak destruction on infrastructure that can be repaired in three years, but this will result in an Iran that, if not actually seeking WMDs, will now become a nation obsessed with nuclear deterrence. 

U.S. forces are scattered among dozens of nations, but Iran has a 450,000 man military that will be in prepared defenses which cannot be flanked by an armored maneuver force using pre-positioned stores of arms, ammunition, and equipment.  Tanks will be as useless in many parts of Iran as they are in Afghanistan.  Where tanks are used, their supply lines will be targeted and fuel will never make it to the front lines as the support areas will be attacked by tens of thousands of suicide bombers and sophisticated anti-armor mines and shoulder-fired rockets.  Iran would then be free to use the U.S.’s tried and true method of insurgency by supplying modern surface-to-air missiles to the Taliban in Afghanistan that would soon shut down the U.S. military effort there. (It was the arrival of U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles in Afghanistan in the late 1980s that drove Russian helicopters from the sky and ultimately doomed the whole Soviet intervention there.)

Iran’s military/industrial complex has created the Noor anti-ship missile.  It is a version of the Chinese YJ-82 that has a 200-km range, is sea-skimmer that is almost impossible to track by radar, and flies at twice the speed of sound.  This missile can cover all the major choke points in the Persian Gulf, and it has a tiny radar profile. Its single-shot kill probability has been put as high as 98 percent.  This will close down all oil tankers transiting the Persian Gulf.  Should Iran then decide to use its sophisticated conventional missiles against Saudi production facilities, this will further reduce the supply of oil on the world market.  Even a small variation between supply and demand will create such a price explosion that British Petroleum will be able to recoup all its losses within a year, and people will be begging them to open up more off-shore drilling sites.  Oil-tankers would face such a difficult kill-zone that insurance rates would preclude commercial shipping for oil super-tankers and in comparison make Somali pirates an actuarial’s wet dream.  All it will take to end shipping in the gulf is to sink two super tankers.

Many have been warning about the Moskit, otherwise known as the SS22 Sunburn anti-ship missile, and the deploying littoral from which Iran will gain a huge tactical advantage.  If one aircraft carrier is sunk, it will forever change the balance of power for the U.S. in relation to carriers being force projection platforms from which the U.S. can engage in battleship diplomacy.  This weakness, and the superiority of anti-ship missiles, will expose the U.S. Navy’s leadership as the “Bathtub Admirals” Jeff Huber has insisted of which it is composed.  The SS22 Sunburn and other anti-ship missiles can be shot from boats, submarines, and land-based launchers that would be almost impossible to locate and target in the event of war with Iran, and they are a heck of a lot cheaper than an aircraft carrier.

The U.S. will not attack Iran.  War planners know that if America does attack Iran, it will be humiliated and expelled from the Muslim world.  We will jaw-jaw while imperial hagiographers will write about options being on the table, war plans being created, and the conduct of naval exercises.  We will continue to issue veiled threats about Iran mingling in Iraq.  However, if we attack Iran, and the U.S. is forcibly driven from the Middle East, there will be no way to dress up defeat.  U.S. influence will cease to exist in Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey and any foreign aid will actually be tribute to protect America.  When missles start flying, we will be hard pressed to replace war losses, and Israel can forget about handouts while the U.S. is hemorrhaging troops, M1 Abrams, and attack helicopters it will find increasingly difficult to replace.

We are living in historic times.  The empire has never faced the threats it now finds itself staring at eye to eye.  Those who cheered for war and promoted it as a useful tool to be wielded first have expended all U.S. political and economic capital, and have over-leveraged our military might while never grasping its limits or the consequences of its use.  The justification for these mistakes is easy to rationalize and bankrupting the public can be overlooked if you are profiting handsomely from war.  Maybe Americans deserve the infliction of a punishment for electing bad leaders to be every bit as severe as the punishment we inflict on the innocent from countries that have no WMD programs or connections to 9/11.  In the end Americans will wonder how they and their leaders could not see what was right in front of their noses.