This is the same argument made against invading Iraq in 2003. Saddam would, it was said, unleash terrorism in our cities in response. Indeed, the same was said in 1991. Never happened. And Khaddafi couldn't manage anything this year even when his very life was on the line.
So now, under the title "Ayatollah for a Day," comes a new terrifying exercise in "how badly can Iran hurt us?"
I went into the exercise believing that the Iranian regime's response to an Israeli military strike -- despite many predictions otherwise -- would be relatively subdued, given the regime's fears of inviting massive reprisals. The opposite turned out to be true. Once our nuclear sites were effectively destroyed, we calculated that we had no choice but to escalate and retaliate in order to save face and project power to our own population and neighbors, deter future attacks, and inflict a heavy political cost on Israel.
Perhaps implicitly, the experience of Israel's September 2007 bombing of a Syrian nuclear reactor was instructive. Aside from a feeble official complaint to the United Nations about Israel's "breach of Syrian airspace," there was virtually no reaction from Damascus. As a result, the Israeli attack was met with little international or even Arab condemnation.
We needed to respond in a way that would further enflame the regional security environment, negatively impact the global economy, and make reverberations felt throughout the world. So we played dirty.
One of our first salvos was to launch missiles at oil installations in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, as well as stir unrest among Saudi Shiites against their government. Our pretext was that Israel had used Saudi airspace to attack us, though we later found out it did so without Saudi permission. Given Iran's less-than-accurate missile technology, most missiles missed their mark, but some struck home and we succeeded in spiking oil prices enough so that Americans and Europeans filling their cars with gasoline might be irritated by Israel's actions.
We also fired missiles at Israeli military and nuclear targets and unleashed Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad to fire rockets at Israeli population centers. Although few of these missiles reached their targets, the goal was create an atmosphere of terror among Israeli society so its government would think twice about future attacks.
We didn't limit our reaction to just the Middle East. Via proxy, we hit European civilian and military outposts in Afghanistan and Iraq, confident that if past is precedent, Europe would take the high road and not retaliate. We also activated terrorist cells in Europe -- bombing public transportation and killing several civilians -- in the belief that European citizens and governments would likely come down hard on Israel for destabilizing the region.
But, appreciating the logic of power, we stopped just short of provoking the United States. Before the simulation, I'd often heard it said that it wouldn't make much difference whether Israel actually got a green light from the United States to strike Iran, for Tehran would never believe otherwise.
This assessment wasn't borne out in the simulation. The U.S. secretary of state sent us a private note telling us that the Americans did not approve the Israeli strike, and vowed to restrain Israel from attacking further -- if we also exercised restraint. They tried on multiple occasions to meet with us or speak by phone, but we refused. While Washington believed that its overtures would have a calming effect on us, we interpreted them to mean that we could strike back hard against Israel -- not to mention European targets -- without risking U.S. retaliation, at least not immediately.
What a joke.
Let me start with the example of Syria in 2007. The author learns from this episode that the way for Iran to get the world (and Moslems in particular) to rally to them is to escalate? Why isn't the lesson that an Israeli strike--the attacker most likely to provoke Moslem anger--hasn't seemed to rally the Syrian population (or the Arab world or wider world) around Assad. In 2011, less than four years after the strike, the Syrian people, the Arab League, and the world seem to want the Assad regime to fall. What happened to the decade or generation of support that should have followed, as the article says?
Second, our direct intervention in the Tanker War in 1987-1988, where we helped their battlefield enemy and directly clashed with Iranian forces in the Gulf, didn't lead the Iranians to lash out at the world to rally their own people or the Moslem world. Indeed, we accidentally shot down an Iranian civilian aircraft. The mullahs couldn't even exploit that mistake.
Third, why assume bombing would rally Iranians? Our bombing of Iraq in 1991 didn't rally Iraqis around Saddam. Our bombing throughout the subsequent decade didn't rally Iraqis. Our bombings through 6 years of intense combat in Iraq didn't rally Iraqis against us. A decade of fighting in Afghanistan hasn't rallied Afghans against us. A lengthy bombing campaign against Libya didn't rally Libyans around Khaddafi. And a number of Syrians are begging us to intervene against Assad. At this point I think we have to call this theory the Persian Exception that proves the rule.
Finally, why is it seen as the height of brilliance to expand a war with Israel, where Israel's ability to engage in a protracted war with Iran is limited, to one that could compel other countries to join the war against Iran out of self interest?
Having Hamas and Hezbollah launch a rocket barrage will just give the Israelis something to do--and with the attention of the world fixed on Iran and oil supplies, Israel will have quite the opportunity to beat down Hamas and Hezbollah. Will those to groups salute and march off to certain destruction if Tehran orders it? I know that from Tehran's point of view, fighting to the last Arab sounds great, but will even Arab terrorists decide that they are an acceptable sacrifice to help Iran?
Attacking Saudi oil fields will get the GCC actively involved against Iran. And in 1987-1988, Iran's threat to the oil export routes even motivated the Western Europeans to send warships to the Gulf to protect their oil supplies.
Maybe attacking European cities would work. It worked on Spain, who got out of Iraq. But it didn't work on Britain. And targeting Canadian troops didn't keep Canada from fighting in Afghanistan for a long time. And 9/11 just pissed us off enough to take down two enemy regimes in the Moslem world. Further, a decade of war didn't deter us from helping overthrow a third who really wasn't even much of an enemy any more. Why assume this would work on enough of Europe to work? If anything can get the Europeans to use their atrophied military power it is a threat to their comfortable lives. Threatening their oil supplies will do that.
Indeed, why assume Iran has the cells to strike at any level likely to compel retreat? Europe may not be a major military power anymore, but they have police powers that our ACLU can only dream of to inspire contributions here.
This best and brightest crowd decided on a Sicilian Expedition against forces not even allied with the enemy they fight as the solution to their fight with Israel. And astoundingly, the author uses a quote from George Kennan that applies far more to Iran than it does to America, with no apparent awareness of how it highlights the stupidity of his Iranian team's scary response:
Shortly before he passed away in 2005 at age 101, he reflected on his half-century of experience. "Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before," he said. "War has a momentum of its own, and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it."
This scenario the author describes isn't playing dirty, with the preening boast that they've managed to be an "ayatollah for a day." This is playing stupid. Iran could turn the setback in their nuclear program into a total war where Iran's regime is at risk from all the enemies it could provoke to take the field against them! Well, if you kept going to turn 4 and beyond.
That's right, recall that the exercise lasted only long enough for Israel to strike and for Iran to execute a spasm of violence in return. Stopping after three turns of action saved the Iranian players from reaping the consequences of their actions on turn 4--or turn 40. If I was playing a game, I'd use all my assets, too. I assume nobody on the Iran team got extra credit for having an unused cell or missile at the end of the game. Remember, too, that "after 3 turns" the Sicilian Expedition was going pretty well. Turn 40 was a bitch, however.
I don't buy this "simulation." In the end, I suspect this was an exercise run by a bunch of people who think attacking Iran is a mistake, and their "simulation" confirmed it. What a shock. Iran is weak. We are strong. Iran exercises power only because we are afraid to stop them. I would never claim that fighting Iran over their nukes would have no bad side effects. But do opponents of strikes want to argue that letting Iran get nukes won't have horrible consequences even if Iran never plans to use them on Israel? I mean, run that simulation to turn 100, will you?
