The Bush administration has been flying surveillance drones over Iran for nearly a year to seek evidence of nuclear weapons programs and detect weaknesses in air defenses, according to three U.S. officials with detailed knowledge of the secret effort.Such drones can do things that satellites cannot do--such as nullifying Iran's ability to hide from predictable orbits. Or sniffing for nuclear material. The Iranians apparently aren't turning on their radars to add our knowledge. But if they keep everything off, it will make it easier to hit them without them detecting the first attacks.
Supposedly the Iranians are a few years off from being able to go nuclear. Perhaps. But how much do we know? Can we take the chance? I won't go over all the details of why an invasion is too hard and air strikes too uncertain. Regime change is the only way to be sure. It should be supported by our forces, however.
With three brigades in Afghanistan (when initially we had 1+) we can spare one to move into Iran from the east.
With elections in Iraq and Iraqi forces gaining proficiency, we may be able to spare three brigades or so to hit from the west. Watch for our units to pull into bases, in backup roles, where they can move out as brigades.
And the Marines could hit the Gulf area. The Marines have been pretty heavily committed in Iraq fighting the Baathists and jihadis. But they will reduce their presence in Iraq from 33,000 to 23,000. That sounds like two brigades worth of troops (regimental combat teams as the Marines call them). Reducing the rotation burden for Iraq will make it easier to scrape up the amphibous forces for an Iran intervention just in case.
If Iranians rise up--especially after another farcical election in the summer--we have Iranian exiles that were organized as military forces in Iraq still concentrated under our protection. We will have spare brigades to support a revolt. And we'll have better targeting data from our recon efforts.
The only thing missing is an assurance that the Iranian military and dissidents will revolt and will work with our special forces and regular forces if we intervene on their side. We've had a long time to work on this and given Iran's leading role in the Axis of Evil, I cannot believe we have not been working on this aspect. With Iranian military units involved, we will avoid the problem we had in Iraq of having no reliable local forces early on.
And I find it hard to believe we'll let this fester for three years.
Or we could be trying to scare the Iranians. But I don't think we can scare them into compliance. They want nukes and we don't want them to have them. It is prudent that we prepare for military action.
