The Iranian Missile Crisis

We cannot allow Iran to deploy nuclear weapons. With the missiles they have, they will threaten a huge region. Everything else that we do must flow from the basic objective of keeping the mullah regime from having nukes.

Sanctions won't work even if China and Russia don't veto the resolution in the Security Council. In time, money will find ways and the resolve of the sanctioners will erode.

And although I don't assume air strikes would alienate the Iranian people, this seems to be the conventional wisdom. So we will act on the assumption that this is true.

The more I think about it, the more I think that the war with Iran that appears to be coming will be in the blockade form with a limited invasion of Iran's Khuzestan to secure the oil fields until regime change allows a sane government to resume using them to export oil.

Letting the mullahs destroy their oil export capabilities during a militarized crisis even if we manage to support a revolution in Iran at the same time will doom the new government without revenue.

So we will wage war--but of the blockade variety that will be, in effect, a siege on Tehran's mullahs. We won't hit them with air power except where we must fight to gain our siege outposts in Khuzestan, on Kharg, and in other Gulf islands. And then we try to collapse the mullah government while we press them hard economically.

If Iran retaliates as they say they will, it will give us the pretext to really go after Iran's nuclear facilities and military assets in a strong aerial campaign.

The State of the Union address should be interesting in this light.