This defense of striking Iran believes Iran will take the surgical strike and not respond:
Critics of military action against Iran argue that it would open up a third front for American forces in the Middle East. Our troops would be at risk from Iranian missiles. Iran would block the Strait of Hormuz (causing oil prices to skyrocket) and use its terrorist proxies Hamas and Hezbollah to carry out attacks well beyond the Middle East, including perhaps on the U.S. homeland.
Yet if we carried out a targeted campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities, against sites used to train and equip militants killing American soldiers, and against certain targeted terror-supporting and nuclear-enabling regime elements, the effects are just as likely to be limited.
It’s unclear, for example, that Iran would want to risk broadening the conflict and creating the prospect of regime decapitation. Iran’s rulers have shown that their preeminent concern is maintaining their grip on power. If U.S. military action is narrowly targeted, and declared to be such, why would Iran’s leaders, already under pressure at home, want to escalate the conflict, as even one missile attack on a U.S. facility or ally or a blockade of the Strait would obviously do?
Why would Iran respond irrationally? For the same reason we don't want the mullahs to have nuclear weapons--they are not rational as we define it.
If we attack Iran's nuclear facilities, this will be viewed by Iran's leaders as a serious attack on Iran. Iran will fight back. I happen to think their counter-attack won't be as bad as some fear. One, the track record of worries about Saddam responding to attacks in 1991 and 2003 with attacks on our homeland didn't pan out. I doubt Iran can do better. Two, I think Iran isn't doing more to fight us in Iraq and Afghanistan because they can't raise the ante--not because they've chosen to be nicer.
But I also believe that once we go after Iran's nuclear facilities, we have to simultaneously wage a broader campaign to blunt their counter-attack. Israel could pull off the narrow attack on Iran's key nuclear facilities, I think, with a decent chance of significant delay imposed on Iran's nuclear progress. But Israel couldn't do the same type of job as we could on the nuclear facilities, let alone match our attacks on Iran's conventional military capabilities and terrorist-supporting institutions.
But we are still firmly in the era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays. Until Iran openly flaunts their nuclear weapons--and perhaps until they use one--we will remain in this era.
Have a nice day.
