Bombing Iran

Calvin Coolidge is famously said to have described a Sunday sermon as being about "sin." When asked what the preacher had said about it, he said "He was agin it." Similarly, I feel the same way about the topic of bombing Iran, "I'm agin it." The Economist has both a leader and extensive analysis on the subject, and draws the same conclusion. In summary, the attacks are unlikely to be successful in halting Iran's ambitions and will invite retaliation at great cost. Some may wish to believe that an attack would destabilize the regime; but if so, why have dictatorships throughout the ages manufactured external threats to consolidate their grip on power. I have some expertise in this area, my professional opinion is that neither the U.S. nor Israel have the means to indefinitely derail Iran's nuclear ambitions.

However, a nuclear armed Iran; given the current leadership, would be a disaster for the world. It would certainly embolden Iran to continue to meddle in the affairs of its neighbors. Further, one should consider that the Iranians would actually launch nukes at Israel. So doing nothing is also unacceptable as well. The element of time is essential, and the best published Israeli estimate is that the Iranians are two to three years away from possessing four nuclear warheads that could be mounted on ballistic missiles. (As an aside, those who ridiculed Reagan's ideas that we should invest in anti-ballistic missile technology are owed a big fat slap down. While ABM technology can't stop thousands of Russian nukes, the argument used against the project, a mere four nukes is a much simpler, although still complex problem.)

The threat of Israeli bombing has had the salutary effect of convincing the world to take tougher sanctions. Inflation and unemployment are ratcheting up. The Iranian currency has lost half its value. The latest sanction is to shut out Iran from the world's electronic banking system, which is basically the same thing. But we need to keep thinking asymmetrically, that is rather than directly attacking the offending program, attack where Iran is weak. Going after the gasoline imports that Iran needs, despite all its oil, should be the next move. Despite reducing its dependency on gasoline imports, they are still running at 50,000 barrels per month. The regime's weakness accrues to its mismanagement of the economy; it practices a sort of theocratic socialism. Its support comes from outside of the cities, where the socialistic largess is directed.

Finally, the shock of seeing nuclear weapons actually launched 65 years since the only two that were ever released in war will shock the world. We might consider that Iran itself would be profoundly changed if it did so. We have seen Pakistan possess nuclear weapons for some number of years, and it is far less stable, and no nukes have been used. While I don't want to count on the Iranians not using their nukes, we have to remember that their use brings a huge downside to their government as well.

Sean Hannity Nukes Himself

As I feared, Sean Hannity led his show tonight with an hysterical over the top criticism of Obama's recently announced nuclear weapons policy. He also managed to drag the usually more thoughtful Newt Gingrich into the mix, declaring the latest Presidential announcement evidence that Obama is "dangerous." It was as if all they knew about the case was the Drudge headline. Perhaps they suffer from Obama derangement syndrome.

The New York Times has a pretty decent piece on the thinking of the administration in announcing the new policy, and as I suspected yesterday, it is aimed primarily at North Korea and Iran. But the Times thinks the policy may be intended to influence the leadership, I doubt that it will have any effect on them. However, the people of Iran may be a different story. For those inclined to be disenchanted with the regime, the fact that Iran's nuclear program puts them in the cross hairs of a large nuclear arsenal may give extra energy to their opposition. In the long run, only regime change in Iran is going to produce lasting peace in the region. I hold out hope that the people of Iran will eventually topple a regime that is so antithetical to any aspirations of better material conditions.

The one part of the new policy that I disagree with is the decision not to develop any new nuclear weapons. New weapons designed to burrow deep into underground bunkers are needed to disrupt the nuke/chem/bio development capacity of rogue states. A credible threat to be able to shut down their programs is a necessary piece of nuclear deterrence.

Slate does a good job of explaining the issues as well.

No Nukes? No Way!

The Drudgereport has what seems to be a disturbing headline:

NO NUKES: EVEN IN SELF-DEFENSE!

implying a change in policy regarding the use of nuclear weapons. From the linked New York Times article:

For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

I beg to differ, and I have some personal knowledge of this subject. First, we will still use nukes against anyone who uses nukes against us, so we aren't giving up nukes in self defense. Further, the non-retaliation with nukes has been the policy of the United States for a long time; because the language of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NNPT) requires this. The treaty makes no mention of an exception to its precepts with regards to biological or chemical weapons. Perhaps it is news because we announced this publicly, but it is not really a change. I hope conservative commentators don't get worked up and display their ignorance (I'm thinking Sean Hannity).

HotAir has some reasoned debate, good for them. When you think about the countries that worry us over chem/bio (Iran, North Korea), they are probably also the countries who are in actual or technical violation of the NNPT, so if they use chem/bio weapons we are still free to turn rain some mushroom clouds on their critical military infrastructure.

24 Empty Missile Tubes, a Mushroom Cloud, Now, it's Miller Time!

Iran and Nukes - How Can We Trust the Intelligence?

HotAir tipped me to a New York Times piece about Iran's nuclear program and the fact that "Mr. Obama’s top advisers say they no longer believe the key finding of a much disputed National Intelligence Estimate about Iran." This much ballyhooed estimate said that Iran had stopped work on their nuke program in 2003. The information was certainly not credible at the time and has since been debunked.

After reviewing new documents that have leaked out of Iran and debriefing defectors lured to the West, Mr. Obama’s advisers say they believe the work on weapons design is continuing on a smaller scale — the same assessment reached by Britain, France, Germany and Israel.

However, now the article intimates that the Iranians are farther away from producing a nuclear warhead than previously thought. Huh??? Let me get this straight, the previous official report said that Iranians were not even working on nukes, now the intelligence sources are saying, don't worry, give sanctions a chance, they aren't as close as we thought.

Unfortunately, I don't think any of this really matters. The real race is whether the current regime will fall because of its despotism vs. whatever the real time line is to get the nuclear bombs made. If Western intelligence agencies are really having success sabotaging the Iranian effort, great, but I just can't trust their public pronouncements.

The best course of action would be to take steps to encourage regime change in Iran, which Obama has shown little willingness to do. Until recently, he has done little to encourage the protesters and botched opportunities to showcase the last Iranian Presidential election for the sham it was. We should now view sanctions not in the light of whether they will influence the mullahs to give up on their nuke program, they will not; but in the light of whether the economic impact will destabilize the regime, which I do not know. Certainly any sanctions will be used by the despots to convince the public that "The Great Satan" is behind their woes, but they have played that card so many times, it may lack effectiveness.

More realistically, we should plan for a more pessimistic but likely outcome. The Iranians produce a bomb, because we can't really stop them. The Israelis retaliate or the Iranians use the first bomb they produce. Either way, we need to get allies lined up and our own propaganda readied, because there will be hell to pay in the Middle East. Tragic as that would be, I don't see the Iranian regime surviving making first use of a nuke and we need to keep the long run in mind. I am not being cavalier at the prospect of tens of thousands of deaths, just realistic. Unfortunately, the administration has shown itself to be incredibly naive to date, and I doubt they are prepared.

Nuclear Politics Update

Little reported until this morning, the US Navy is tracking a North Korean ship bound for Singapore or Myanmar. It is believed the ship is carrying banned material, like missile parts, that earn the Norks hard currency. In an earlier post, I opined as how denying Kim Jong Il hard currency is the best leverage we have to influence his behavior on the nuke issue. I am waiting to see how the current administration handles the situation. They have been getting quite an education lately between Iranian electoral shenanigans and North Korean nuclear sabre rattling. Let's hope they are fast learners. As usual, Information Dissemination has excellent in depth naval analysis. They also believe that Kim Jong Il will not last without Chinese support and have reason to believe that Chinese support for "the little perv" as Dean called him, is eroding.

Interestingly, Information Dissemination linked to this scholarly mathematical analysis showing that the Iranian election results were almost certainly fraudulent (99.6% likely to have been faked). This is important, because the nuclear hard line taken by Ahmedinejad is certainly not in the best interests of the people of Iran. This will dawn on them as events unfold; posessing nuclear weapons means you can also be on the receiving end of nuclear weapons. A move to true democracy won't make Iran our new BFF, but will result in a regime more amenable to listening to reason on the nuke issue.