What if? US conducts a surprise attack on Iran
It is a scenario that most people would either want or not want to happen. Imagine getting out of bed, and turning on the television, and you find breaking news on CNN, Fox News, BBC, or whatever channel reporting explosions occurring in the Iranian capital city of Tehran and airstrikes against military and nuclear sites.
The military response scenario comes from the paper, "Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East," written by British scholar and arms expert Dr. Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy and Martin Butcher, a former Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and former adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament.
The paper essentially concludes that the U.S. military probably has plans in place that can destroy Iran's WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus, and economic infrastructure within days if not hours of President Bush giving the order.
Several points were mentioned:
1) The attack would be multi-front scale, but no ground invasion. Focusing on WMD facilities only would leave Iran with too many retaliatory options, so Bush would choose a plan that would destroy most of Iran's military and security infrastructure. It would leave the regime vulnerable to civilian disorder.
2) Airbases hosting US bombers (B-52, B-1, B-2, F-117A, etc.) and long range missiles would be ready to destroy thousands of targets in Iran in just a few days.
3) The proximity of US forces already in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan can attack Iranian forces, the regime, and the state at short notice.
4) Armed popular resistance in the Iranian provinces or ethnic areas of the Azeri, Balujistan, Kurdistan, and Khuzestan, plus possibly UK military action.
5) The use of nuclear weapons is an option, but very highly unlikely to be used in such a conflict. Human, political, and environmental effects would be devastating.
6) Israel is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons but with its current military capability, can only wound Iran's WMD programmes.
7) How would the UK react? While the Brown government and the public are against more war, they would probably still support US' actions because of their view that Iran must not acquire the bomb.
8) The US is of course keeping their military plans secret, so the chances of military confrontation is high.
Both Plesch and Butcher believe that the US will not confine its airstrikes to just nuclear sites. They foresee a "full-spectrum approach," designed to either instigate an overthrow of the government or reduce Iran to the status of "a week or failed state." To substantiate this assumption, they noted the administration's National Security Strategy which includes eliminating Iran as a regional power.
They do acknowledge that such a full-scale intervention would encounter substantial potential risks and impediments. I would surmise that such risks would include high opposition within the Congress, public disorder, increased global tension and hatred of the US, world condemnation, etc. It would also bode ill for the President's party in the next general election.
In terms of strategy, a wider form of air attack would do two things... one is to delay the Iranian nuclear program for a sufficiently prolonged period of time and create an opportunity for the political opposition in Iran to overthrow the current regime. The consequences and rewards would be extremely high. If the full-scale attack fails, the US would be damaged severely on the world stage. Whatever remaining credibility or goodwill will go down the toilet. Bush's last months as President would be pretty bad. If the attack succeeds and the Iranian regime falls, half of the international community would applaud it, the other half would criticize it. But the US should not occupy Iran. The Iraq-occupation should deter any notion of doing the same thing to the Iranians.
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