Patrick Disney, the former Assistant Policy Director for the National Iranian American Council, has written a great piece responding to Ray Takeyh and Steven Simon’s Washington Post op-ed, which Tony Karon described as “a ‘how-to-bomb Iran’ manual.”
(Ali discussed the increasingly hawkish rhetoric coming out of the Council on Foreign Relations in his blog post Monday.)
Disney’s critical analysis of Takeyh and Simon’s article concludes that a bombing campaign of the type proposed by the CFR scholars would have disastrous effects.
Disney writes:
First, there is no military option short of a full-blown invasion and occupation. Even if all of Iran’s nuclear facilities can be located, and even if they can all be destroyed with surgical air strikes, the ruling hardliners will just rebuild them — only this time without the contraints of the IAEA.
Indeed, no proposed air strike would permanently destroy Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions and would probably exacerbate already tense U.S.-Iran and Iran-Israel relations.
He continues:
Secondly, and most disappointingly, Takeyh and Simon’s analysis totally ignores the devastating impact an attack would have on the long-term prospect of democracy in Iran. Iranians last summer took to the streets in the most passionate outbreak of popular dissatisfaction since the 1979 revolution. Those who know their history viewed the events of last year as the latest step in Iran’s democratic evolution — a process that began over 100 years ago with the constitutional revolution of 1906. Although the street protests have died down and the democracy movement is in some disarray, it is clearly still a factor in Iran. Unfortunately, dropping bombs on Iran now is the surest way to uproot any hope for peaceful democratic change in the country. The hardliners will most likely use an act of foreign aggression as justification for a brutal crackdown, and the focus of political discourse will shift away from questions of internal reforms and regime legitimacy toward external threats and the need to rally the nation’s defenses.
While Takeyh and Simon may have the luxury of discussing their hypothetical best-case scenarios for bombing Iran, Disney draws a believably dismal picture of what a U.S. or Israeli military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities might bring.
An Iranian regime which has quit the IAEA, crushed its domestic opposition and turned its nuclear program into a symbol of avenging the countless deaths from an Israeli or American air strike is a frightening thought, but one which — no thanks to alarmists such as Takeyh and Simon — could become a reality.
Disney concludes:
With the anti-Iran rhetoric at a fever pitch in Washington, it’s easy to forget sometimes just how remote of a threat Iran’s nuclear program actually is. According to numerous unclassified assessments by the U.S. Intelligence Community, Iran has not yet decided to pursue a nuclear bomb, and the US and international community still has time to convince them not to. The three to five years an attack would gain now will most certainly not be worth the cost it would incur: a non-democratic Iran with an overt nuclear weapons program and a vendetta against Western powers who attacked it.
“…owned and operated by the most corrupt corporations in history.”
Among them being a corporation that few people pay *any* attention to whatsoever: Judaeo-Christianity-Islamism, Inc.; whose religious ‘authorities’ accrue probably billions of dollars each year in the teaching of theological doctrines which not only *flagrantly* contradict the Revelations received by Moses, Isaiah, Jesus and Mohammed; but are, in fact, nothing less than an *incitement* to violence between Jews, Christians and Muslims.
Bombing Iran would simply prove to the world that it is an open world war against Islam. To assume that bombing or simply invading Iran would be the way to stop them from whatever it is the US and Israel doesn’t like, and would be the “end all” is pure fantasy. There will be serious repercussions – “blowback” in the form of terrorism being the LEAST costly.
Fallout in the Caspian or on Turkey would affect a billion people from Russian fisheries to energy transit to europe. Even without nuclear weapons involved, we could just redraw the entire political map of central asia, and call it “KillUSA-istan.”
The only people “occupying” Iran would be speaking Russian and Chinese. Forget about all the “investment” in Iraq and Afghanistan and friendly dictators in Uzbek and Turkmen lands. How long would it take the entire house of Saud to get on planes and flee to the US and Canada?
All because Israel said so and were holding the US over the barrel with threats.
Don’t do it, and the US has to undertake a policy of isolationism to get from “over the barrel.” Do it, and be isolated from the rest of the world – in terms of energy, imports, and influence.
“Secondly, and most disappointingly, Takeyh and Simon’s analysis totally ignores the devastating impact an attack would have on the long-term prospect of democracy in Iran.”
Yes, but neither the US military-industrial complex, the oiligarchy nor the current israeli regime want democracy in Iran, in fact they don’t want it anywhere in the Middle East, because it would obscure their possibilities for absolute corporate control of the vast oil resources left there and for an eternal “war against terror” which is vital to their suspension of democracy at home. They don’t want democracy anywhere, they want “democracy”: they want a facade they can control. For the israeli regime, democracy in Iran would hamper their plans for ethnic cleansing of greater Israel, which on the other hand would be easier with a prolonged war going on (so they think).
Where is all the money to pay for these little boys invasions going to come from? History will repeat over and over the foolhardiness of American adventure in the middle east during the 20th and early 21st century. None of the people in the Obama admisnitration or the current military possess a high IQ or exhibit any real cognitive abilities. Obama’s IQ is around 120. IQs among those now serving in the Congress, Senate, and Executive branch, are twenty points below those of the legislative and executive branches of 30 or 40 years ago.
I have to shake my head when I hear these elites so casually discuss the merits of whether or not to bomb Iran. To drop high energy explosives down on people who have done us absolutely no harm. To burn their flesh, eviserate their guts, and smear their blood and brains over their land. We talk about this so casually and,of course, they can hear our discourse. And then we wonder why they don’t trust us enough to lay themselves bare to our will.
Iran is condemned for trying to develop a deterence to our own evil. America has gotten itself a ruling class that is ruthless and hypocritical, our ally Israel, the source of much of these destructive urges, wants to do the deed with nuclear weapons. They have become a monster nation. We are not far behind.