Unthinkable (35 page)

However, I do not dismiss this option, either. Although I ultimately do not agree with it, the use of force against Iran is a serious alternative to containment and has a great deal to commend it.

To start with, the United States military is far more powerful than anything Iran could hope to defeat. Since 1991, the U.S. armed forces have engaged in a half-dozen military campaigns that have given them tremendous experience in how to wage modern warfare. They have worked out many of the bugs and learned how to overcome much of the friction that hinders military operations. In contrast, Iran's military is small, weak, technologically backward, and tactically maladroit. Iran is not helpless, and the Iranians could do some damage to American forces—especially if the United States were as cavalier about a war with
Iran as we were about the invasion and occupation of Iraq. But barring some unforeseeable development, there is little doubt that the United States would “win” the military aspects of any conflict with Iran. Wars are unpredictable, but the balance of power between America and Iran lies overwhelmingly in favor of the United States.

The use of force against Iran also offers the prospect of a “complete” solution to the problems of Iran—not just its nuclear program but also its support for terrorism and other efforts to oppose the United States and cause trouble in the Middle East. This is because we could choose to use sufficient force to invade Iran, topple the clerical regime, and help build a new political system in its place. I don't know of a single American in favor of this idea, but the possibility is inherent in the resort to force.

Setting aside the discomforting question of an invasion, using force also holds out the alluring possibility that Washington could act unhindered by other diplomatic constraints, such as the views of allies and adversaries. The need to work within the constraints and preferences of other nations has been a major source of frustration to many Americans. A great many countries do not share our perspective on Iran. The need to rely on diplomacy, even covert action, has forced us to take those views into consideration and to limit our actions. Many Americans fear that these other countries do not understand the threat posed by Iran, and thus their insistence on restraint, on patience, and on accommodation of the Iranians will prove disastrous. For Americans holding such a belief, the military option is the only way for the United States to shed these diplomatic shackles and act to guarantee its own security and the safety of our allies.

The use of force could also enable the United States to pursue an active policy toward Iran, one in which our disproportionate strength promises to allow us to dictate the course of events—“retain the initiative,” in military parlance—in most circumstances. Likewise, within the military realm, we will always have what is called “escalation dominance” over Iran, the ability to ratchet up the fight to another level by adding more or different kinds of forces. If Iran seemed to be “winning” any tactical engagement,
we could always send reinforcements or hit them in a different area. We would have a good chance of controlling the fight.

Because of America's unmatched military capabilities and the size and scope of our armed forces, there are a range of different military options we might pursue. This chapter looks at the three principal ways in which the United States might employ force against Iran: a blockade, air strikes to destroy its nuclear program, and a full-scale invasion.

The use of American force against Iran might prove to be the answer to all of our problems with Iran, but it also might prove to be a disaster. There are serious costs and risks involved in the use of force, even if the United States employs only limited force, such as an air campaign directed at Iran's nuclear program. We may well have to pay those costs and risks even if we secure all the advantages of force, and we could end up paying all of those costs and risks without getting any of the advantages. That is what concerns me.

A naval blockade is one possible military action the United States might employ against Iran. The United States certainly has the capacity to impose a blockade on Iran, but it's just not clear why we would want to do so. A blockade is an act of war that has little likelihood of solving American problems with Iran.

The international, multilateral, and unilateral sanctions are already imposing severe costs on Iran. A blockade might help some, but probably not much. As a result of the sanctions alone, Iran's maritime trade fell by more than 50 percent in 2012, measured by ships calling at Iranian ports.
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Where there are sanctions there is smuggling, but in the case of Iran, what smuggling there is does not seem to be offering significant relief to the Iranians.
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Much of the smuggling moves overland across Iran's long, porous borders, and more of it would shift to that route in the event of a naval blockade.
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As I noted in chapter 6, Iranian oil exports have fallen significantly as a result of the American and European sanctions (from
2.3 million barrels per day on average in 2011, to just 1.1 million barrels per day on average in 2012) and the major impediment to further diminishing Iran's oil exports is not smuggling, but rather the unwillingness of countries such as China and India to adopt the sanctions themselves.
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Looking at the imports side of smuggling, the inflated fuel prices caused by the sanctions and Tehran's own bizarre edicts that penalize “imports” to try to build autarkic domestic industries have both undercut smugglers.
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Iran continues to smuggle prohibited items related to its military and WMD programs, but these are already covered by the Proliferation Security Initiative, an agreement among ninety-eight countries (including the United States, which proposed the idea) that authorizes the states to search all vessels believed to contain prohibited items and seize any contraband.
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No further blockading authority would be needed to deal with this area of harmful smuggling. Finally, a great deal of what is smuggled into Iran consists of drugs and alcohol. It would be difficult to justify an expensive blockade that could spark diplomatic problems and even firefights to shut down Iran's illicit trade in these goods.
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Recent history suggests that when UN sanctions are respected, they do not need military enforcement; when they aren't, military enforcement does little to solve the problem. The Iraq sanctions from the 1990s are a perfect example of this phenomenon. Initially, when the world supported the containment of Saddam, the sanctions were respected by Iraq's trading partners with little need for enforcement. Where they weren't—by Turkey and Jordan, for instance, who demanded special exemptions—or later, when more and more countries began to ignore them, the United States was unable to enforce the sanctions militarily even though the U.S. Navy maintained a blockade of Iraq. The problem was simple: enforcing the sanctions meant picking fights with Iraq's trading partners, not with Iraq, and Iraq's trading partners were America's trading partners, including China, Russia, Egypt, and France. With only a few exceptions, the United States was not going to intercept their ships, planes, and trucks, or even the goods themselves, for fear of creating a diplomatic incident, a trade war, or worse.

One could make the case that a blockade imposed to enforce the current sanctions or harsher, future sanctions would have a useful psychological effect on Tehran. But it is unlikely that a blockade would move Tehran to abandon its nuclear program. Given the kind of hardships Iran has already shrugged off, it seems far-fetched to believe that a blockade—a passive military operation that would remain unseen off Iran's shores—could succeed instead. Still, any use of military power to enforce the sanctions could appear more menacing to the Iranians than relying on sanctions alone. In particular, it might suggest to Tehran that more offensive military action might be forthcoming. In that sense, a blockade could be a temperate shot across Iran's bow.

The utility of such a signal would have to be measured against the potential downside of a blockade. As the blockading state typically prevents the ships (and planes and trucks) of third countries from moving to and from the blockaded country, blockades create severe problems between the blockader and those third parties, even causing wars. American history is replete with examples of the diplomatic complications of blockades. From the War of 1812 (sparked by the British blockade of Napoleonic Europe), to the American Civil War (in which the Union's blockade of the South nearly brought British intervention on the side of the Confederacy), to World War I (when the U-boat blockade was a key element bringing the United States into the war against Germany), Americans have faced unwanted conflicts as a result of blockades.

A blockade of Iran would probably have little impact on the nuclear impasse itself.
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It would not solve our problems on its own, or even in conjunction with toughened sanctions. It would add little in a material sense to the impact of the sanctions, and any psychological impact could be offset by the problems it might create between the United States and other countries still trying to trade with Iran.

All that said, there are two possible rationales for a blockade. First, as noted, it might send a psychological signal to Iran to get serious about making compromises on its nuclear program and accept a deal with the P-5+1 before the West shifts to more aggressive methods. In that sense,
it might be useful as part of a last step to get the Iranians to agree to a negotiated settlement before we face the ultimate choice between war and containment.
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Alternatively, one could make a cynical case for a blockade that it might provoke Iran to do something foolish that would turn international and domestic opinion so strongly against it that much larger uses of force would become more palatable. Historically, when Western (particularly American) naval forces are in proximity with Iran's Revolutionary Guards, and especially when those Western naval forces take actions that the Iranians see as antithetical to their interests, the Guards have a habit of acting in ways not always authorized by Tehran. Some of these incidents could have escalated quickly had the U.S. government not moved to rein in its military forces. If one were looking to create the context for war with Iran, a blockade might do the trick, although even that is not a guarantee.

When most people discuss “the American military option” toward Iran, what they mean is air strikes, and specifically air strikes against Iran's nuclear program. Air strikes would be a direct blow to the Iranian nuclear program and could do severe damage, unlike a blockade, which would have little more than symbolic value. Yet they also offer the tantalizing prospect of allowing the United States to eliminate Iran's nuclear facilities—and hopefully knock Iran's nuclear weapons bid back to square one—without the exorbitant costs of a full-scale invasion. Especially in light of America's experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, that would appear to be a key criterion for any military move against Iran.

The concept behind such an operation is straightforward. Its minimal goal would be to destroy the key facilities of Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile facilities. In that sense it would be a close parallel to the idea of an Israeli strike. However, the specifics of an Israeli air raid and an American air campaign against Iran's nuclear facilities differ markedly in their military, diplomatic, political, and even economic particulars. These differences make
an American air campaign far more compelling than an Israeli strike.

Compared to what Israel could bring to bear, the United States has more aircraft capable of reaching Iran, our planes would not need to fly through other countries' airspace, and they can carry much bigger and more powerful weapons. The United States can employ huge, long-range bombers such as the B-52, B-1, and B-2 and a vast fleet of refueling tankers, allowing the bombers to launch from bases in the United States itself, if necessary. America's ability to operate from the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, however, provides a far more convenient in-theater base. These big bombers can also carry many more bombs and much bigger bombs than anything in the Israeli arsenal, including the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which is the only conventional weapon that may be able to destroy Iran's Fordow enrichment plant. The U.S. Navy still has ten enormous
Nimitz
-class aircraft carriers, each one of which typically deploys with thirty-six to forty-eight F-18 fighter-bombers and twenty-eight support aircraft. Although three carriers are normally on station around the world at any time, in times of crisis, the Navy can surge four or even five if necessary. Another advantage that the United States has over Israel is a vast fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or “drones”) and large numbers of air- and sea-launched cruise missiles. The United States has basing rights at airfields in Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE—and at times has also been able to use facilities in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Oman. If those states allow American aircraft to use their bases, additional wings of American Air Force fighters and strike planes (F-15s, F-16s, F-22s, F-117s, and someday F-35s) can be added to the lineup for an air campaign against Iran.