Unthinkable (75 page)

77.
 Eli Clifton, “NBC/WSJ Poll: Americans Prefer Diplomacy over Military Action to Prevent Iran from Acquiring Nukes,”
ThinkProgress.com
, March 5, 2012. The original poll can be found at
http://online.wsj.com/documents/wsjnbcpoll-03052012.pdf
.

78.
 “CNN Poll: Americans Favor Diplomacy Against Iran,”
CNN.com
, February 15, 2012, available at
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/15/cnn-poll-americans-favor-diplomacy-against-iran/
.

79.
 Ali Akbar Dareini, “Iran Threatens to Hit Turkey If US, Israel Attack,” Associated Press, November 26, 2011; Ali Akbar Dareini, “Iran Threatens Attacks on US Bases in Event of War,” Associated Press, September 24, 2012; Lee Ferran, “Iran: We Can Hit US Bases in ‘Minutes,' ” ABC News, July 6, 2012; Marcus George, “Iran Threatens to Target U.S. Bases If Attacked,” Reuters, June 3, 2012; “Iran Vows ‘Proportionate' Response to Any Strike,” Agence France-Presse, June 2, 2012; Parisa Hafezi and Mitra Amiri, “Iran's Khamenei Warns U.S., Israel on Atom Site Attacks,” Reuters, November 10, 2011; Parisa Hafezi, “Iran Threatens to Hit Any Country Used to Attack Its Soil,” Reuters, February 5, 2012.

80.
 Hafezi and Amiri, “Iran's Khamenei Warns U.S., Israel on Atom Site Attacks”; “Iran's Leader: War Would Be Detrimental to U.S.,”
CNN.com
, February 3, 2012, available at
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/03/world/meast/iran-warning/index.html
.

81.
 Kroenig, “Time to Attack Iran.”

82.
 For a concurring assessment by an outstanding analyst, see Kahl, “Not Time to Attack Iran,” p. 170.

83.
 See for instance, Ephraim Kam, “An Attack on Iran: The Morning After,”
Strategic Assessment
15, No. 1 (April 2012): 24.

84.
 Greg Miller, “Iran, Perceiving Threat from the West, Willing to Attack on U.S. Soil, U.S. Intelligence Report Finds,”
Washington Post
, January 31, 2012.

85.
 For a concurring view, see Rieger and Schiller, “Pre-Emptive Strike Against Iran: Prelude to an Avoidable Disaster?,” p. 134.

86.
 Kenneth M. Pollack, “A Series of Unfortunate Events: A Crisis Simulation of a U.S.-Iranian Confrontation,” Middle East Memo No. 26, Saban Center
for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, October 2012, available at
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/11/us%20iran%20crisis%20simulation%20pollack/us%20iran%20crisis%20simulation%20pollack%20paper.pdf
.

87.
 Rick Gladstone, “Noise Level Rises over Iran Threat to Close Strait of Hormuz,”
New York Times
, December 28, 2011; Ramin Mostafavi, “Iran Threatens to Stop Gulf Oil If Sanctions Widened,” Reuters, December 28, 2011; Brian Murphy and Nasser Karimi, “Iran Revives Gulf Threats After EU Sanctions,” Associated Press, January 24, 2012; David E. Sanger and Annie Lowrey, “Iran Threatens to Block Oil Shipments, as U.S. Prepares Sanctions,”
New York Times,
December 27, 2011.

88.
 Kroenig argues that the United States should try to convey to Iran during a strike that the U.S. is purposely refraining from hitting these targets to make the point clear to Tehran. I tend to doubt that they will believe anything we tell them in the midst of an attack on their nuclear sites. See Kroenig, “Time to Attack Iran,” p. 83.

89.
 Again, for concurring assessments, see Anthony H. Cordesman, “Iran, Oil, and the Strait of Hormuz,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 26, 2007; Caitlin Talmadge, “Closing Time: Assessing the Iranian Threat to the Strait of Hormuz,”
International Security
33, No. 1 (Summer 2008): 82–117.

90.
 McNally, “Energy Brief: Managing Oil Market Disruption in a Confrontation with Iran,” p. 1.

91.
 Ibid.

92.
 Ibid., p. 7.

93.
 Ibid, pp. 5–7; the International Energy Agency tracks global reserves of oil and its regularly updated figures can be found at
http://www.iea.org/netimports.asp
.

94.
 Alan Greenspan, “Monetary Policy and the Economic Outlook,” Testimony Before the Joint Economic Committee, U.S. Congress, April 17, 2002, Federal Reserve Board, available at
http://www.federalreserve.gov/BoardDocs/Testimony/2002/20020417/default.htm
; Hillard G. Huntington, “The Economic Consequences of Higher Crude Oil Prices,” Final Report, EMF SR 9, prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy, October 3, 2005, p. 24; Jad Muawad, “Rising Demand for Oil Provokes New Energy Crisis,”
New York Times
, November 9, 2007; Keith Sill, “The Macroeconomics of Oil Shocks,”
Business Review
, Q1 (2007): 21, 26.

95.
 On the potential problem of war termination with Iran, former national coordinator for counterterrorism Dick Clarke describes how the U.S. government discussed these expected dynamics when the Clinton administration
was considering a military attack on Iran in response to the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996. See Richard A. Clarke,
Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror
(New York: Free Press, 2004), pp. 112–21; on American frustrations with Iran over the Tanker War, see David Crist,
The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran
(New York: Penguin Press, 2012), pp. 256–379.

96.
 This section draws heavily on passages I cowrote with Michael O'Hanlon in Kenneth Pollack, Suzanne Maloney, Daniel Byman, Michael O'Hanlon, Martin Indyk, and Bruce Riedel,
Which Path to Persia? Options for a New Strategy Towards Iran
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2009).

97.
 Steven R Ward,
Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2009), pp. 323–24.

98.
 Bruce Hoffman, “Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq,” RAND Corporation, June 2004; Kalev I. Sepp, “Best Practices in Counterinsurgency,”
Military Review
85, no. 3 (May/June 2005): 9; James T. Quinlivan, “The Burden of Victory: The Painful Arithmetic of Stability Operations,”
RAND Review
, Summer 2003, available at
http://www.rand.org/publications/randreview/issues/summer2003/burden.html
. Also, James T. Quinlivan, “Force Requirements in Stability Operations,”
Parameters
(Winter 1995): 56–69.

99.
 Iraq had a population of 27 million in 2007–2008, thus the canonical ratio would call for a force of 540,000 security personnel. If the three provinces of the Kurdistan Regional Government are excluded (they were secure and therefore did not require extensive Coalition assistance), this arithmetic produces a population of 23 million, requiring about 460,000 security personnel. During that time, the United States maintained 163,000 troops, another 50,000–100,000 security contractors, about 11,000 allied troops and 200,000–300,000 ISF personnel for a total of 425,000–575,000 security personnel. Although U.S. troops working with small numbers of competent and reliable Iraqi security forces were able to secure large swaths of the population within six to twelve months of the start of the Surge, the change in U.S. strategy and tactics, the end of the Battle of Baghdad, and the onset of the Anbar Awakening (all of which occurred in late 2006 and early 2007), they were not able to secure the entire country, and most of southern Iraq—with nearly 40 percent of Iraq's population—lay beyond their control. Only when the total of U.S. and competent Iraqi troops exceeded 450,000–500,000 in early 2008 were these forces able to expand their control to the south without jeopardizing the gains made in the center
and west. Figures from the “Iraq Index,” Brookings Institution, available at
http://www.brookings.edu/about/centers/saban/iraq-index
.

100.
 Ward,
Immortal
, pp. 323–24.

101.
 Amy Belasco, “The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11,” RL33110, Congressional Research Service, March 29, 2011, p. 1.

102.
 Pollack, “A Series of Unfortunate Events.”

1.
 The text of Senate Joint Resolution 41 can be found at
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112sjres41es/pdf/BILLS-112sjres41es.pdf
.

2.
 “Press Conference by the President,” Office of the Press Secretary, White House, March 6, 2012, available at
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/06/press-conference-president
.

3.
 “President Obama's 2012 Address to U.N. General Assembly (Full Text),”
Washington Post
, September 25, 2012.

4.
 “State of the Union 2013: President Obama's address to Congress (Transcript),”
Washington Post
, February 12, 2013.

5.
 This simple distillation of the concept ultimately derives from George Kennan's famous “Long Telegram” and his “Mr. X” article in
Foreign Affairs
. For the latter, see George Kennan (writing as “X”), “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,”
Foreign Affairs
25, No. 4 (July 1947). For later expansions on this basic conception, see for instance, John Lewis Gaddis,
Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War
, revised and expanded ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); John Lewis Gaddis,
We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); John Lewis Gaddis,
The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Raymond Garthoff,
Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan,
rev. ed. (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1994); Charles Gati, ed.,
Caging the Bear: Containment and the Cold War
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1974); Michael J. Hogan,
The End of the Cold War: Its Meaning and Implications
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Walter LaFeber,
America, Russia and the Cold War 1945–2007
, 10th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006).

6.
 Karim Sadjadpour and Diane de Gramont, “Reading Kennan in Tehran,”
Foreign Affairs
90, No. 2 (March/April 2011).

7.
 Thomas Donnelly, Danielle Pletka, and Maseh Zarif, “Containing and Deterring a Nuclear Iran: Questions for Strategy, Requirements
for Military Forces,” American Enterprise Institute, December 2011,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_documents/111205_AEI%20Iran%20report%20text%20final%20Dec%206%202011.pdf
, p. 10. Let me reiterate that this study is superb. It is insightful, balanced, nuanced, erudite, and constructive. It is well worth reading for those interested in delving deeper into the topic of containment and particularly its challenges.

8.
 On this topic, the definitive work remains Gaddis,
Strategies of Containment
.

9.
 On Dual Containment of Iran, for the definitive statement by the Clinton administration, see Martin Indyk, “The Clinton Administration's Approach to the Middle East,” Keynote Address at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's Soref Symposium, May 18, 1993. See also Martin Indyk,
Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), pp. 149–66; Kenneth M. Pollack,
The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America
(New York: Random House, 2004), pp. 259–65.

10.
 Richard A. Clarke,
Against All Enemies; Inside America's War on Terror
(New York: Free Press, 2004), pp. 103–104; Pollack,
The Persian Puzzle
, pp. 270–75; James Risen, “Gingrich Wants Funds for Covert Action Against Iran,”
Los Angeles Times
, December 10, 1995, p. 1; David Rogers, “Gingrich Wants Funds Set Aside for Iran Action,”
Wall Street Journal
, October 27, 1995, p. 1.

11.
 On contemporary Pakistan, its internal dysfunctions and obsession with India, see Stephen P. Cohen,
The Idea of Pakistan
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2006); Stephen P. Cohen et al.,
The Future of Pakistan
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2006); Pamela Constable,
Playing with Fire: Pakistan at War with Itself
(New York: Random House, 2011); Ahmed Rashid,
Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan
(New York: Viking, 2012); Riedel,
Deadly Embrace
.

12.
 Paul K. Kerr and Mary Beth Nikitin, “Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation and Security Issues,” RL34248, Congressional Research Service, February 13, 2013, p. 4; Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, “Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories, 1945–2010,”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
66, No. 4 (July/August 2010): 78; Karen DeYoung, “New Estimates Put Pakistan's Nuclear Arsenal at More than 100,”
Washington Post
, January 31, 2011; David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt, “Pakistani Nuclear Arms Pose Challenge to U.S. Policy,”
New York Times
, January 31, 2011.

13.
 David E. Sanger and Choe Sang-Hun, “North Korea Issues Blunt New Threat to United States,”
New York Times
, January 24, 2013.

14.
 Tom Miles, “North Korea Threatens South with ‘Final Destruction,' ” Reuters, February 19, 2013.

15.
 “North Korea Threatens to Reduce South Korea's Government ‘to Ashes,' ” NBC News online, April 23, 2012, available at
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/04/23/11346567-north-korea-threatens-to-reduce-south-koreas-government-to-ashes?lite
.