The Foreign Service Journal, June 2007

coupled with the question of the regime’s willingness to escalate the conflict, could well lead to a full-blown war. Put another way, if the United States initiated air strikes against Iran’s known nuc- lear facilities, would it stop there, or would it carry on to suspected nuclear as well as chemical and biological weapons sites? Would an air campaign attempt to elimi- nate Iranian air defenses, which have been piled up around the known nuclear sites? What about Iranian command and control nodes? The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps? Ultimately, once Iran responded to a U.S. attack, would Washington target the Iranian leadership? Both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency have conducted war games on Iran; and, as Newsweek magazine reported in September 2004, “no one liked the outcome.” Retired General Barry McCaffrey went so far as to argue on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “the notion that we can threaten them with conventional air attack is simply insane.” The essential problem is that even if the strikes began as targeted, it is unlikely that Washington would be able to prevent or even control the escalation of such a conflict. Iran holds a number of cards to play against the United States in response to a military attack. First among them is the prospect that Iran’s political and mili- tary penetration of Iraq could lead to a rapid escalation of violence in that country, and might well plunge the entire Persian Gulf region into chaos. Iran’s Cards In particular, both the political and the security situa- tions in Iraq could become nightmarish if the United States were to attack Iran. In January, powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr announced that if Iran were attacked, Sadr would throw his support behind Iran. Although it is possible to overstate Iran’s influence in Iraq (and, in particular, Iraqi Shiites’ degree of fealty to Iran), it is important to recognize the influence that Tehran has cultivated in Iraq, and the implications that a U.S. assault on Iran could hold for the stability and viability of the Iraqi government. There is also the potential for a U.S. military meltdown in Iraq. As the old military adage holds, “Am- ateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics.” American supply lines through southern Iraq would be highly vulnerable to sabotage and attack, which could quickly imperil the entire occupation. Nearly all of the supplies that come into Iraq are transported from Kuwait through southern Iraq, in supply trucks driven by foreign civilians. As Patrick Lang, former head of the Near East bureau at the DIA, has pointed out, it is a difficult and resource-consuming endeavor to protect supply convoys over hundreds of miles of hostile territory. Another risk inherent in a U.S. attack against Iran is the potential for Tehran to lash out against Israel. Mohammad-Ebrahim Dehqani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, stated in May 2006 that “wherever America does something evil, the first place that we will target will be Israel.” It is no secret that both the Iranian leadership and public see Israel and the United States as close allies, and would look upon an attack by one of them as an act of war by both. Last summer’s violence in Lebanon and northern Israel underscored one potential Iranian tactic in such a situation: the use of proxies such as Hezbollah to attack Israel. Even in that limited conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, the former was able to achieve surprising tac- tical successes against hard Israeli targets. Forty-seven Israeli tanks were struck by anti-tank missiles, and 15 or 16 of them were completely destroyed. More notably, Hezbollah’s ability to use a radar-guided missile to disable an Israeli warship on patrol in the Mediterranean Sea indicated a new level of sophistication in its attacks. Even attacks inside the United States are not incon- ceivable. Terrorism analyst Daniel Byman says that Iranian attacks against the U.S. homeland are “less likely” than attacks against U.S. interests overseas, but “far from impossible.” A former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, stated after the 9/11 attacks that Hezbollah was the terrorist group with the largest presence inside the United States. An attack F O C U S 34 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 7 Uncertainty about the scope of the Iranian program, coupled with the question of Iran’s willingness to escalate the conflict, could well lead to a full-blown war.