Iran

Do we need to bomb Iran? Should we? Can we? Why is the topic even being discussed?

These are some of the issues we're discussing in many of my classes -- and in many informal conversations, at the cafeteria or pub. There are several military personnel on my course and they all uniformly agree that it's a logistical near-impossibility. Not only is the US military stretched so thin already, the Iranians have spread the critical components of their nuclear program around the entire country. Estimates in the media say "two dozen," but what we're hearing is that it's more in the range of 75 to 160, and could be as high as 350 different sites! Not only is that an incredibly high number of targets -- of which you must hit every single one, without fail -- but they're buried in extremely deep, extremely fortified bunkers. You'd need to pound each site multiple times, and even then you're not guaranteed success.

The US military guys are saying that it'd require at least two carrier groups. The UK military guys don't want to even speculate because they don't think such an operation is remotely feasible. We just don't have the men or equipment. The men and equipment we do have are already fatigued and stressed to exhaustion. Some soldiers are returning for their fourth tours.

Another problem: the US administration is conflating Iran and terrorists, just like they did with Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Iran and Al-Qaeda are sworn enemies. They're not allied! They have radically different visions. It'd be foolish to think of all Muslims the same, just as it was foolish to think in the '50s that there was some grand Chinese-Soviet alliance. There wasn't! Bush made a speech last week where he spoke of "terrorist networks and terrorist states," a linking that tends to blur the two together into one vague, scary "terrorist."

The Iranians are quite rational actors, even if we don't see them as such. They've been in power since 1979. They want to stay in power. They're not going to turn their capital or their country (of 70 million people) into a desert of glass just for a chance to launch one bomb... at who? Israel? The Israelis have 200 nukes and could decimate Iran, even without US help -- which they would receive in an instant. Who else would the Iranians target -- Europe? That's a ludicrous reason -- the Europeans are the ones restraining the US, the Europeans are the ones holding the flush Iranian bank accounts -- but it's a reason that Bush is citing as an excuse to build a missile defense system in Europe. Would the Iranians nuke the US? First off, they're nearly a decade away from having that sort of capability. Secondly, we faced off with the Soviets for 40 years and maintained our cool. We ought to keep our composure now, too.

If you want to read a very good article about this topic, check this out.