Costs of Another War

The Center for American Progress brings us this summary of some of the costs of starting another war, this time with Iran:

COSTS OF WAR: IRAN TERROR FORCE 'MAKES AL QAEDA LOOK LIKE KINDERGARTEN': A recent Washington Post report noted "a growing consensus that Iran's agents would target civilians in the United States, Europe and elsewhere" if attacked; planning for such a response "is consuming a lot of time" throughout the U.S. intelligence apparatus, one senior official said. "It's a huge issue," another said. Former U.S. counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke stated recently that Iran would be likely to respond to an attack with a three-pronged terrorist assault: "terrorism by Hezbollah, which they own and operate as a subsidiary; terrorism in Iraq, where they have tens of thousands of militia under their control; and terrorism by their special forces call the Kudz Force, that in the past blew up the American Air Force base at Khobar. All three of these organizations make al Qaeda look like a kindergarten." Clarke concluded, "We’ve thought about military options against Iran off and on for the last 20 years and they’re just not good because you don’t know what the end game is."

COSTS OF WAR: AIR STRIKE WOULD 'ALMOST CERTAINLY SPEED UP' IRANIAN NUKE PROGRAM: A military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities would not likely delay the program, but "almost certainly speed it up," as occurred after the 1981 Israeli preemptive strike on Iraq's nuclear facilities. After the Israeli strike, with its nuclear ambitions fully exposed, Iraq stepped up its weapons development dramatically, according to Iraqi defector Khadir Hamza. "At the beginning we had approximately 500 people working, which increased to 7,000 working after the Israeli bombing," he said. According to Carnegie Endowment nonproliferation expert Joseph Cirincione, "the bombing set back Israel more than Iraq" by further harming its international reputation while "making Iraq appear a victim of Israeli aggression." Similar dynamics are at play in the current impasse with Iran.

COSTS OF WAR: 'WHAT WILL 1.2 BILLION MUSLIMS THINK THE DAY WE BOMB IRAN?': A report published in February by the Oxford Research Group determined "that attacks on Iranian facilities, most of which are in densely populated areas, would be surprise ones, allowing no time for such evacuations or other precautions," and thus leading to hundreds or thousands of civilian casualties. Moreover, planners also currently debating launching attacks from Iraq or using Iraqi airspace, which could "exacerbate the political cost in the Muslim world." Analysts fear a military strike would "rally the Iranian public around an otherwise unpopular regime, inflame anti-American anger around the Muslim world, and jeopardize the already fragile U.S. position in Iraq." As one former Pentagon advisor asked Seymour Hersh, "What will 1.2 billion Muslims think the day we attack Iran?"

A NUCLEAR REGIME CRISIS, NOT A NUCLEAR WEAPONS CRISIS: The "consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies" is that Iran is "about a decade away" from acquiring a nuclear weapon, meaning that the situation today is "not a nuclear bomb crisis, it is a nuclear regime crisis." The Bush administration's Iran strategy should reflect this reality. The first priority of U.S. officials should be to form a strong global front to demand that Iran curb its nuclear ambitions or risk further international isolation. Iran's latest actions -- demanding that the U.N. Security Council stop investigating its nuclear program and announcing it will not abide by the Security Council's directive that it cease uranium enrichment -- have helped unite the international community; new reports of the Bush administration's aggressive war planning will likely reverse that tide. Also, the United States should come to the table and engage Iran directly in bilateral talks over its nuclear program, an option it has consistently rejected despite numerous opportunities. As Council on Foreign Relations expert Ray Takeyh notes, current U.S. policy "of relentlessly threatening Iran with economic coercion and even military reprisals only empowers reactionaries and validates their pro-nuclear argument." A "more adroit American diplomacy could still dissuade Tehran from crossing the nuclear threshold" by persuading Iranian pragmatists of the many benefits of abandoning their nuclear ambitions.

SHOW US THE INTEL: "Fortunately, we know more about Iran's nuclear program now than we ever knew about Iraq’s," Cirincione writes. But we don't know nearly enough. Following a briefing last week on Iran intelligence, Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee, said, "I remain skeptical — lots of unanswered questions." As we learned the hard way in Iraq, intelligence about Iran's nuclear development is key to determining the appropriate policy -- and facts are already being manipulated. At a recent meeting of the International Atomic Energy Association, for example, "US officials called several journalists to tell them that in the briefing IAEA officials were 'shocked,' 'astonished,' 'blown-away' by Iran's progress on gas centrifuges." In fact, nuclear experts reported that "IAEA officials have said they were not surprised by Iran's actions," prompting one IAEA official to say the U.S. statements came "from people who are seeking a crisis, not a solution." As Cirincione advises, "The key now is to get all this information on the table for an open debate. ... An accurate and fully understood assessment of the status and potential of Iran’s nuclear program is the essential basis for any policy."