Pressure is building on Iran. This week Europe agreed to new sanctions and President Bush again suggested something more serious – possible military strikes – if the Islamic Republic doesn't bend to the will of the international community on its nuclear program.
But increasingly military analysts are warning of severe consequences if the US begins a shooting war with Iran. While Iranian forces are no match for American technology on a conventional battlefield, Iran has shown that it can bite back in unconventional ways.
Iranian networks in Iraq and Afghanistan could imperil US interests there; American forces throughout the Gulf region could be targeted by asymmetric methods and lethal rocket barrages; and Iranian partners across the region – such as Hezbollah in Lebanon – could be mobilized to engage in an anti-US fight.
Iran's response could also be global, analysts say, but the scale would depend on the scale of the US attack. "One very important issue from a US intelligence perspective, [the Iranian reaction] is probably more unpredictable than the Al Qaeda threat," says Magnus Ranstorp at the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defense College in Stockholm.
"I doubt very much our ability to manage some of the consequences," says Mr. Ranstorp, noting that Iranian revenge attacks in the past have been marked by "plausible deniability" and have had global reach.
Of course, it really is unfathomable, at least to me, that the US would actually attack Iran with airstrikes, etc given the tinderbox the Middle East / West Asian region currently is with US troops occupying Iraq and Afghanistan to either side of our next prospective target. The likelihood that such an attack - even in the form of very "limited, targeted" strikes on hardened military position - is near zero for 2008, but a Neoconservative oriented McCain administration could perceivably pull the trigger some time next year.
Beyond the mortal carnage such an assault would inevitably lead to, it really is questionable how the US could afford to pay for what would more than likely end up as a long-term military campaign and occupation, complete with guerilla attacks that really would make the Iraqi front to the west look like a cakewalk.
Although, its been five years since we've fulfilled the Ledeen Doctrine and thrown a defenseless Third World country against the wall to remind the world community that we "mean business."
On the other hand, the Pentagon's MO is always to attack only countries that cannot legitimately fight back in order to ensure a short and decisive destruction and a propaganda victory for mass media consumption.
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