Expert: U.S. Attack on Iran Would Have Terrible Consequences
Wednesday, November 28, 2007 12:41 PM
By: Jeff Burt
Iran may be militarily impotent but a U.S. first strike would throw the Middle East into chaos while leaving Iran?s nuclear program largely intact, an Israeli military expert tells Newsmax.
Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history and strategy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem says that, for all its bombastic rhetoric and saber rattling, there is little Iran can do to protect itself from an attack by the United States or to strike back in retaliation.
Iran has an underfunded defense budget, ill-equipped ground and air forces, and a limited number of unreliable Shihab III missiles that, while technically able to reach Israel, do not pose much of a threat, van Crevald says.
Still, any first strike by the U.S. would be ill-advised, van Crevald warns.
A U.S. air attack using cruise missiles and manned aircraft aimed at knocking out Iran?s large, entrenched nuclear program would succeed only in exacerbating conflict in the Middle East and put U.S. troops in Iraq at risk. ?The scenarios are really terrible,? he says.
Iran?s leadership is in a panic, with the September bombing by Israel of a nuclear installation in Syria and implied threats by the U.S. of similar action in Iran. In response, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other officials are ?lashing out in all directions,? van Creveld tells Newsmax.
?What makes me think they are in a panic was this commander of the Revolutionary Guard [Gen. Mahmoud Chaharbaghi] talking about 11,000 rockets that they would fire at a single moment,? he said. ?Either he?s mad or he?s trying to bluff or he?s in a panic, because militarily, it makes no sense whatsoever.?
There is little substance behind the threats. Van Creveld estimated Iran?s defense budget at about $6.3 billion?just more than half of Israel?s and less than 2 percent of the United States??hardly enough to fund a conventional force. However, that could be an indication that Iran is using its money to build its nuclear capability.
?My interpretation, and I?m not the only one who thinks this way, is that actually what has happened is that Iran has neglected its conventional defenses in favor of the nuclear program,? van Creveld says.
This is where it would become difficult for the United States, he adds. Unlike nuclear programs in Syria and Iraq, the Iranian facilities appear to be large, well concealed and well dispersed. The chances of the United States being able to knock out the entire program is remote.
?We are talking about a large program, and probably not all the components of the program are known,? van Creveld said. ?Since you don?t know them, you cannot hit them.?
Still, if struck, there is little Iran could do to retaliate. Its air force is a sorry collection of old U.S.-made aircraft left over from the Iran-Iraq War, some Russian-made fighters and homebuilt Saeqeh jets modeled after the American F5 Tiger, an aircraft last updated in the 1960s and rejected by the U.S. Air Force, he says.
Iran could foment terrorist attacks against the U.S. and Israel, but, at best, they would be ad hoc events with little strategic impact, he adds.
?Coordinated terrorist attacks are very, very difficult to organize,? van Creveld tells Newsmax. ?There may be an occasional act of terrorism ? but it won?t make any difference. Tomorrow, if Iranians blew up the White House, would it make any difference in the United States? ability to wage war against Iran? Not really.?
Militarily, the greatest risks would be to U.S. troops in Iraq, he said. Those soldiers are configured to fight an insurgency, and a conventional attack by Iranian forces could result in some U.S. troops being isolated and in danger.
?You can well imagine a scenario where they are surrounded, and where the U.S. would use tactical nuclear weapons to extricate them,? van Creveld says.
Iran also could start trouble ? what the Iranian commander could have been referring to when he talked about the 11,000 missiles ? among Persian Gulf states, which would cause the price of oil to skyrocket and have an immediate impact on the West, he says.
The question that needs to be answered by U.S. and Israeli officials is whether they need to be concerned about a nuclear Iran. Historically, every time a country?whether it was the Soviet Union, Israel, Pakistan, India or others?was to test a nuclear weapon, the United States warned of terrible consequences.
?Each time any country wants to go nuclear, the United States will invent some kind of reason why that country does not deserve nuclear weapons,? van Creveld says. ?And each time it goes nuclear, nothing happens. It?s all rubbish.?
The argument that a nuclear Iran is more of a threat than those other countries makes no sense.
?In the whole of history, who was more crazy than Josef Stalin?? he asks. ?In the whole of history, who was more crazy than Mao Tsetung? I don?t see that Ahmadinejad is more crazy than them. Maybe to the contrary. I listen to Ahmadinejad?s rhetoric, but I cannot think of even one case since 1980 and the Iranian Islamic Revolution that this country has behaved irrationally.?
In the end, what may be best for the U.S., Israel and the rest of the region is for negotiations with Iran, van Creveld said. The West should accept a nuclear Iran and draw the country into talks about setting up some kind of regional security program. Western powers also need to ensure that the Gulf states are protected, a move that he believes already is underway, possibly through a deal with the United States.
?The greatest threat coming from Iran is not to Israel,? he says. ?Israel can take care of itself. The United States has nothing to fear from Iran. It is the Gulf states that have to fear.?
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