Clark and Simon against attacking Iran

Richard Clarke and Steven Simon have a very significant op-ed
in today’s NYT that argues forcefully against the idea of the US
bombing Iran in attempt to halt the Iranian nuclear program.

The piece is significant mainly because of these two men’s
credentials.  Clark is the fairly famous guy who was national
coordinator for security and counterterrorism in both the Clinton and
the early GWB administrations, and Simon was senior director for
counterterrorism in the Clinton-era National Security Council.

They build on the experiences they both went through dealing with the
Iran issue in the mid-1990s, noting that on that occasion: “In essence,
both sides looked down the road of conflict and chose to avoid further
hostilities.”

And they conclude this about the present situation:

Now, as in the mid-90’s, any United
States bombing campaign would
simply begin a multi-move, escalatory process. Iran could respond three
ways. First, it could attack Persian Gulf oil facilities and tankers —
as it did in the mid-1980’s — which could cause oil prices to spike
above $80 dollars a barrel. [Or,
much more ~HC]

Second and more likely, Iran could use
its terrorist network to
strike American targets around the world, including inside the United
States. Iran has forces at its command that are far superior to
anything Al Qaeda was ever able to field. The Lebanese terrorist
organization Hezbollah has a global reach, and has served in the past
as an instrument of Iran. We might hope that Hezbollah, now a political
party, would decide that it has too much to lose by joining a war
against the United States. But this would be a dangerous bet.

Third, Iran is in a position to make our
situation in Iraq far more
difficult than it already is. The Badr Brigade and other Shiite
militias in Iraq could launch a more deadly campaign against British
and American troops. There is
every reason to believe that Iran has
such a retaliatory shock wave planned and ready.

No matter how Iran responded, the
question that would face American
planners would be, “What’s our next move?” How do we achieve so-called
escalation dominance, the condition in which the other side fears
responding because they know that the next round of American attacks
would be too lethal for the regime to survive?

Bloodied by Iranian retaliation,
President Bush would most likely
authorize wider and more intensive bombing. Non-military Iranian
government targets would probably be struck in a vain hope that the
Iranian people would seize the opportunity to overthrow the government.
More likely, the American war
against Iran would guarantee the regime
decades more of control.

Good judgment there, guys.  You don’t have to “love” the mullahs
who rule in Teheran to reach this conclusion…  You just need to
have some basic grasp of the realities of regional and global power
dynamics.

Of course, what they didn’t do in their article, which I wish they had
done, was point out that even if using a bombing campaign or other
major military escalation against Iran is a really, really bad option–
still, there are other options which might help people deal with
concerns they (we) still have about the Iranian nuclear program…. As
I have noted here on a number of occasions, there are a number of
urgent diplmatic paths that need to be followed.  One is working
intensively through and with the IAEA.  Another is opening
diplomatic talks with Teheran with an open-ended agenda to include the
nuclear question along with others…

Do I think these are the kinds of “diplomatic” options that the Bushies
are now pursuing?  No, sadly, I don’t.