Will we attack Iran?

Signs point toward such a disturbing development

In 2015, the New York Times published an oped urging President Obama to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities and provide “vigoroU.S. American support for … regime change in Tehran.” President Trump recently named that article’s author, John Bolton, as his new national security advisor.

Last May, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo vowed to launch an “unprecedented pressure campaign against the Iranian government to ensure Iran never acquires nuclear weapons.”

Also in May, Trump withdrew America from the Iran nuclear deal, establishing a dangeroU.S. path toward war: As re-imposed sanctions bite deeply, Iran might execute a rapid breakout to nuclear weapons-building, leading to U.S. or Israeli retaliation.

Last July, President Trump heard a speech by Iran’s President Rouhani warning that a U.S.-Iran confrontation would be “the mother of all wars.” Trump responded with an all-caps tweet: “Never, ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have suffered before. We are no longer a country that will stand for your demented words of violence & death. Be cautious!”

On Sept. 24, Bolton announced U.S. troops would remain in Syria “as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders and that includes Iranian proxies and militias.” This risks bringing the 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria into conflict with 10,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces.

Speaking before an anti-Iran hate group on Sept. 25, Bolton threatened: “Let my message today be clear. We are watching, and we will come after you. There will indeed be hell to pay.”

On Oct. 3, Pompeo announced U.S. withdrawal from the 1955 U.S./Iran Treaty of Amity urging international friendship.

It’s the Iraq War all over again: The president and his national security officers seem bent on forcibly changing a Mideast regime.

Congress is already responding. Sens. Udall, Leahy, Feinstein, Durbin, Sanders, Merkley, Heinrich and Murphy introduced legislation “to prohibit the United States from expending funds which could lead to war with Iran without express approval from Congress, as required by the Constitution.” According to Udall, “Every day, the president and his saber-rattling foreign policy advisors … are inching us closer to conflict.”

Fifty former national security officials led by Joe Cirincione, a non-proliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, recently challenged Trump’s hawkish moves. Their statement charges the policy is based on military threats that “provide no exit ramp to avoid collision,” and that this policy “risks that neither side will be able to prevent a small unintended clash from spiraling into a large, strategic conflict.” Signers include former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former chairs of both the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees, 15 former ambassadors and 12 former generals and admirals.

An attack on Iran would be even more disastrous than the Iraq War. It wouldn’t be the mere “several-day” endeavor that Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton has suggested. Air strikes would destroy nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, Arak and Isfahan, but would be unable to destroy Iran’s many centrifuge manufacturing facilities that could restart its nuclear program within a few years. Thus, only land invasion, regime change and occupation can permanently remove Iranian nuclear weapons.

For reasons that go beyond America’s war weariness, Iran is nearly impossible to invade. Iran is three times larger than Iraq, and cities such as Tehran have huge “strategic depth,” similar to the way Moscow is located within Russia. Nearly impassable mountains guard Iran’s eastern, northern, and northwestern borders, while open seas that make invasion difficult in the face of precision-guided weapons surround the remainder.

Invasion from the sea would entail a long march across deserts and mountains before reaching strategic cities. Iran’s huge ballistic missile inventory could strike U.S. troops anywhere in the region, including Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. Iran could block the Straits of Hormuz, through which 30 percent of the world’s oil passes, inflicting global economic disruption and compelling other great powers to intervene and stop the war (I doubt if any would join us). Even a serious threat of closure would create economic shockwaves. Given America’s distaste for battlefield deaths, Iran will go all out to kill Americans. Pentagon war games, staged against an asymmetric strategy based on swarms of small boats and missiles, have not gone well. For these and many other reasons, military experts have warned against war with Iran, and Presidents Bush and Obama have wisely followed their advice.

Let us resolve not to once more make the mistake of launching a “war of choice.”