This Plan Is Not a Plan; It's Just a Plan

President Bush has said that he does not plan to attack Iran – but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have a plan for an attack on Iran. The BBC is reporting today that “U.S. contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure.”

If such an attack is launched it would apparently hit air and naval bases, missile sites and command centers. The “target sets” include uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz, Isfahan, Arak and Bushehr, with B2-delivered, bunker-busting bombs being used at Natanz, where facilities are more than 25 yards underground. The U.S. and the UN have urged Iran to stop its uranium enrichment program or face further economic sanctions. The UN deadline is tomorrow.

The BBC reports that there are two triggers for such an attack. The first is “any confirmation” that the Iranians are developing a nuclear weapon, which they deny. The second trigger is any “high-casualty attack” on U.S. forces in Iraq that can be traced to Tehran. Both triggers raise cause for serious concern, given the administration’s trigger-happy track record.

Regarding the first trigger, we’ve watched this administration “confirm” with almost absolute certainty the development of a nuclear weapons program once before, in Iraq. Problem: there was no such program; the administration was wrong. Regarding the second trigger, the U.S. can’t decide what it can and cannot trace to senior Iranian leadership. At various times this month certain U.S. sources have claimed they had evidence Iran was providing weapons to Shia militias. Other U.S. sources said they only had proof that some weapons being used in Iraq were "made in Iran". General Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he didn’t know if the Iranian government "clearly knows or is complicit" in providing any weapons.

Which sources will the president listen to as he fingers that second trigger? Will those sources be more reliable than the sources he relied on in 2002 and 2003? This is an issue of trust. Should we trust that the president and his administration will receive sound intelligence and make equally sound judgments in assessing and responding to any risk that may be presented by Iran? We have ample reason to withhold that trust; what reason do we have to maintain it? It’s no longer enough to just say, “He’s our commander-in-chief; we should trust him.” “Game over” on that one.

I don’t fault the administration or the Pentagon for having a detailed contingency plan for military action against Iran. Given the state of affairs in the world, the region and in Iran itself, we’d be foolish not to have such plans on the shelf and ready to use if needed. But that readiness begs more questions than it answers – are those plans fit-for-purpose and reasonable in scope; have the right “triggers” been identified and well defined; will those triggers be properly and clearly confirmed; will we employ those plans only in reaction to aggressive and threatening Iranian action; will we employ them preemptively to prevent Iranian action that we believe is or may be aggressive, threatening and imminent based on sound intelligence; will we go forward unilaterally or with international support – or, will we once again stand up alone and yell “Ready, fire, aim!” like we did in 2003?

One doesn’t have to be a Middle East analyst in order to perceive potentially catastrophic consequences following a U.S. attack on Iran. In fact, it’s hard to see how those consequences could be anything other than catastrophic, at least in the Middle East and other Islamic areas of the world, if not in America.

It’s time to engage the Iranian government in direct talks, as we’ve successfully done in a number of other highly charged international conflicts over the last 50 years. There’s no excuse for failure in this situation. We’ve had enough failure in Washington over the last few years. Let’s try something that has a higher probability of success than just blowing up some big chunk of another country.