IRAN: Stop nukes by bombing oil wells, neocons suggest

Why attack Iran's nuclear facilities when striking their oil infrastructure would be much more effective in the scope of a US-led preventive war? Sure, oil prices might skyrocket and the world economy might collapse. But, hey, that's the price you pay for security.

Such a scenario is not a nightmare or an outtake from a remake of Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove," but part of a serious recommendation made by two neoconservatives in case sanctions fail to persuade Iran to abandon its enrichment of uranium, a process that can be used to make nuclear weapons or fuel for peaceful energy production.

In a July report titled "The Last Resort: Consequences of Preventive Military Action Against Iran," and published by the neoconservative Washington Institute for Near East Studies, scholars Patrick Clawson and Michael Eisenstadt advocate military strategies that would ultimately discourage Tehran from pursuing any future non-civilian nuclear activities:

Because the ultimate goal of prevention is to influence Tehran to change course, effective strikes against Iran's nuclear infrastructure may play an important role in affecting Iran's decision calculus. Strikes that flatten its nuclear infrastructure could have a demoralizing effect, and could influence Tehran's assessment of the cost of rebuilding. But the most effective strikes may not necessarily be against nuclear facilities. Iran is extraordinarily vulnerable to attacks on its oil export infrastructure.... The political shock of losing the oil income could cause Iran to rethink its nuclear stance—in ways that attacks on its nuclear infrastructure might not.

And if an attack on the oil facilities of a country with some of the world's largest reserves leads to a huge spike in oil prices, sends gas prices up to 10 bucks a gallon and brings economic ruin in the rest of the world, the report continues, well, so be it:

To be sure, in a tight world oil market, attacking Iran's oil infrastructure carries an obvious risk of causing world oil prices to soar and hurting consumers in the United States and other oil-importing countries.... If the choice is between higher oil prices and a Middle East with several nuclear powers, higher oil prices and reduced economic growth are not clearly the greater evil.

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy is a famous Beltway think tank. It was founded in 1985 by Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel.

The 45-page report reads like a manual on how to wage a successful preemptive war on Iran. It discusses "key political and contextual questions" pertaining to a preventive war outside the usual frame of strictly military-technical considerations.

The report assesses different scenarios of military action by stressing the importance of "favorable" international, regional and local political environments. An attack against Iran won't necessarily lead to a nationalist backlash if it's done at the right time and in the right way. They draw such conclusions from civilian reaction to bombing runs during World War II and the Iraq-Iran War:

After a few days of bombing, civilians realized that as long as they stayed away from military facilities or potential strategic targets, they could go about their business reasonably safely, even during air raids. That fact is likely to undercut the intensity of the reaction to any preventive strike.... The challenge, should the United States decide to go that route, would be to conduct military and information campaigns that mitigate a nationalist backlash and that undercut and isolate the regime, while at the same time signaling the Islamic Republic's leaders that the United States is prepared to make a deal if they abandon their nuclear program.

The authors go on to dismiss Iranian responses to a strike and present "remedies" to every one of these possible responses, from attacking U.S. assets in the Gulf to attacking Israel through Lebanon and sponsoring terror or even waging a full-scale war. They argue that the U.S. should strike Iran before Israel does because the Jewish state "would have many disadvantages to the United States."

The report concludes that no matter how costly, a policy of prevention remains a better option than deterrence:

If the potential risks, challenges and consequences of prevention (as previously outlined) are daunting, the risks and challenges of deterrence are even more so. Deterrence is not an easy, low-risk alternative. The cost/benefit calculus pertaining to prevention versus deterrence as a means of dealing with Iran's nuclear program may be one of the most complex and difficult policy choices facing U.S. policymakers today, given the uncertainties of the prospects for success and the possible price of failure for each.

— Raed Rafei in Beirut

Photos: Patrick Clawson, top, and Michael Eisenstadt. Credit: Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

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Comments

[sunflyer]

How about we invest in renewable sources of energy and drill for oil off the east and west coasts and in the gulf all at the same time and then Iran will no longer be a consideration for the U.S. , and no bombs will have exploded either. I know I know it makes too much sense!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Sage]

I suggest you Google the word Israel and see how many hits you get. Then Google "common sense" and see how many. Compare the two numbers.
A former ambassador to Israel? LOL Why am I not surprised. Israel exerts FAR TOO MUCH influence on America and her govt leaders.

[Jon]

Without a doubt, this is incredibly foolish. Two gentlemen are willing to derail the world economy to keep Iran from having nuclear weapons? While it may not be a popular viewpoint, the sophistication needed to develop nuclear weapons often coincides with the sophistication needed to realize the repercussions of using them.

-Jon
www.MicroFinanceChallenge.org

[joel paige]

Madge...you are now in 1939 London....what would you do?...Join Chamberlain on his peace mission to Berlin?...Join the Nazi Party and join in the fun?...Talk to Hitler and politely ask him to leave the poor Czechs alone or we will put sanctions on you?....or resist and fight?...
the Jews dint fight back and lo and behold, 6 million dead ones...How many people live in Israel?....what 10 million or so?....Germany was a small country in the midsts of Europe...or perhaps you are really an anti semite who masquerades as a Progressive...

[Majid]

I think this is only a pretext for weakening Iran and postponing the military action until a further date let's say 10 yrs later when Iran has lost all its potence and has no military budget and people are starving and have no medicine. This is almost a repeatition of Iraq senario with a different begining. Somtimes it is good to step back and look at roots and causes that brought us to the point that we actually need to seriously deal with Iran and do not have many good options. What level of threat a relatively weak country like Iran could pose toward the rest of the world? and why is it a given that either we kill them or they are going to kill us and therefore preemption is required? I leave the duty of cursing the proposers of this idea to others but in a scientific level of evaluating this proposal I wonder if anybody cared about the poverty following the destruction of oil facilities will bring about; especially in a country like Iran that depends largely on oil revenue. Then the next thing is that democracy will not nurture in a society that people are all falling under the poverty line. Although the US administration has its own way of injecting democracy into historically undemocrat countries but it is always proved itself as a wrong method. Democracy have to find fertile ground to flourish. One major ingredient of democracy is that the country shall have a sizable majority of middle income people who have stepped over the poverty issues of bread and butter and have started to care about themselves and their freedom and the way they are treated. All sanctions in the world and oil embargo or destruction of oil facilities are only going to make people hate outsiders who have caused all these miseries for people of Iran. They will not understand your ill-justified preemption of any kind since they have no sympathy about things that you dear the most. They are sure able to use a little bit more of social freedoms and improved quality of life but they will not blame the government if foreign-imposed sanctions and attacks parallizes the Iran's economy and ruin their lives.

[kick-oil.org]

How about a solution that doesn't cause economic ruin worldwide? Within less than a decade, the United States could end its dependence on foreign oil, send oil prices plummeting and cause the mad mullahs of Iran to run out of money. The technology to do this has existed since the 1920s. What is lacking is simply political will. Join kick-oil.org and help get America off petroleum for good!

[joe johnson]

I suppose these neocon facsist nazis figure that killing more people in their war on terror will make them safer. They know nothing in terms of foreign policy and how the population will react. Their dream is of an Israel that owns all the land from the mediterranean to Iran. I hope these nazi pigs suffer the fate they advocate on others.

[Thaid]

We should bomb Iran and then they will be our friends. It worked on the Japanese.

P

[BiBiJon]

And the Oscar for intelliegent, pragmatic, and humane foriegn policy goes to ...... Iran.

http://www.bibijon.org/iranimage/

[ralph l. seifer]

This is the identical thought process that prevailed in Washington at the outset of the attack on Iraq.

For decades the U.S. relied on the doctrine of containment espoused by George F. Kennan, and that proved amazingly effective for all, except for the prevaricators who dreamed up the Tonkin attack.

Iran is certainly not the threat regionally or internationally that the Soviet Union represented for so long. The difficulty with containing the Iranians lies in the fact that the collective IQ of the policy makers in Washington is far to the left of zero, speaking algebraically. If these "sages" think the U.S. public won't be rioting in the streets when gas hits $10, they are under the same type of horrible misapprehension they were under after being thoroughly briefed (by Curveball) on Iraq's so-called weapons of mass destruction.

Let's try a modicum of rationality and intellect before we invade another middle east country. Has George Bush ever heard of Kennan??

[Smart Peace]

US should be smart enough not to let itself be manipulated by bunch of Israeli think tanks in Washington. Israel tries to abuse US resources for its own selfish interests even though in the long run that would be against the US interests. Why should the Israelis care about the US interest as long as they stand to gain?

[Miro Markovic]

Let us all try to encourage our representatives in Congress
to debate this issue and decide together what is the best for the USA and the world at large. Iran is relatively small a country and should be respected as the official member of the UN.
If the Congress doesn't find a good solution, then the UH is the next place to deal with an international problem. Anythig else, as it was shown in the near past, is not good for the USA and its people. It is not good for Israel either.

[Sergei Etonhurst]

...And this measure is supposed to be a "preventative war" ? So bombing economic targets that will lead to starvation of 70 million civilians is actually not war according to these two psychopaths whose pictures grace this rather bizarre article. Amazing! And these two are in a "think-tank" and not in an asylum. Amazing! And these people are trying to portay the Iranians as terrorists! Amazing!

[Madge]

From 1945 to 2005, the United States attempted to overthrow 50 governments, many of them democracies, and to crush 30 popular movements fighting tyrannical regimes. In the process, 25 countries were bombed, causing the loss of several million lives and the despair of millions more.

Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister said “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” This is exactly the maxim being adopted by Israeli leaders who are spreading lies, disinformation and half-truths about Iran in order to get the madman in Washington D.C. and his gang of neocons and war criminals to attack another Muslim country on Israel’s behalf.