Commentary: Don’t Attack Iran – By Charles V. Pena (Defense One) / December 22, 2021
Those who advocate strikes against nuclear sites are underestimating the risks and overestimating the benefit.
A growing number of influential voices in Washington are advocating military action against Iran to prevent Tehran from continued expansion of its nuclear program that could eventually lead to that country having a nuclear weapon. Reportedly, the Biden administration has reviewed military options to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Advocates of a military strike to take out Iran’s nuclear capability often point to Israel’s successful 1981 attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility, which prevented Saddam Hussein from developing a nuclear warhead. As a superpower with the world’s largest and most capable military, one would think that we could do the same with relative ease. And with relative impunity since Iran has no long-range strike capability to retaliate against the American homeland (which raises the question of how and why Iran is considered a threat to U.S. national security).
But taking out Iran’s nuclear capability would not be Osirak redux. It would be a more complex military operation. While the U.S. military is certainly capable of such an operation, it would not be a “cakewalk”—as some predicted the U.S. military invasion of Iraq would be (and we all know how that turned out).
To begin, Iran’s nuclear program isn’t a single target. The three primary targets are Arak (which is actually several industrial complexes), Bushehr (nuclear power plant), and Natanz (fuel enrichment). But there are probably at least a dozen targets in total: reactors, power stations, production, conversion, and enrichment; mining; waste management; and research and development. Some of these targets are hardened, deeply buried facilities. And some of them are co-located near heavily populated areas—so the likelihood of collateral civilian casualties would be relatively high.
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