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Iran has learned from what happened to the Iraqi's Osirak plant and has spread its nuclear research facilities across the country & placed them in populated areas to make the civilian costs of any attack on them high. As James Fallows has noted, attacking the facilities is unlikely to permanently disable them, just delay things a few years.
From WindsofChange.net, a possible alternative: take out Iran's oil infrastructure. "Petroleum amounts to 80 percent of all Iranian exports, 45 percent of the country's GDP, and 60 percent of the government's revenues. With the economy there already rickety, any shortfall in oil sales would tempt financial, economic, and consequently political suicide for Iran's current regime." And unlike their nuclear facilities, their oil mechanism is extremely vulnerable.
I'd also be dropping arms and Special Forces guys into Kurdish Iran. The Iranians have been extremely paranoid about the Mujahedin-e Khalq, who were never a real threat to the regime. Perhaps its time to give them something worth worrying about, like a resurgent Kurdish separatist movement.
(The main thing I don't like about that plan is putting Kurdish Iraq in possible jeopardy via Iranian military retaliation. The Peshmerga have been able to keep out the Iraqi insurgents, but a professional military is a whole different matter, even with U.S. air cover.)
The counterpoint to this is that actively opposing Iran like this opens the possibility of them unleashing their proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc. against us both directly - terrorist strikes - and indirectly through attacks against the Persian Gulf oil flow (remember the tanker wars of the '80s?). That would pretty much put our economy back in the toilet, and devastate the economy of places like China which are much more dependent on Gulf oil than even we are.
One other point: there's a lot of talk about Iran's President, Ahmadinejad, being "insane" or "nuts." Aside from it being probably untrue, and not a useful way to look at things anyway, he's really irrelevant to the whole problem. The real power in Iran, who controls the military and really who gets to be allowed to be President, is the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
From WindsofChange.net, a possible alternative: take out Iran's oil infrastructure. "Petroleum amounts to 80 percent of all Iranian exports, 45 percent of the country's GDP, and 60 percent of the government's revenues. With the economy there already rickety, any shortfall in oil sales would tempt financial, economic, and consequently political suicide for Iran's current regime." And unlike their nuclear facilities, their oil mechanism is extremely vulnerable.
I'd also be dropping arms and Special Forces guys into Kurdish Iran. The Iranians have been extremely paranoid about the Mujahedin-e Khalq, who were never a real threat to the regime. Perhaps its time to give them something worth worrying about, like a resurgent Kurdish separatist movement.
(The main thing I don't like about that plan is putting Kurdish Iraq in possible jeopardy via Iranian military retaliation. The Peshmerga have been able to keep out the Iraqi insurgents, but a professional military is a whole different matter, even with U.S. air cover.)
The counterpoint to this is that actively opposing Iran like this opens the possibility of them unleashing their proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc. against us both directly - terrorist strikes - and indirectly through attacks against the Persian Gulf oil flow (remember the tanker wars of the '80s?). That would pretty much put our economy back in the toilet, and devastate the economy of places like China which are much more dependent on Gulf oil than even we are.
One other point: there's a lot of talk about Iran's President, Ahmadinejad, being "insane" or "nuts." Aside from it being probably untrue, and not a useful way to look at things anyway, he's really irrelevant to the whole problem. The real power in Iran, who controls the military and really who gets to be allowed to be President, is the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
