What happens after the U.S. bombs Iran
Bill Kristol didn't like what he heard from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff yesterday when he said that military strikes and a nuclear-armed would be "equally destabilizing." Writes Kristol:
But Mullen's formulation of geostrategic equivalance ignores a massive difference between the two outcomes: Even assuming the degree and kind of "destabilization" would be the same in both the cases of attack and appeasement (which I don't think would be so), one scenario--attack--leaves Iran without nuclear weapons, at least for now; the other--appeasement--means Iran would have nuclear weapons going forward. Which unstable outcome is less damaging to U.S. interests? I think the answer is pretty clear: An attacked Iran that does not have nukes.
One problem with the formulation above is Kristol's seeming belief that any U.S. military strike on Iran does not escalate. Bombing a few Iranian nuclear sites - even if it provokes some blowback against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan - is a more palatable option than having to wage a broader war against the country, but no one can guarantee that one step does not lead to another. Imagine, for a moment, that a few days after the U.S. airforce reduces Natanz to rubble, a few American airliners are blown up at the hands of Hezbollah terrorists. The U.S. would have to respond. As Reuel Marc Gerecht argued in Kristol's own magazine, it would be unwise to think that a "limited" military operation against Iran wouldn't blossom into something much larger - in part because we couldn't be sure we did enough damage to Iran's nuclear capability without some kind of ground presence and because Iranian reprisals could force our hand.
America would win any military confrontation with Iran, but as we've seen in both Iraq and Afghanistan, that's almost besides the point. Military victories are transitory without some kind of durable post-war settlement - and Washington's track record in this regard doesn't inspire one with a lot of confidence. So I think we can read Mullen's "geo-strategic equivalence" as a plaintive cry against having a third Humpty Dumpty in the Middle East that the U.S. military is somehow supposed to patch together again.
