Taking The Point On Iran

Among my "lay specialties" here at the Asylum is intelligence. No, not the sort of intelligence the Left claim they have. I'm referring to intelligence of the clandestine/military type. Well, thanks to Michelle Malkin, she points to Dafydd at Big Lizards. Dafydd put forth an idea that should be looked at seriously. It's called the "Guillotine Gambit."
(HT: Michelle Malkin/Big Lizards)

http://biglizards.net/blog/archives/2005/12/free_the_mind.html

ElBaradei, of the IAEA, agrees with Israel: Iran is close to completing their work on nuclear weapons. There are just months away from completing this phase of nuclear proliferation. When they have nukes, we know what may come next. Iranian hosta...President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stated that he wants to wipe Israel off the face of the planet with nukes, and that would be the primary purpose for them. Iran's nuclear project is not defensive, and it's not for creating electricity. It's for weapons, and those weapons are likely to be pointed at us, our allies in Europe, or at Israel. The problem comes in shutting down the programs.

Iran, despite it's backwards, Dark ages thinking, isn't stupid. They took a page from Saddams mistake when Israel bombed Osirak back to the stone age in 1981. No, they've split up their facilities. It's impossible to nail them all at once with airstrikes, especially with the new missiles just sold to Iran from Russia (thanks Putin, we sure do appreciate your continued complicity with terrorist friendly states).

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051202/wl_nm/russia_iran_arms_dc
The Vedomosti business daily cited military sources as saying Iran would buy 29 TOR-M1 systems designed to bring down aircraft and guided missiles at low altitudes.

The paper, calling it the biggest sale of Russian defense hardware to Iran for about five years, said Moscow and Tehran had already signed the contract.

There are nine sites that Iran supposedly has. They are as follows:

Tehran Nuclear Research Centre - radioisotope production, waste management
Kalaye Electric Company (Tehran) - Uranium enrichment; supposedly dismantled
Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant - breeder reactor
Isfahan (Esfahan) Nuclear Technology Centre - several reactors and laboratories; fuel manufacturing
Natanz - Uranium enrichment
Karaj - storage of radioactive waste
Lashkar Ab'ad - Uranium laser enrichment plant
Arak - reactor, radioisotopes, heavy-water production
Anarak - waste storage

So many different sites, and possibly more that have yet to be found, means that we have a lot of targets that need to be shut down. The diplomatic route is too dangerous. It's much like our talks with North Korea. We can't trust North Korea just like we can't trust Iran. The murderous ideology both nations represent means that we have to proceed, but utilize the Reagan philosophy of "trust, but verify."

The route that Dafydd proposes is a tricky one. The Guillotine Gambit would mean we--our coalition against terror--would have to mount an offensive in two ways. First, we'd have to create a revolution, like the one in Ukraine a year ago. The key problem to this idea is that we would have to utilize the SOG teams that the CIA put back together at the beginning of the GWOT. Relying on the CIA right now isn't something that brings me hope. That agency has more problems than the DNC, and just could not be entirely reliable.

So, that means we have to fall back on our allies. That means Mossad and MI-5. Mossad might be willing to undertake the operation. MI-5 might be a bit trickier. Again, like the US, Britain has a policy of not wanting to assassinate heads of state. Granted, they wouldn't be killing the president of Iran. They'd be taking out the group that controls the president, and keeps a leash on Hezbollah.

We'd be taking out the ayatollah, and the radical mullahs. They hold all the cards. The key to toppling the Iranian theocracy, and likely their nuclear ambitions, lie within the theocrats that control the nation. Now, there are problems to this move, as well. Plausible deniability, as Dafydd brings up, is going to be one we're going to have to make absolutely sure protects the US. Second, who takes control? We have the students over there that dislike their regime. Richard Miniter, in his book "Shadow War," has stated that the protests and demonstrations the students mount happen quite frequently. And they love Western culture. Western democracy is iffy; we're not sure they would embrace that. But it's likely that should they be the ones who take control, they won't go right back to the regime that oppressed them for so long.

Either way we look at it, Iran is slowly becoming a problem. Not only to the region, but to the Western world, as well. Should these nuts make a nuke, even a crude one, nothing will stop them from either lobbing it at Israel, or smuggling it into Israel or some other US-friendly nation by Hezbollah, and detonating it. The fallout alone will cost countless thousands of lives, and should it happen in Israel, there's no doubt that they'll retaliate against Iran. And I'm not talking about an air-strike. I'm talking about a nuclear retaliation. Israel has stated that an act of nuclear terrorism against them will prompt them to retaliate in like kind.

Our efforts in the Middle East might go up in smoke, literally, should such a scenario be unveiled to the world. We have to proceed carefully with Iran. This is a game of chess on a much larger board, and with consequences equally as dire as those during the Cold War. The difference is that Iran doesn't have a nuclear stockpile the equivalent of the Russians. At least not one we're aware of. Of all the options on the board right now, I favor the Guillotine Option in concert with either clandestine, on the ground strikes at the nuclear facilities, or in concert with a colaition led series of airstrikes against their facilities.

It was bad enough that Saddam was pursuing these weapons. He wasn't as close as we and the world thought, but he was well on his way. Iran is much closer, and that makes the game much more dangerous. Iran can't be allowed to gain the ability to make nuclear weapons. To do so would deliver to the world the worst possible nightmare. A terrorist-sponsoring state with the capability of delivering a weapon of mass destruction to freedom-embracing nations across the globe. And they need not deliver it on the end of a missile. A storage container on a ship would work just as easily as a missile would.

Publius II