Although the Obama administration appears to be currently focused on resisting calls to increase sanctions on Iran while negotiations over its nuclear program are in session, the far more dangerous “military option” is alive and well in Washington despite its many pitfalls.

Senator-elect Tom Cotton (R-Ark) told a group of reporters on Dec. 3 that Congress should be considering the “credible use [of] force,” against Iran, according to the Free Beacon. Cotton, who described the ongoing negotiations with Iran as “a sham,” also said the US should consider arming Israel with bunker-buster bombs that could penetrate Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.

A day later, Dennis Ross, Ray Takeyh and Eric Edelman—all of whom have served in the US government—echoed their previous calls for a greater threat of force against Iran in the Washington Post. “The president would be wise to consult with Congress on the parameters of an acceptable deal and to secure a resolution authorizing him to use force in the event that Iran violates its obligations or seeks a breakout capacity,” they wrote Dec. 4.

While the White House has considerably lowered the volume on its insistence that “all options are on the table,” it has maintained the mantra. “We will not let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon—period,” said Vice President Joe Biden on Dec. 6, according to Reuters. “End of discussion. Not on our watch.”

Of course, President George W. Bush considered the so-called “military option” against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in 2006, but rejected it. The notion of “surgical” air strikes is also absurd: Bush was told taking out Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would require a massive effort. And despite its repeated threats, Israel does not have the capability with which to launch such an effort (unless it resorted to nuclear weapons). Only the US has a sufficiently robust conventional capability to do so. However, the military challenge is greater now than it was back in 2006.

The Military Option Lives On

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared in June 2014 that the Americans “have renounced the idea of any military actions.” Khamenei was likely reacting to President Obama’s West Point speech a week before. Referring to military action in general, the president said: “Just because we have the best hammer does not mean every problem is a nail.” However, asked for a reaction to Khamenei’s assertion, the White House highlighted another passage in the speech on Iran: “…we reserve all options in order to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

Possibly extending the threat into the future, leading Democratic presidential contender for 2016 Hillary Clinton repeated the mantra in March of this year. While arguing that the diplomatic process with Iran should be given enough time to work, she also said she was “Personally skeptical” of Iranian intentions. “[L]et’s be clear, every other option does remain on the table,” she added, according to Haaretz.

Various American pundits (be they hawks or those who are sensitive to Israeli views on the matter) have since labored to keep the military option alive. Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz declared in TV interview on Nov. 24 that if diplomacy fails, the US “should use its military facilities and ability to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.” Israel also keeps the heat on the US by threatening to strike Iran if Washington fails to do so. Dershowitz, however, noted correctly that an Israeli attack “could only ‘set back’ Iran’s nuclear program for a few years.”

Israeli vs. US Military Action

Aside from using nuclear weapons, Israel does not have an effective military option. The extreme range involved greatly reduces the power of Israel’s military reach. Additionally, finding routes to and from the target is dicey, with most countries certain to oppose use of their airspace.

Flying through Turkey is a leading option, but Ankara would not grant permission, and could try to interfere. Cooperation between Israel and some of the Arab Gulf states (sharing the same dim view of Iran) reportedly has increased. But if a southern corridor were available—even if GCC aerial tankers refueled Israeli aircraft en route—the Israelis could only severely damage a few key targets.

By contrast, with access to the Gulf and the Indian Ocean, plus its bases close to Iran, the US could mount a vastly more powerful effort. Carrier battle groups, other naval assets, and large numbers of US Air Force combat aircraft could be used.

Iranian Military Preparations

Despite its public scoffing, Iran is aware that it could face a robust military assault at some point and has thus been busy since 2006 upgrading its ability to deter or confront an attack.

Iran has upgraded its military radar and missile systems with assistance from sources such as China and Russia, as well as a variety of equipment and expertise secured through less official channels. Iran has also enhanced its large arsenal of MiG-29 fighter aircraft and several formerly Iraqi SU-24 fighter-bombers that were flown to Iran at the outset of the First Gulf War. Iran’s navy has also expanded its inventory of missile-equipped fast-attack vessels to confront a more modern navy with an asymmetric threat: “swarming” enemy vessels (overwhelming them with large number of smaller craft).

The most significant upgrade to Iran’s air defense was to have been the potent Russian S-300 anti-aircraft/ missile system. However, in response to a greatly tightened UN arms embargo in 2010, Moscow suspended the deal.

The Iranians claim to be developing their own version of the S-300 (the “Bavar-373”). They also claim to have produced their own models of a host of other foreign air, air defense and naval systems.

Many of these claims are dubious, but as with its own impressive Shahab series surface-to-surface ballistic missile program, Iran has developed quite impressive technical military-related capabilities. Some upgrades and even a few of these indigenous systems probably have been successfully fielded. I observed impressive Iranian improvisation while covering the Iraq-Iran War from inside the US Intelligence Community. For example, the Iranians kept advanced US F-14 fighters in the air far beyond all Pentagon estimates, even producing a large number of parts needed for basic maintenance and minor overhauls.

The Military Option Means War

Veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh consulted me regarding his April 2006 New Yorker article about Bush administration deliberations concerning the military option against Iran. My intelligence credentials told me that Hersh had assembled, effectively, a surprising amount of information on the military planning presented to President Bush.

Hersh revealed that one military option included the use of tactical nuclear weapons to destroy vast underground facilities such as the Natanz enrichment complex. Hersh felt, as I do, that as a part of such planning, extreme options are provided, but such an option was highly unlikely to be part of any realistic plan.

Nonetheless, even conventional US military action to destroy or cripple all known Iranian sites, would, as envisaged in 2006, involve a massive effort. The Pentagon anticipated as many as 2,000 military combat flights and a possible duration of a week. Why? In order to reach Iran’s array of nuclear sites, US combat planes would have to smash Iranian defenses leading to and around the targets.

Although unclear back then, it is also possible once the US had decided to go that far, it would also hit Iran’s ballistic missile inventory, manufacturing, and test sites. This would target what many US officials (and the Israelis) consider a potentially nuclear-related sector of Iran’s military-industrial complex: a formidable delivery capability.

Iran would hardly remain passive while all this unfolded. Therefore, the US would have to anticipate attempts by Iran’s large air force to intercept incoming US aircraft, as well as sea- and air-borne attacks against US naval vessels. Finally, dozens of Iranian anti-ship missile sites flanking the Strait of Hormuz would have to be taken out. Given Iran’s post-2006 military upgrades, US aerial combat missions and the length of the assault would have to be increased. Slugging it out with Iran’s anti-aircraft defenses, confronting its air force, fending off its navy, and striking nuclear targets would effectively add up to war.

Among the many adverse consequences, perhaps the greatest concern would be radioactive contamination stemming from attacking sites near large Iranian civilian populations. The Arak reactor complex and a number of other nuclear-associated sites are close to or practically within Isfahan. The Natanz enrichment facility is less than 30 miles from the smaller city of Kashan. And the Fordow nuclear enrichment complex is situated near over a million people who call the holy city of Qom their home. International outcry over radiation leaks, civilian casualties, and other collateral damage could exceed that resulting from the assault itself.

With so many aircraft missions involved, another is the possibility that a few would be damaged or experience in-flight failures, with aircrew falling into Iranian hands. US diplomatic efforts to secure the return of downed flyers would be inevitable (for which Iran would surely exact a high price).

A particularly ominous result could be the very real possibility of an Iranian break with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in order to pursue—with lots of expertise and perhaps more residual nuclear capabilities than thought—a nuclear weapon, although probably defensive (precisely what such an attack would try to forestall).

Once hostilities are initiated, Iran might also not end them definitively. While Iran might do very little (or nothing) to sustain the military confrontation, the US could be saddled with the seemingly endless task of keeping large air and naval forces in the Gulf as a precaution against potential retaliation, particularly against frightened Arab Gulf states (several of which could have aided the US effort). Such an open-ended commitment and prolonged instability in the Gulf could become a nightmare for Washington—and plenty of other countries around the globe.

The article is a badly organized stream-of-consciousness collage written from an ossified Washingtonian narrative that offers very little, if any, fresh input on actual policy. It is really far more emblematic of the collapse of U.S. regional strategy as opposed to being a new course. And although Stephen Walt has already done a masterful job at debunking the faulty logic of the article in Foreign Policy, it is also useful to consider a few points concerning the overall U.S.-Iran relationship, for they are often either taken for granted from both critics and advocates of current U.S. policy towards Iran, or confused altogether – hence why U.S. policy towards Iran has never really succeeded.

1) The first concerns the efficacy of the dual-track approach, which is what Pollack and Takeyh claim they have advocated for. Broadly speaking, the rationale behind the dual-track approach is the following: faced with a “problem country”, the US, as a matter of policy, would apply economic and/or trade sanctions, either gradually or rapidly, to convey the message to the target country that their policies are unacceptable and need to be changed according to American objectives. At times, the U.S. laces what it deems are in its interests with the moniker of ‘global security’ or ‘the will of the international community’ – however, being a hegemon, the US usually can get few-to-several countries to back its policies, particularly with the sanctions regime. Simultaneously, the US would convey to the country being targeted with sanctions that ‘there is a way out’ – if the country would change policies, there would be vague economic inducements as a ‘reward’. Although this sounds logical from the U.S. side, rarely, if ever, does the target country view the situation in similar fashion. There are a plethora of examples – from Cuba, to Mao’s China, to the Sudan, to Saddam’s Iraq, to Burma, to Syria, and to Iran itself – that suggest that this approach rarely works, primarily because it fails to view the behavior of the target country from the latter’s vantage point. Hence, if a country is being sanctioned for funding terrorism or having a nuclear program, that country might view their own behavior (i.e. the behavior that is eliciting sanctions) as vital for their national security and thus, economic inducements would not work without an overarching political/security architecture that can address the target country’s security concerns. On Iran, the U.S. has never attempted to discuss a broad ranging security framework for the region that would include Iran, and thus this leaves the latter with no choice but to push towards nuclear capacity and to fund and sponsor sub-national groups within the region for protection.

2) The second has to do with the fallacy of the sanctions or war dichotomy, which subscribes that in lieu of actually waging a war on a certain ‘problem’ country, the US will sanction the latter in hopes of behavior change. Yet this reasoning breaks down when transferred to actual policy, as it falsely implies that sanctions can prevent war when at times they actually lead to war (e.g. Iraq, Libya, etc.). On Iran-U.S. relations, earlier this year, I mapped out why Washington’s policy towards Tehran has usually failed. One of my main points was that:

…containment [sanctions and military posturing] and the use of military force are not opposing perspectives but two faces of the same policy, viewpoints that both lie along a continuum principally rooted in hostility. Since 1979, American policy toward Iran has oscillated between these two points, usually landing somewhere in the ambiguous middle. During the later stages of the Iran-Iraq War, the United States actually intervened militarily against Iran. In the war’s aftermath, the Clinton administration employed a dual containment approach, imposing stringent trade and financial sanctions on both Iran and Iraq. Yet whatever its varying strategy — “pure” containment, the use of military force, or the ambiguous middle — American actions have failed to deter Iran from pursuing what it has deemed to be its justifiable policies, including its nuclear program.

In other words, from imposing sanctions, threatening the use of force, or actually using force, the U.S. has utilized all of these policy tools against Iran and none succeeded. Again, these are not individual separate policies, but tactical subsidiaries that comprise one overall strategy, characterized by hostility towards the said country. After 32 years of the same policy of sanctions/threats of war/intervention, one would think that the mainstream U.S. punditry would have fresh approaches, but if Pollack and Takeyh are in any way representative, the poverty of ideas is what currently reigns.

3) The third point has to do with faulty logic of applying “pressure” on a country in order to open up their political space. Usually, states democratize and gradually learn an appreciation of human rights internally when they are allotted ‘private time’ to evolve, without the complications of having a superpower threaten regime change, institute sanctions, and intervene domestically. Rarely, if ever, does a political system move towards political reform under threat of war. The aforementioned examples of Cuba, Mao’s China, the Sudan, Saddam’s Iraq, Burma, Syria, etc. – countries that have been under the sanctions regime for years – clearly indicate that outside pressure does not render democratic governments nor do they inculcate an appreciation of human rights amongst target countries. Pollack and Takeyh try to use South Africa as a template but that is a ruse and utterly dissimilar case with Iran. What happened in South Africa, namely full-blown state apartheid was normatively rejected by the brunt.  of the international community, so much so that civil societies around the world initially stopped ‘doing business’ with the apartheid regime, which gradually forced, from below, their respective governments to match their societies positions. On Iran, while its internal characteristics (i.e. politics, governance, human rights, etc.) are problematic, it is not dissimilar to the domestic contents of many other governments in the world. Thus, expecting varying governments to isolate Iran based upon the very same dynamics that exist in the former is simply unrealistic and naïve.

Moreover, democracy, as the adage goes, is not only a messy process, but also a long-drown out evolution, filled with uncertainty and always susceptible to regression. Most importantly, it is ultimately an affair between two actors: the state and its civil society. In Iran’s case, the most salient example of this was in the 1990s. While the U.S. still kept the sanctions regimen upon Iran and even stopped all Iran-U.S. trade, there was a lessening of tension between both countries (i.e. an end to the talk of regime change and virtually no interference in Iranian domestic affairs) which slowly helped the reformists to attain power in 1997. And while the tenure of the reformists was riddled with inaction and tepidness, in many aspects, the press laws, social constrictions, and the overall political space became relatively relaxed. It was only until the invasion of Afghanistan, the axis of evil premise, the Iraq imbroglio, and most consequently, the collapse of the nescient post 9/11 Iran-U.S. regional cooperation that gave way to the rise of the Iranian neo-conservatives.

4) Fourthly is the specious claim concerning the supposed “outreach” of the Obama administration to Iran.  One of the hallmarks of Pollack and Takeyh’s jumbled article is the utter confusion they possess regarding this subject:

The [Obama] administration started out, properly, by offering to repair relations through a process of engagement. When Tehran rebuffed these overtures, Washington switched over to the path of pressure…

Yet, in the next paragraph they admit that there was very little authentic engagement that differed from the Bush years:

In truth, Obama’s approach to Iran was another variant of the basic strategy embraced by the George W. Bush administration – a carrot-and-stick policy designed to create a combination of incentives and disincentives which would convince the Iranian leadership to give up its nuclear program (and hopefully its support for terrorism and other anti-status quo gambits).

This last statement by Pollack and Takeyh is accurate, but why then construct a supposed ‘new’ Obama “outreach” when essentially the Bush approach never changed?

Equally disingenuous is Pollack and Takeyh’s next assertion that, “… Iran…, refus[es] to consider any limits on its nuclear program.” However, with his recent trip to the U.S., Iranian President Ahmadinejad explicitly said that given a deal with the U.S., Iran would halt enrichment at 20%. This was buttressed by the proposal of Fereydoon Abbasi, the head of Iran’s atomic energy agency, that Iran would allow international inspectors full supervision over the country’s nuclear activities for the next five years – a major concession of sovereignty.

There is much more to consider regarding the contours of this complex interaction between the U.S. and Iran and equally charged critiques do exist on the Iranian side. And unfortunately, most of the much-needed nuance gets subsumed under a simplistic wrong vs. right or good vs. evil narrative that exists in both capitals. Yet, when one sums up both the failed policies that the U.S. and its punditry has pushed on Iran, along with diminishing American influence in the region, a troubled economy at home, economic and strategic challenges on the Iranian side, and the ostensive merging of key areas of interests with Iran and the U.S., one wonders how long the narrative fostered by Pollack and Takeyh will hold.

For starters, Pollack and Takeyh admit that their past prescriptions have been a bust. They take credit for what they call the Obama administration’s “two track” approach, writing that “the two of us were among the very first to propose this policy.” Then they freely admit “it is time to acknowledge that the current version of the two-track policy has failed.” The chutzpah here is impressive: although their own policy recommendations have failed, they think we should continue to respect their insights and follow their advice. It would be hard to find a clearer example of the lack of imagination or accountability that bedevils U.S. policy on this issue.

Second, Pollock and Takeyh present a one-sided narrative of U.S. policy toward Iran that exaggerates the carrots we’ve supposedly offered and overstates Iranian recalcitrance. They argue that the Obama administration started out with a “passionate determination to emphasize carrots,” and claim that “the United States and the international community have offered Iran a path toward a responsible civilian nuclear program … should it conform to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations.” This formulation is at best misleading and at worst simply wrong. Obama & Co. were hardly “passionate” about emphasizing carrots; in reality, the United States made a couple of purely symbolic gestures but quickly reverted to mostly sticks when the symbolism didn’t produce immediate Iranian concessions. Moreover, the United States and its allies have never made Iran a concrete offer; the supposed “path” to a deal was merely a list of topics Washington said it was willing to discuss as soon as Iran agreed to give us what we wanted (i.e., an end to nuclear enrichment).

Read more here.

• The Wall Street Journal: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Emanuele Ottolenghi opines, “Arabs’ revolutionary awakening belies Western conventional wisdom in the Middle East,” and repeats a linkage-denying argument that “ordinary Arabs who rose against their regimes didn’t do so because they wanted to free Palestine, but because they wanted to free themselves.” Ottolenghi rejects the linkage argument, a view promoted by the Obama administration, which posits that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a crucial step in addressing regional problems in the Middle East. He concludes, “The conventional wisdom that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the mother of all problems in the region has now been exposed as nothing but a myth. Will Western leaders finally learn?”

• The Waterloo Record: Senior Council on Foreign Relations Fellow Ray Takeyh writes, “it is all too obvious that the only option the United States has in altering the Islamic Republic’s behaviour is to support the ‘green movement.’” Takeyh acknowledges that the “military option” has “now become implausible” and discards the potential of negotiations, observing, “Tehran’s callous leadership, indifferent to the financial penalties of its nuclear truculence, was hardly prone to make cost-benefit assessments and constructively participate in negotiations.” He concludes that the Green Movement should “be beneficiaries of advice and assistance” from the U.S. “Whether motivated by idealism or a desire to advance practical security concerns, the West must recognize that the only thing standing between the mullahs and the bomb is the green movement,” he writes.

• The Diplomat: American Enterprise Institute Scholar Michael Rubin is interviewed on The Diplomat blog on “how sanctions can work with Iran.” Rubin says that sanctions are having both an economic and reputational impact. “[Iranians] look at themselves as a country that was once on par with European countries like Spain and Portugal, and they see themselves now following headlong into the third world,” he says. Rubin advocates tightening sanctions on Iran’s banking sector and on passenger air travel as a way of “[making] life a little bit more inconvenient.” Rubin says he’d “never rule out a military option” but acknowledges that containment might be a more likely path than bombing. He concludes that he’s pessimistic about stopping Iran’s nuclear program with either diplomacy or a military strike and questions whether Israel has the capability to launch military strikes on Iran.

• The Washington Post: The neoconservative blogger Jennifer Rubin writes that “pundits on the left” have for years said that negotiations with Iran should focus on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei instead of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “Scholars and pundits critical of the administration’s Iran engagement policy” have argued that Ahmadinejad is a central player and “talking him out of pursuing nuclear weapons is a dangerous fantasy,” she argues. Rubin points to Ahmadinejad’s firing of Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki as the latest evidence backing up the ‘critics.’ Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations tells Jennifer Rubin that the move is part of an ongoing consolidation of power by Ahmadinejad. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy‘s (WINEP) Michael Singh e-mails her and says: “I view this as just the first move in a power struggle over foreign policy, and it is too soon to tell how it will shake out.” Rubin suggests the latest events support the idea of “reflect[ing] on our current policy,” presumably switching to her own flawed prescriptions for aggressive military action. She concludes: “Those who advocate continued engagement, I would submit, have the burden of proof to demonstrate that we are doing more good than harm in continuing to participate in the Ahmadinejad-orchestrated charade.”