War Game Shows Dangers of Attacking Iran

WASHINGTON - Here's a war game involving Iran, Israel and the U.S. that shows how unintended consequences can spin out of control:

With diplomacy failing and precious intelligence just received about two new secret Iranian nuclear facilities, Israel launches a pre-emptive strike against Tehran's nuclear complex. The strike is successful, wiping out six of Iran's key sites and setting back its suspected quest for a bomb by years.

But what happens next isn't pretty.

The U.S. president and his National Security Council try to keep the crisis from escalating. That sours U.S.-Israeli relations, already stressed by the fact that Israel didn't inform Washington in advance of the strike. The White House tries to open a channel for talks with Iran, but is rejected.

Instead, Iran attacks Israel, both directly and through its proxies in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. It misinterprets U.S. actions as weakness and mines the Straits of Hormuz, the world's chief oil artery. That sparks a clash and a massive U.S. military reinforcement in the Persian Gulf.

This recent war game conducted at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, part of the Washington-based Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank, appears to dampen hopes for a simple solution to Iran's real-world nuclear challenge.

The lesson is "once you start this, it's really hard to stop it," said Kenneth Pollack, a former White House and CIA official who oversaw the simulation.

Pollack and others who participated in the day-long exercise late last year are quick to point out that war games are imperfect mirrors of reality. How Iran's notoriously opaque and fractious leadership would react in a real crisis is particularly hard to divine.

But the outcome underscores what diplomats, military officers and analysts have long said: even a "successful" airstrike on Iran's nuclear facilities - setting the program back by two to four years - could come at a tremendous, unpredictable cost.

"It's ... an option that has to be looked at very, very, very carefully," a senior European diplomat said Friday. "Because we know what the results could be, and they could be disastrous." He requested anonymity to speak more frankly on the sensitive issue.

Tensions over Iran's nuclear program rose again this week after the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog reported the country could be secretly developing a nuclear warhead to be placed atop a ballistic missile. Additionally, Iran has begun enriching uranium closer to the purity level needed for use in a nuclear weapon.

Israel, which sees Iran as a direct threat, has refused to rule out military force, although officials there say they are counting for now on diplomatic pressure. There have even been hints from Sunni Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia, that they would look the other way in the event of a strike on Shiite Iran, a historic adversary.

Yet one of the Brookings war game's major conclusions is that Israel could pay dearly for an attack on Iran.

By the end of the simulation, eight days after the fictitious Israeli strike, Israel's prime minister, under heavy domestic pressure, is forced to launch a 48-hour air blitz in southern Lebanon to halt rocket attacks from Hezbollah, the militant group sponsored by Iran. Israeli officials know the blitz is unlikely to achieve its objectives, and prepare a larger, costlier operation in Lebanon, including ground forces.

Israel's relations with the United States, its most important ally, are damaged. To avoid damaging them further, Israel bows to intense U.S. pressure and absorbs occasional missile strikes from Iran without retaliating.

Some members of the "Israeli" team nonetheless felt that setting back Iran's nuclear program "was worth it, even given what was a pretty robust response," said one participant. He asked that his name not be used, because under the game's ground rules, participants are supposed to remain anonymous.

Jonathan Peled, an Israeli embassy spokesman, declined comment on the war game or its outcome.

"All we can say is that Iran constitutes a threat not only to Israel but to the region, to the U.S. and to the world at large, and therefore should be addressed without delay by the international community, first and foremost through effective sanctions," he said.

The Brookings war game was one of three simulations regarding Iran's nuclear program conducted in December. The other two, at Harvard University and Tel Aviv University, reportedly found that neither sanctions nor threats dissuaded Tehran from its suspected nuclear weapons ambitions.

In the Brookings game, three teams of experts, including former senior U.S. officials, played the Israeli, Iranian and American leadership. They assembled in separate rooms at the think tank's Washington headquarters. Israeli and U.S. "officials" communicated with each other, but not with the Iranians.

One of the simulation's major findings was how aggressively the Iranians responded to the attack - more aggressively, some participants felt, than they would in real life - and how Washington and Tehran, lacking direct communication, misunderstood each other.

Iran did not retaliate directly against the United States or U.S. troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. But it struck back at Israel, then attacked Dharan in eastern Saudi Arabia, then began mining the Straits of Hormuz.

"There would be almost no incentive for Iran not to respond" with force, said another participant, a member of the Iranian team. "It was interesting to see how useful it was for Tehran to push the limits."

Without knowing it, Iran's last two actions crossed U.S. "red lines," prompting an American military response.

"No one came out on top - (but) arguably the Iranians," the Iran team member said.

The Tehran regime was also able to crush its domestic political opposition.

RAMADI, Iraq - The U.S. Marine Corps wrapped nearly seven years in Iraq on Saturday, handing over duties to the Army and signaling the beginning of an accelerated withdrawal of American troops as the U.S. turns its focus away from the waning Iraqi war to a growing one in Afghanistan.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden held talks with Iraqi leaders amid growing tensions over plans to ban election candidates because of suspected links to Saddam Hussein's regime.

The White House worries the bans could raise questions over the fairness of the March 7 parliamentary elections, which are seen as an important step in the American pullout timetable.

The Marines formally handed over control of Sunni-dominated Anbar, Iraq's largest province, to the Army during a ceremony at a base in Ramadi - where some of the fiercest fighting of the war took place.

If all goes as planned, the last remaining Marines will be followed out by tens of thousands of soldiers in the coming months. President Barack Obama has ordered all but 50,000 troops out of the country by Aug. 31, 2010, with most to depart after the March 7 parliamentary election.

The remaining troops will leave by the end of 2011 under a U.S.-Iraqi security pact.

But concerns about the success of the election - and perhaps the loss of hard won security gains that the Marines helped cement - are on the rise because of a growing political dispute that could see more than 500 candidates blacklisted because of suspected ties to previous regime.

The changeover at Ramadi, west of Baghdad, leaves the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division with responsibility over both Baghdad and Anbar, the vast desert province that stretches from western Baghdad to the borders of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The province was once the heart of the deadly Sunni insurgency that erupted after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. In the battles for control of the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, the Marines saw some of the most brutal and deadliest fighting of the war.

Violence began dropping off in the province in late 2006 when Sunni fighters - known as Awakening Councils - turned against al-Qaida and sided with the Marines to fight the insurgency.

As many as 25,000 Marines were in Iraq at the peak, mostly in Anbar province. The few thousand who remain - except for U.S. Embassy guards and advisers in Baghdad - are expected to ship out in a matter of weeks.

The upcoming parliamentary election is also considered an important step toward speeding the U.S. troop pullout. But plans to ban hundreds of candidates have raised deep concerns in Washington that the voting could widen rifts between the majority Shiites who gained power after Saddam's fall and Sunnis who are struggling to regain influence.

Biden, who arrived late Friday, had a full agenda of meetings with Iraqi leaders including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has strongly supported the blacklist.

Some Sunni leaders have accused the Shiite-led government of using the ban as a political tool. But al-Maliki insists that Iraq must purge all ties to Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime. A vetting panel has put 512 names on the blacklist and more are expected.

President Obama is roping in former Presidents George W. Bush and Clinton to help coordinate Haitian earthquake relief efforts. It's a gesture that makes Obama look bipartisan and gives Bush a chance to start shaping his post-presidential legacy.

 




Washington --- Maybe President Obama is doing former President George W. Bush a favor.

President Obama plans to announce that his immediate predecessor will team up with former President Clinton to help on humanitarian relief efforts and fund-raising for Haiti. Obama called Mr. Bush Wednesday night, and he accepted, according to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

For both ex-presidents, the role seems logical. Mr. Clinton was already the UN special envoy for Haiti when a massive earthquake struck Tuesday. And he served in a similar capacity along with the first President Bush five years ago after the Asian tsunami – at the behest of the 43rd president, the second Bush.

The junior Bush had signaled a year ago, as he was leaving office, that he would serve if asked. But there’s an awkward aspect to Bush’s new assignment.

“The thing about ‘43’ is that of course he was the acrimonious target of the Democrats who replaced him, and was perceived as discredited, and now he’s being offered a little bit of redemption by those former opponents,” says Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. “That makes this interesting.”

One episode that particularly damaged Bush’s image was the federal government’s response to hurricane Katrina in 2005. Though local and state governments also fell short, Bush never recovered politically.

For Democrat Obama, the inclusion of his Republican predecessor in relief efforts adds a bipartisan touch to the response. Obama came to office promising a new tone in Washington, but he and the Republicans quickly reverted to the city’s partisan ways.

For Bush, involvement with Haitian relief allows him to start shaping his post-presidential legacy. For the past year, Bush has laid low in his new hometown of Dallas, avoiding comment on his successor. In contrast, former Vice President Dick Cheney has had plenty to say – mostly negative – about Obama, especially his handling of terrorism.

Bush has given few speeches since leaving office, but in one, delivered in May at a high school graduation in New Mexico, he commented on how “liberating” it is to be out of office – and at times humbling. He recounted a recent walk out with his dog Barney.

“There I was, former president of the United States of America, with a plastic bag in my hand,” he said. “Life is returning back to normal.”

Now, with Haiti, Bush has much weightier issues to address.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22, 2009 – Defense officials are hailing passage of the fiscal 2010 budget that funds military programs and wartime operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and provides a military pay raise.
President Barack Obama signed the 2010 Department of Defense Appropriations Act into law Dec. 19 after the Senate approved it during a rare early Saturday session. The Senate passed the measure by an 88-to-10 vote.

The $636.3 billion legislation provides $128.3 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a 3.4 percent military pay raise.

The law also extends various authorities and other non-defense fiscal 2010 appropriations, White House officials announced. Most of those provisions involved temporary extensions of emergency unemployment and health-care benefits that had been set to expire.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued a joint statement Dec. 18, pressing the Senate for action.

“We strongly urge Senate passage of the Defense Appropriations Bill today, prior to expiration of the current continuing resolution,” the statement said. “Passage today will provide important support for our foreign policy and national security priorities and ensure continuity of funding for our troops in combat and for all of the Department of Defense.”

The House passed the legislation Dec. 16.