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I like to point out that Iran has already been miscalculated.

From the very start of suspicions about their nuclear program, we should have assumed they had not only obtained the information they needed to construct a nuclear device, from Pakistan, but also that they had already obtained weapons grade uranium and even plutonium from North Korea.

On top of their reasonably sophisticated missile program, that would leave only obtaining parts and assembling of multiple weapons under the about 1 ton weight that could be carried by their missiles.

This would mean that their entire uranium enrichment effort has been designed from the start as a decoy both to their progress in weapons development, and to the locations of their actual nuclear weapons assembly—far away from the decoy locations. In a calculated manner, this would give them time to leisurely assemble many nuclear weapons.

Fortunately, President Bush has ordered Iran be ringed with over 300 Pac-3 anti-missiles, which should be more than capable of taking out both weapons and dummy missiles. Far beyond that number, even, assuming typical overkill failures.

Second, the Iranians are also miscalculated in two other counts. The first being that they have planned for an air attack similar to Gulf War I and II. Planned to be able to reconstruct their nuclear program after an air war, figuring that America will leave them alone for a decade after thinking it destroyed, as we left Iraq alone.

The other count is the American assumption that decapitation of their leadership would end their nuclear program. This is incorrect, because the typical Iranian on the street wants a nuclear weapons program. They see it as Aladdin’s djinn. Once they have nukes they get anything else they want. So whatever government is in power, it will probably continue to want nukes.

So, taking some mix of the above as axioms, what should a war strategy with Iran be like?

Iran is Persia, surrounded by districts of minorities: the Kurds, Arabs, Baluchs and Azeri, being the major groups. The Persians exploit them, but otherwise they are second class citizens, having more in common with adjacent peoples than Persians.

To prevent the Persians from reconstructing their nuclear weapons program after it has been reduced from the air, the US should partition Iran of some of these minority lands, which would deprive them of the resources they would need to do so. Importantly, we would not attack Persia itself, just its military and its nuclear infrastructure.

If their military was reduced, these partitioned lands could be turned over to the adjacent nations. Iranian Kurdistan to Iraqi Kurdistan, to make a “greater Kurdistan”. Arab Khuzestan, which has most of Iran’s oil wealth, would be joined with southern Iraq. And Iranian Baluchistan would be joined with Pakistani Baluchistan, depriving Iran of its mineral wealth.

This would roughly be a crescent from Iran’s northwest, South, to its southeast. It would include the Bushehr nuclear reactor on the Persian Gulf coast, and would deny Persia access to either the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Sea, which they have long used to menace shipping.

For their part, the Iranian strategy is much the same as the strategy of the Japanese prior to WWII: to kick the US out of the region, so they could dominate it. In both cases, this means to attack and destroy one or more US carriers.

For this reason, our carrier groups in the region are their primary target. Secondary targets include US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, Saudi oilfields, and the US facilities at Naples, the UAE and Bahrain.

Ironically, there is a pervasive belief throughout the Middle East that unless the US provides vast amounts of money and military hardware to Israel every year, Israel will quickly wither. In past, I was assured by a Muslim Lebanese engineer that the US spent over half its defense budget propping up Israel. He could not be persuaded otherwise, because the alternative was intolerable.

But for this reason, Iran, for its bluster, is *less* concerned about Israel than it is of driving the US out of the ME. Thus Iran is satisfied to attack Israel via its proxies.

I will also note that for at least the last six months, the US has mysteriously not deployed any of its aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf or Arabian Sea.