Posted on 09/18/2006 10:08:31 AM PDT by areafiftyone
Two recent orders by the American military have led some observers to conclude that the U.S. is preparing for an attack on Iran.
One order was a "Prepare to Deploy" command sent to a submarine, an Aegis-class cruiser, two minesweepers and two mine hunters, telling the ships’ commanders to be ready to move by Oct. 1.
The other was a request from the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) for a fresh look at long-standing U.S. plans to blockade two Iranian oil ports on the Persian Gulf.
The orders created a buzz within the military because there are few places in the world where minesweepers could be significant – chief among them, the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, where about 40 percent of the world’s oil passes each day.
"Coupled with the CNO’s request for a blockade review, a deployment of minesweepers to the west coast of Iran would seem to suggest that a much discussed – but until now largely theoretical – prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran,” according to a special report in Time magazine.
The U.S. military routinely makes plans for many different scenarios, and the vast majority of them will never be carried out.
"And yet from the State Department to the White House to the highest reaches of the military command, there is a growing sense that a showdown with Iran – over its suspected quest for nuclear weapons, its threats against Israel and its bid for dominance of the world's richest oil region – may be impossible to avoid,” Time reports.
The magazine’s reporters interviewed dozens of experts and government officials to find out what an attack on Iran would consist of – and what its repercussions might be.
First of all, most observers believe the attack would not involve ground forces and would instead be a massive air campaign against Iran’s 18 to 30 nuclear-related facilities.
But many of the targets are hardened, and would have to be struck repeatedly to ensure that they were destroyed or severely damaged. Some sites are in populated areas, and civilian casualties would be a certainty, according to Time. And there would be no guarantee that the strikes would destroy all nuclear-related sites, because some sites could be undiscovered.
What’s more, the attacks would spark retaliation from Iran that could include ordering a Hezbollah attack on Israel and stepping up the funneling of money and weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan and insurgents in Iraq.
The likelihood that Iran would also seek to close the Strait of Hormuz is high, and a disruption of the oil supplies flowing through the strait could send oil prices skyrocketing.
That in turn could spur a stepped-up military effort by the U.S. that could even include the "worst case” use of ground forces in an effort to topple the Iranian regime, retired Marine General Anthony Zinni told Time.
For that reason, Zinni believes an attack on Iran is a "dumb idea.”
And that is why the U.S. has sought to emphasize a possible diplomatic solution, Time concludes. One Bush administration official told the magazine:
"Nobody is considering a military option at this point. We're trying to prevent a situation in which the President finds himself having to decide between a nuclear-armed Iran or going to war. The best hope of avoiding that dilemma is hard-nosed diplomacy, one that has serious consequences."
I'll defer to your point, though I simply wrote that I was curious as to current carrier placement. I always leave the details to the admirals, they wouldn't listen to me anyway, and shouldn't!
I like the blockade idea, that's the core of my comments.
So was seizing our embassy in 1979.
We are already technically at war with them.
We shouldn't worry whether or not it's an act of war...we should worry only about what Iran and their allies can do about it.
Time magazine this week looks like they're going back into the "write about stuff to try to scare people" mode. "What War With Iran Would Look Like"
excerpts:
The first message was routine enough: a "Prepare to Deploy Order" sent through Naval communications channels to a submarine, an Aegis-class cruiser, two minesweepers and two minehunters. The orders didn't actually command the ships out of port; they just said be ready to move by October 1. A deployment of minesweepers to the east coast of Iran would seem to suggest that a much discussed, but until now largely theoretical, prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran.
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OK, so we already have four minehunters there -- it still sounds scary to be doubling our force, you might say. It might be, if it wasn't for the fact that the two Osprey-class ships currently in Bahrain are being decommissioned in Dec. '06 . So, it looks like rather than doubling the force, we're just replacing the ones that are already there but leaving. Since all the Osprey-class ships are to be decommissioned by the end of 2008 .I wouldn't be surprised if the two "minesweepers" that got prepare to deploy orders were the Cardinal and Raven, who are going to "deploy" to their new owners in Egypt -- which means we'd still just have four minesweepers in the Gulf.
And what about the cruiser and the submarine that were mentioned? Well, it turns out that Navy ships, especially since 9/11, do "surge deployments" all the time. Bottom line: This just isn't a big deal, no matter how much Time wants us to believe it is. http://bubbleheads.blogspot.com/2006/09/time-magazine-scare-mongers.html
I won't believe until Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh confirm it.
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