Required Reading

Ralph Peters:

So… if we are forced to attack Iran’s nuclear-weapons facilities at some point, what would it take to do it right and limit Tehran’s ability to respond with such devastating asymmetrical attacks?

At the most-basic level, we would need to conceive of the operation as a war, not just a brief series of raids. In addition to the standard requirements to knock out Iran’s early-warning and air-defense systems, we would have to strike the headquarters facilities of the Revolutionary Guards, the military and the various intelligence arms. We would need to destroy Iran’s combat aircraft on the ground, and then destroy any aircraft ― including passenger jets ― that could be used as flying bombs against oil facilities. It would be essential to destroy, early on, Iran’s navy and the Revolutionary Guards’ naval arm, right down to the Zodiac-boat level. We also would need to sink any commercial vessel that attempted to leave an Iranian harbor throughout the period of hostilities, since it could be used in an attack scheme. Not only would we need to disable Iran’s government and military communications infrastructure on the first day, but we also would have to disrupt civilian communications indefinitely. Then we would have to parry years of Iranian attempts to take revenge, not just regionally, but globally. We certainly would see a resurgence of state-sponsored terrorism ― and it could be taken to a whole new level.

Read the whole thing.