U.S. had few viable options to recover drone from Iran

We find it REVEALING that one of the architects of the misguided invasion of Iraq would now be criticizing President Obama for not sending American forces into Iran to recover a spy drone that was seized last week.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney had the temerity to argue that a recovery mission “would have been a fairly simple operation.” That’s what he and other advocates in the administration of President George W. Bush said about the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Their insistence that the removal of Saddam Hussein would result in the Iraqi people embracing the U.S.-led coalition forces turned out to be wrong. American troops are only now coming home — after the death toll of 4,483, including 3,531 servicemen and women, and a price tag of almost $1 trillion.

So Cheney’s contention that President Obama was too timid in his reaction to the loss of the drone would be laughable were it not so pathetically political. If there’s one lesson this country should have learned from the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan it is that there are limits to the exercise of military power.

The president is right in seeking a diplomatic solution to Iran’s capture of the spy drone. After all, the unmanned craft was 140 miles inside that country, reportedly gathering information on its nuclear program. The West believes the program is being designed to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Iran has test fired missiles that could hit Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf, has over 500,000 personnel in the army, navy and air force, and has the ability to establish a blockade in the Strait of Hormuz through which most of the oil from the Middle East is transported.

Any attempt to retrieve the drone could also have triggered a military response by Iran against the dwindling American forces in neighboring Iraq. Indeed, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is already creating problems for the fledgling democratic government of Iraq by supporting Islamic extremists who are determined to replace Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki with a theocracy similar to the one in Tehran.

The Obama administration has asked Iran to return the drone, knowing that the request will be ignored, while the Iranians have demanded an apology.

Electronic ambush?

The issue that the White House should address is why the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, the RQ-170 Sentinel built by Lockheed Martin, was not able to be destroyed by the operators when they lost control of it. Administration officials say it malfunctioned, but Iran contends it was brought down in an electronic ambush. Television images and photographs show the surveillance craft with little damage.

The Iranians are attempting to retrieve whatever data may have been stored in the drone, are conducting an analysis of the radar-evading skin and are studying the technology.

Without a doubt the loss is significant, especially since Russia and China would be willing to make a deal with Iran to gain access to the craft. But an American retrieval attempt had the potential to be more harmful than the loss.