Bombing Iran a last resort

Opinion: January 28, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

By James Jay Carafano

McClatchy-Tribune

WASHINGTON

“Bombs away” should not be the first military response from the United States, but respond we must. Closing international waters is a blockade — essentially an act of war against other states.

Were we to stand idly by and let any nation shut down a vital international passage, it would lend credence to the view that the United States is now too weakened and timid to defend its sovereign rights. To ignore such aggression would be like giving the Barbary Pirates a pass when they ravaged U.S. shipping in the early 1800s.

And, don’t buy the line that it’s none of our business. Over a third of the world’s oil transported by sea goes through the strait. If that flow stops, you can bet the farm it will cause huge problem here at home.

Job losses

When the Heritage Foundation war-gamed this scenario back in 2007, the impact was immediate: a near doubling in the cost of a barrel of oil and a loss of 1 million domestic jobs.

Though closing the straits is an act of war, responses in war ought to be proportional. Thus, the first U.S. military objective ought to be to reopen the straits, and you don’t have to attack Iran to do that.

Consider 1987, when Iran tried to interfere with the passage of oil through the strait. President Ronald Reagan authorized Operation Ernest Will. The U.S. Navy protected ships going through the straits and only conducted military operations in defense of the tankers or U.S. forces.

That should be the going-in strategy today. If Iranian attacks were to persist, then a proportional and responsible act would be to take out the bases or support infrastructure where the attacks originate.

Military facilities

And if the Iranians still didn’t get the message, the target set should then be expanded to things that the regime values: targets like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Headquarters, government facilities, and other military facilities — including those contributing to Tehran’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile program.

Going after these targets might require taking out Iranian command and control and air defense sites. That would be justified.

At no point along the way would the United States need to ask the United Nations or anyone else for permission. The United States would just be exercising its inherent right as a nation to act in self-defense.

Odds are Tehran won’t try to close the strait. It knows the United States would have to reopen the passage. But the mullahs also know that the last thing Obama wants is another war before the election.

James Jay Carafano is director of the Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Distributed by MCT Information Services.