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Grapevine Talk
Helena Cobban, an experienced Middle East journalist, is concerned that an attack on Iran might come before December 6, the day the Iraq Study Group report will become an official document.
Her reasoning is based on a few ominous signs:
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the recent sudden resign of "realist" Rice counsellor Phil Zelikow, who might have learned of some coming action that he does not want to be part of;
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the general time with Congress out of session and changing leadership and no major policy pressure (which may change after the ISG paper) and no more elections for Bush in the way;
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the unprecedented travel activities of Bush / Cheney / Rice and others in the Middle East;
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the sudden peace offer by Olmert to the Palestinians which an Arab journalists (explained by Badger) sees as a historic repeat:
In a nutshell, Atwan says the 1991 war was accompanied by a promise to the Palestinians of an international conference to solve their problems (the Madrid Conference), which however produced nothing for them; and the 2003 attack was preceded by the famous Bush promise of a sovereign contiguous state for the Palestinians by 2005. In other words, these promises are attempts to rally Arab support ahead of major wars.
Add to these signs the current fluff of pro-Sunni/anti-Shia outbreaks in Lebanon, Egypt and by Saudi Arabia.
I am not sure that the publication of the ISG report with a measured demand for negotiations with Iran and Syria is something that is perceived by Cheney as limiting the chances to bring on an attack on Iran. It may not have such a weight, but I have to defer to Helena’s experience in analyzing politics on that.
What makes me a bit leaning to her concern are the relative big and fast changes in the $/Euro rate, and the determined upward movements in oil and gold over the last days.
What do these markets know that we do not know?
@dan:
I’m afraid I don’t share your saguine view of Iran’s prospects.
You can find a summary of Iranian AF inventory here. What on this list would lead you to believe that Iran isn’t going see its AF get shot out of the sky?
The only vaguely modern air superiority fighters on the list are the 25 MIG-29s. The rest is mixed bag of designs ultimately dating from the 1950s (F-5, F-7), 1960s (F-4, MIG-23), and 1970s (F-14, F.1, the last being ex-Iraqi). It’s true that the F-14 is still the USN’s premiere fleet air defence interceptor, but the Iranian examples are early variants dating from the 1970s with comparatively primative avionics that moreover have horrible serviceability because Iran has had no access to spare parts (other than the black market) for almost three decades. Similarly, the fact the Iranians are still trying to keep their decrepit F-4s flying -with even less success than their F-14s- years after they were retired by other AFs is clearly a sign of desperation. It is significant that in spite of having no domestic military aviation industry Iran has taken the radical step of designing and producing its own fighter, the Azarakhsh (which basically seems to be a reverse engineered F-5), though they have not yet appeared in significant numbers. This seems to me to be a clear sign of Iranian frustration at being largely shut out of the global arms market, including having a planned purchase of Russian SU-27s interminably delayed because of American pressure.
It’s true that the Iranians have tried to upgrade their aircraft and some are in a sense “younger” than they appear. The Chinese F-7 for example is obviously derived from the Soviet MIG-21, hence basically a design dating from the 1950s, but has been considerably improved by the Chinese. It still isn’t a match for any American fighter currently flying even on a good day, however.
In short, Iran has an air force struggling to hang on to 2nd rate status and it would be going up against the best air force in the world. The smart money says the Iranians are going to be in a world of pain.
The American advantage doesn’t stop at better aircraft either. History has repeatedly shown that good pilots in good planes can inflict highly assymetrical losses on mediocre pilots in mediocre planes, even when outnumbered by a factor of 2, 3, 4 or even more to 1, and it’s doubtful any country in the world outspends the US on pilot training one for one (though some are probably close or about even). We don’t really know how good the Iranian pilots are (though those F-4s and F-14s can’t be logging a lot of training hours) but we do know they don’t have access to the same quality of facilities and that for the most part their planes aren’t even in the same league.
Finally, we need to consider the force multiplier effect of American dominance of the electromagnetic spectrum and C3I (command, control, communications and intelligence). If an attack on Iran does occur probably the first indication the Iranians will get, even before the bombs start falling, is when electronic jamming blinds their radars (many of which will subsequently be destroyed by ARMs) and their communications network suffers almost complete collapse (except for secure old fashioned technology like land lines). Basically, the Iranians won’t know what hit them until it’s all over.
I think a comparison to Iraq in 1991 is useful. Although you seem to denigrate Iraq’s capabilities, in 1991 it had just fought Iran, a country more than two and half times its size by population, to a standstill after an extremely bloody 10 year war. The Iraqis were “battle hardened”, had loads of operational experience, and had a large, well equipped armed forces. In spite of this the Iraqi air force and air defence system was completely overwhelmed by coalition forces, and the land war turned out to be a one hundred hour rout. The coalition flew over 115 000 sorties and lost only 75 aircraft, for a sortie:loss ratio of about 1533:1. In short, the Iraqis tried to beat the United States at its own game and failed miserably. Coincidentally, in so doing they spawned all manner of neocon fantisies about American military invincibility. To their credit the Iraqis learned from their mistakes and adapted to match their strengths to American weakenesses, a change that has brought the American military to the cusp of a humiliating defeat. But the Iraqi experience in this case has little relevance to the predicament in which Iran finds itself.
For what its worth I don’t think even a “successful” air campaign against Iran -and for the reasons I have outlined here I have every reason to believe it will be successful by conventional measures- is really going to change anything in the long term. As you clearly appreciate the Iranians have shown themselves to be resourceful and tenacious, and an air attack is at best only going to be impose a temporary delay on Iran’s nuclear program. Indeed, to the extent that an air attack further erodes the Bush administration’s international standing, which is already pretty damn close to rock bottom, it could fatally undermine American efforts to maintain Iran’s isolation, which means it would actually end up contributing to exactly the result the Bushites are seeking to avoid.
Posted by: Lexington | Dec 3 2006 5:13 utc | 38
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