Submitted by Dennis, Nov 9, 2006 15:04

The problem with every analysis of the military option in Iran, and why Gates is opposed to it, is now a cliche: Effectively hitting all the hardened nuclear facilities would be impossible and/or such an action would alienate Iranians generally, and especially those we'd like to court. But as Arthur Herman discusses in the November issue of Commentary Magazine there's a far surer way of taking on Iran militarily: deployment in the Gulf of Oman of a carrier task force, minesweepers, and Aegis class cruisers; followed by a halting of Iranian oil shipments but allowing those of other states to pass throught the Straits of Hormuz; and concluding with an air attack on Iran's air defense system and especially on its gasoline refineries and storage facilities. With no imports of gasoline available, and with its oilfieds either destroyed or in U.S. hands, the Iranian Army and Republican Guards would be halted in their tracks, and Iran cut off from the lifeblood of its ecomony. The Iranian navy, says Herman, is old and decrepit, its major offensive capability represented by three Kilo Class Soviet era subs. These could be destroyed at the dock. This is not a fantasy. During the Iran-Iraq Warl a similar small scale operation was carried out by the U.S. in the so-called "tanker war" when the U.S. feared the war would interrupt the flow of oil through the Gulf.

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