Imagining A War With Iran

With America heading toward a war with Iran, inadvertent or otherwise, the picture of how the conflict is likely to pan out is becoming clearer.

In an all-out war, the basic American military tactic will be air attacks, naval blockades, offshore bombardments, and the destruction of oil and power infrastructures and Iran's naval presence in the Persian Gulf.

Iran will respond with an immense deployment of ground forces on its borders, attacks against American troops inside Iraq, and the activation of hundreds of trained, well-armed, dormant terror cells peppered from one end of the gulf to the other.

America's primary weapon will be two naval carrier groups now in the Persian Gulf, supplemented by attack planes and bombers from neighboring Kuwait, Oman, Qatar — where the U.S. Central Command is based — the United Arab Emirates, possibly Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and bases in Europe. An American land invasion of Iran is out of the question, given Iran's 1 million-strong army, the refusal of its neighbors to allow it, and the lack of American troops to carry it out. U.S. Special Operations, however, will be pushed into Iran to carry out attacks on the country's prized nuclear research facilities and other designated targets — with the objective of dismantling the mullahs' command and control of the population.

Tehran's most lethal weapon is manpower. From its army, it can marshal several hundred thousand troops along its borders with Iraq and Afghanistan to pressure American forces in those countries, and it can call on Syria to heat up its border region with Iraq, as well.

Two Iraqi Shiite militias allied with Iran — the Badr Brigades and Mahdi Army, led by Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim and Moqtada al-Sadr, respectively — will launch large-scale attacks on American troops inside Iraq. Together, Messrs. Hakim and Sadr command some 80,000 to 100,000 men, who are armed, funded, and trained by Iran.

Iran's air defense is an unknown. Should it prove somewhat adequate, it may down some American pilots, sapping American morale. Iranian dogma dictates that war with America will translate into regional upheaval. Among Iran's targets will be the U.S. Central Command in Qatar and the U.S. Navy's sixth fleet in Bahrain, a tiny country of 700,000 people, a majority of whom are Shiite and pro-Iranian. In Lebanon, the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia will be instructed to light up the place, as will Hamas in Gaza.

One way or another, the war will involve oil production and prices. America's strategy will be to maximize Iranian pain without setting world oil prices ablaze. To do this, it must be able to wreck Iran's offshore oil platforms and production while preventing Iran from shutting down everyone else by blocking the Straits of Hormuz to oil exports. It will be a difficult, though not impossible, feat, successfully achieved by America in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980–88.

If other oil producers, especially Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, are able to keep production and exports up, any rise in prices can be contained below a tolerable $75 a barrel. Of course, Iran's creed is "if we cannot export oil, no one else will."

The underlying logic here is economic pain. Iran's offshore oil platforms pump 500,000 barrels of its 4 million barrels a day of oil, but they are enormously expensive and difficult to replace. Translation: Iran may cry uncle first.

Indeed, this war will be a race to see much pain both parties can take. On the morale level, one pro for Iran is it will be fighting in its own neighborhood, endowed with experience from past wars and a martyrdom mind-set. (Iran lost nearly 1 million citizens between 1980 and 1988 without blinking.) America will be counting on setting Iran back a few decades economically, as it did the former Yugoslavia; on total support from scared Arab regimes; and on an uprising in Iran by a population that after 28 years of religious fanaticism may finally have had enough of the mullahs.

Propaganda will be just as important. Iran will assume the mantle of "Islam against the infidel crusaders." America will portray the war as a fight for Western interests — control of Middle Eastern oil and defense against a tidal wave of Iran-led Islamic fundamentalism — and for modernization of a largely failed Arab world. Iran will plead its case among brethren in the faith. America will appeal to pro-Western Arabs, Muslims, and Iranians.

Flip a coin.