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January 15, 2006
Iran: Is A Blockade In Order?
It's becoming increasingly apparent that the big story of 2006 will be a showdown with Iran over its naked ambition to develop nuclear weapons. The situation is rife with Big Problems for us: First, how do we impress upon a "war-weary" public the very serious danger posed by a nuclear Iran; and second, what should be our course of action.
Regarding the first problem: We were over at my mom's today for our usual Sunday lunch, and she casually mentioned that today was the sixty-first anniversary of my uncle Lee's death. He was killed in the waning days of the Battle of the Bulge--and he was one of 19,000 US soldiers who lost their lives in five weeks of combat. That's why I use quotes with the term "war-weary". We are a fat, dumb and happy society that has already forgotten, for the most part, what happened on 9/11. Nuclear weapons in the hands of someone like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pose a threat of casualties of an order of magnitude that only our parents and grandparents are familiar with.
So who is this guy who's the president of Iran? Dr. Sanity casts her professional eye on the situation, and her conclusions are sobering:
In my career as a psychiatrist I have encountered many psychotic individuals with religious delusions. One study suggests that those patients with religious delusions are suffering from a particularly virulent form of schizophrenia, where the potential for self-harm or harm to others is significantly increased. The study concluded that "religious delusions are commonly found in schizophrenia and that by comparison with other patients who have schizophrenia, those patients with religious delusions appear to be more severely ill."
Dr. Sanity notes previous reports that detail some of Ahmadinejad's pronouncements and concludes that the man is dangerously delusional.
The schizophrenic patients I have seen with religious delusions were often the hardest to treat and least responsive to medication. Most of them had such severely impaired thinking processes that they could hardly function on a day-to-day basis; let alone would they have been able to rise to a position of influence or power in any culture. But there were a few who were notable for their single-minded and persistent incorporation of everything they came in contact with into their delusional system; and who had only contempt for anyone who didn't subscribe to their psychotic ideas. These latter patients exhibited a psychopathically clever and manipulative intelligence that was completely immune to any insight into their illness. These patients' were chillingly and frighteningly serious about their delusion, and to them you were nothing.
OK, so I'm convinced the guy is supremely dangerous. But what exactly are we to do? Iran has evidently learned a lesson from the destruction by Israel of Iraq's nuclear reactor in the early 80's. Iran's nuclear facilities are not concentrated in one area and they are in hardened underground facilities, so air strikes may or may not be effective.
Mike Burleson at New Wars Blog reaches back 43 years and many thousands of miles closer to home, and remembers a situation similar to the one we're facing today:
In October 1962, American reconnaissance flights discovered Russian built nuclear missiles on Communist Cuba, which could reach targets deep in the mainland. Ignoring the advice of his military advisors who called for air strikes and an amphibious invasion, President John Kennedy ordered the Navy to establish a “quarantine” or blockade around the island, in an attempt to force the Soviets’ hand. Shamed in the UN, and fearful of a nuclear war, the Russians finally relented and agreed to remove the weapons.
A similar crisis is brewing over Iranian attempts to build nuclear weapons, and a similar response could be the answer. Naval forces could be used to stop the flow of oil from leaving Iranian ports. [...]
A naval quarantine would be more desirable, in that military force would be utilized without necessarily any attacks. Though the Iranian ayatollahs could care less of any economic effect upon their own people, cutting off the oil flow would influence those who depend on the Iranians, namely Russia, China, and Europe. It would further prove to these nations who are straddling the fence on imposing economic sanctions that America is serious about denying nuclear weapons to terrorists and their supporters.
This sounds pretty promising: As powerful and adaptive as our land forces have proven to be in Iraq, they are still fighting an enemy who has at least some native advantages. On the sea, US power is absolute: it would be pretty difficult for an couple of guys to sneak an IED up next to a destroyer. A blockade is inherently passive; there is little chance for collateral civilian deaths. And the suspension of Iran's oil exports would be a powerful cudgel to the heads of our recalcitrant European and Asian "allies".
This is something to think about.
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