Despite this, only an invasion offers the United states finality when it comes to its 30-year conflict with the islamic republic. if the goal is to elimi- nate all the problems the United states has with the current iranian regime, from its pursuit of nuclear weapons to its efforts to overturn the sta- tus quo in the Middle east by stirring instability across the region, there is no other strategy that can assure this objective. of course, as U.s. expe- rience in iraq and afghanistan has demonstrated, that certainty comes with the distinct possibility of creating new risks, threats, and costs that may be as troublesome or more so than the current range of problems.
in particular, as american failures in iraq and af- ghanistan have underscored, the critical question that the United states would need to address in the event of an invasion of iran is how to build a stable, secure, and at least relatively pro-amer- ican state after toppling the government. While american missteps in Mesopotamia and central asia have certainly furnished Washington with a wealth of lessons about how to do better the next time around, the idea of applying these lessons to iran—a country with three times the population
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here is little appetite in the United states for mounting an invasion of iran. after the frus- trations and costs of the wars in afghanistan and iraq, few americans are looking for another fight in the Middle east. american ground forces are badly overstretched as it is. Under these circum- stances, an invasion of iran would require calling up huge numbers of National Guard and military reserve personnel and keeping them in service for several years. after the strains of frequent deploy- ments to iraq and afghanistan over the past eight years, this might undermine the foundations of the all-volunteer force.Nor is it clear that a full-scale invasion is nec- essary. The most compelling rationale for this course of action is the fear that iran’s leadership would prove difficult or impossible to deter once it had acquired a nuclear weapons capability. Doubts remain, but american, european, and even israeli experts have all argued that while iran may not be easy to deter, the available evidence indicates that it probably could be deterred from the most extreme behavior. This in turn calls into question whether the costs of an invasion could be justified.30
30 For experts making this argument, see, for instance, Yair ettinger, “Former Mossad chief Downplays iranian Threat,” Haaretz, october 18,
2007, available at <http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/914171.html>; tim McGirk and aaron Klein, “israel’s Debate over an iran strike,”
Time, July 24, 2008; Kenneth M. Pollack, The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict between Iran and America (New York: random house, 2004),
turkey, a Nato ally, as well as afghanistan (where the United states has a growing investment) and Pakistan—one of the most unstable and danger- ous countries in the world. Thus the impact of spillover from chaos in iran would likely threaten vital american interests in several locations. consequently, if the United states ever were to contemplate an invasion of iran, it would likely find itself in the same bind as it is in iraq: the country is too important to be allowed to slide into chaos, but given iran’s internal divisions and dysfunctional governmental system, it would be a major undertaking to rebuild it. as with iraq and afghanistan, the reconstruction of iran would likely be the longest and hardest part of any inva- sion, and would generate risks and costs so great that a decision to invade could only be respon- sibly made if there were a concomitant commit- ment to a full-scale effort to ensure the country’s stability afterwards.
Time Frame
in theory, the United states could mount an in- vasion at any time. The president could order an invasion tomorrow, which would seem to make this option very time efficient. But the reality, of course, is that it is highly unlikely that he would do so, and there are many hurdles to be cleared before the first troops would hit the beaches. al- though an invasion might accomplish its objec- tives more quickly than engagement or the vari- ous regime change options, it still would require months of military and logistical preparations, and might take even longer to lay the political and international foundations.
it seems highly unlikely that the United states would mount an invasion without any provo- cation or other buildup. even in the case of the Bush administration’s march to war with iraq in 2003—which was about as fast as it is possible to imagine—there was almost a year of preparations, and four times the land mass of iraq—is daunt-
ing. Moreover, since one of the lessons is clearly that large numbers of troops are needed to secure the country for months after an invasion and that those troops could only be provided by a massive, long-term call-up of National Guard and military reserve units that might wreck the all-volunteer force, it is just unclear how the United states could reasonably expect to handle postwar iran if the american people ever did change their per- spective enough that an invasion became politi- cally feasible.
Goal
The goal of the invasion option of iran would be to forcibly remove the iranian government, crush its military power to prevent any remnants of the regime from reasserting their control over iranian society, and extirpate its nuclear programs. Un- fortunately, as Washington learned in iraq (and to a lesser extent in afghanistan), that cannot be the limit of american goals. as the wars in iraq and afghanistan have demonstrated, the United states would inevitably have to ensure that a rea- sonably stable and reasonably pro-american (or at least less anti-american) government would be able to assume power and rule the country after U.s. forces departed.
Like iraq, iran is too intrinsically and strategically important a country for the United states to be able to march in, overthrow its government, and then march out, leaving chaos in its wake. iran ex- ports about 2.5 million barrels per day of oil and, with the right technology, it could produce even more. it also has one of the largest reserves of nat- ural gas in the world. These resources make iran an important supplier of the energy needs of the global economy. iran does not border saudi ara- bia—the lynchpin of the oil market—or Kuwait, but it does border iraq, another major oil pro- ducer and a country where the United states now has a great deal at stake. Moreover, iran borders
requisite iranian provocation. in fact, it might never come at all.
as far as the time requirements for the military side of the option, it might take a few months to move the forces into the region, and then anywhere from one to six months to conduct the invasion, depend- ing on a variety of circumstances—particularly how much U.s. forces had been built up in the region before the attack was launched. Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that the rapid launch of the war against iraq was a function of the inad- equate number of troops and planning for postwar reconstruction. since Washington would not want to repeat that tragic mistake in iran, the buildup for an invasion of iran would have to be bigger and thus take longer to complete than the buildup for the iraq invasion. Finally, the preparations for iraq were greatly aided by a superb network of ameri- can bases in the Persian Gulf. absent some dramat- ic iranian provocation, it seems very unlikely that those same countries (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Britain, in particular) would allow the United states to use those same facilities for an invasion of iran, potentially further lengthening the time required for the invasion itself.
as in both iraq and afghanistan, postinvasion reconstruction would be the longest (and possi- bly the bloodiest) part of the whole endeavor. if it were handled very well, applying all of the lessons learned in iraq and afghanistan, it might require only a few years of major military and financial commitments, followed by a significant diminu- tion of U.s. presence and aid thereafter. if the re- construction were to go badly, either because of american mistakes or forces beyond U.s. control, it could take many more years to produce an ac- ceptable end state.
starting with ominous statements from the ad- ministration, new UN security council resolu- tions, a congressional vote, the buildup of forces, and an ultimatum to saddam husayn. Moreover, in the case of iraq, there was a legal basis that the Bush administration could rely upon (the same basis that Bush 41 and clinton had used to justify various air- and missile strikes against iraq dur- ing the 1990s). in the case of an invasion of iran, there does not yet seem to be a legal predicate to justify the use of force—which is important more because it is required under domestic U.s. law than because of the need for international legal sanction. if a provocation or a UN security coun- cil resolution is needed to provide that legal basis, that also will take time.
in fact, if the United states were to decide that to garner greater international support, galvanize U.s. domestic support, and/or provide a legal jus- tification for an invasion, it would be best to wait for an iranian provocation, then the time frame for an invasion might stretch out indefinitely. With only one real exception, since the 1978 revolution, the islamic republic has never will- ingly provoked an american military response, although it certainly has taken actions that could have done so if Washington had been looking for a fight.31 Thus it is not impossible that teh-
ran might take some action that would justify an american invasion. and it is certainly the case that if Washington sought such a provocation, it could take actions that might make it more likely that tehran would do so (although being too ob- vious about this could nullify the provocation). however, since it would be up to iran to make the provocative move, which iran has been wary of doing most times in the past, the United states would never know for sure when it would get the
31 During the tanker War of 1987-1988 (a part of the iran-iraq War), U.s. naval forces were deployed to the Persian Gulf to escort Kuwaiti oil
tankers that had been attacked by iranian naval and air forces. iran responded by mining the Persian Gulf and conducting a number of attacks and aggressive actions against american naval forces, which at times did trigger american military responses.
For purposes of this analytic exercise, we as- sume that a U.s. invasion of iran is not triggered by an overt, incontrovertible, and unforgivable act of aggression—something on the order of an iranian-backed 9/11, in which the planes bore iranian markings and tehran boasted about its sponsorship. First, this seems exceptionally un- likely given iran’s history of avoiding such acts, at least since the end of the iran-iraq War. second, were that ever to happen, the circumstances of an invasion would become almost easy—the United states would suddenly have enormous domestic and (perhaps grudging) international support for undertaking an invasion. indeed, the entire ques- tion of “options” would become irrelevant at that point: what american president could refrain from an invasion after the iranians had just killed several thousand american civilians in an attack in the United states itself?
Beyond such a blatant act of inexcusable aggres- sion, the question of provocation gets murky. Most european, asian, and Middle eastern publics are dead set against any american military action against iran derived from the current differences between iran and the international community— let alone iran and the United states. other than a tehran-sponsored 9/11, it is hard to imagine what would change their minds. For many democracies and some fragile autocracies to which Washington would be looking for support, this public antipa- thy is likely to prove decisive.
For instance, saudi arabia is positively apoplec- tic about the iranians’ nuclear program, as well as about their mischief making in Lebanon, iraq, and the Palestinian territories. Yet, so far, riyadh has made clear that it will not support military opera- tions of any kind against iran. certainly that could change, but it is hard to imagine what it would take. For instance, one might speculate that further ira- nian progress on enrichment might suffice, but the iranians already have the theoretical know-how and plenty of feedstock to make the fissile material
overview of the Policy
a ground invasion of iran designed to overthrow the government would be onerous but rather straightforward. indeed, it would likely have con- siderable parallels with the overthrow of saddam’s regime in iraq and the taliban regime in afghan- istan. Because the United states probably could not mount the invasion using bases in any of iran’s neighboring countries (discussed in greater detail below), a U.s. Marine force would first have to seize control of a regional port, after which the United states could establish a logistical base and build up its ground and air forces before embark- ing on a “march” of several hundred miles north to tehran.
The key to this policy option is not the mechanics of its implementation but mustering both the po- litical support and the resources needed to make it work, and dealing with the potentially painful consequences of either its success or failure.
requirements
The requirements for the invasion option are complex. in some ways, they are well within american capabilities; in other ways, they are po- tentially well beyond our current reach.