Act III

I like William Lind and do not generally disagree with anything he says. I do not disagree with his premise in this article about a the potential consequences of a US attack on Iran. I only disagree with two of his assumptions but not his conclusion. (link via Joshua)

What I fear no one foresees is a substantial danger that we could lose the army now deployed in Iraq. I have mentioned this in previous columns, but I want to go into it here in more detail because the scenario may soon go live.

Well before the second Iraq war started, I warned in a piece in The American Conservative that the structure of our position in Iraq could lead to that greatest of military disasters, encirclement. That is precisely the danger if we go to war with Iran.

The danger arises because almost all of the vast quantities of supplies American armies need come into Iraq from one direction, up from Kuwait and other Gulf ports in the south. If that supply line is cut, our forces may not have enough stuff, especially fuel, to get out of Iraq. American armies are incredibly fuel-thirsty, and though Iraq has vast oil reserves, it is short of refined oil products. Unlike Guderian's Panzer army on its way to the Channel coast in 1940, we could not just fuel up at local gas stations.

Inarguable points but if you are reading along and believe that the Air Force could just mount a massive Berlin Airlift redux think again...first the amount of supplies required is enormous and includes a lot more than mere food...second if you cannot secure the cities fully it is hard to secure all of the areas around airports, as in places a few guys with shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles could be fired.

There are two ways our supply lines from the south could be cut if we attack Iran. The first is by Shi'ite militias including the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades, possibly supported by a general Shi'ite uprising and, of course, Iran's Revolutionary Guards (the same guys who trained Hezbollah so well).

The second danger is that regular Iranian Army divisions will roll into Iraq, cut our supply lines, and attempt to pocket us in and around Baghdad. Washington relies on American air power to prevent this, but bad weather can shut most of that air power down.

Now weather is not the sort of problem one might find in Europe or elsewhere but there is the potential that this could hamper the "all-mighty" Air Force's ability to interdict.

Let's take Mr. Lind's scenario and play it out.

First of Iran's 11 million man military they could probably at best deploy 420,000 and more realistically only about 300,000. Beyond that Iran would not have much going for it, a tiny air force consisting of aircraft easily defeated by US forces, no navy etc. etc.

The one thing Iran would have in its favor is that the US military in Iraq is not prepared to fight a conventional force. We are using artillerymen as door kickers, we are positioned in consolidated FOB's that are pretty good at keeping powerpoint rangers safe from harm but would be nothing more than the Belgian and French forts that the Germans had so much fun with in the beginning of WWII.

The Iraqi population in central Iraq is primarily Shiite, there is no doubt that they have grown tired of the occupation by their liberators and would likely support liberation by fellow Shiites (the whole Persian versus Arab thing aside).

There is no doubt that the US would ultimately defeat Iran - but as Lind points out with a pretty high cost - real casualties, a few actual lost battles, casualties in the hundreds per week instead of per month and likely the abandonment of a heck of a lot of equipment that we would have to destroy because we could not easily get it out. And in the end a withdrawal from Iraq.

And of course what we would call this a defeat of Iran they would call a victory - we would not occupy them, in fact the war would end with the US leaving Iraq in humiliation.

Think this a crazy scenario? Hezbollah did defeat Israel you know or do you actually believe Fox News?