Iran likely to widen war if Israel strikes

NY Times:

U.S. Sees Iran Attacks as Likely if Israel Strikes

 American officials assessed that Iran would retaliate to an Israeli strike by launching missiles on Israel and terrorist-style attacks on United States civilian and military personnel overseas.
Iran has certainly threaten such attack, probably in hopes of putting pressure on the US to stop the Israeli attack.  This administration appears to be responding to those threats by trying to persuade Israel to give it more time to negotiate with the religious bigots running Iran.  My own view is that any negotiation by the Tehran entity will be undertaken in bad faith to stall an attack until after they can get their sites buried.  I think that is a concern of Israel also.

I do think Iran will lash out and the US needs to be prepared to launch a destructive campaign against her war making potential.  That would mean taking out Iran's missile launch facilities and any manufacturing facilities.  It would mean taking out Iran's naval assets to make it harder for her to effect shipping.  I would also target all her weapons production facilities, particularly those that made the deadly IEDs used in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It is probable that we would also target the command and control facilities of the Revolutionary guard and other units that Iran might use for attacking us or our allies.

Israel has indicated that it will not give the US a prior warning of its attack.  There are probably two reasons for this.  First, by not giving us a warning, it gives the US deniability in the attack.  The second reason is that giving the warning might leak and harm the operational security of the attack.  There are people in this administration who might give out the information in order to stop the attack.  Certainly our intelligence analysis have been trying to undermine pressure put on Iran going back to the Bush administration.

We need to get forces into the region to deal with thee attacks and not put all the pressure on the Navy.  That would mean some Air Force units and special ops units at a minimum.


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