Iran has multiple options to retaliate against a military strike
A military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities would have multiple negative consequences, not the least of which is that it would initiate a prolonged war with Iran.
Quicktabs: Arguments
Iran is liable to take countermeasures against the US following an attack on its nuclear installations. Retaliatory measures could include terrorist attacks against American targets, both inside and outside of the Middle East; terrorist attacks and military measures against American allies; attacks employing conventional weapons against American forces in the Gulf region or in Iraq, including a cruise missile attack on US ships; and an intensified effort to disrupt American efforts in Iraq, where Iran has influence among Shiite organizations. Iran is also liable to respond to a US attack with an attempt to hit Israeli targets, even if Israel is not involved in the attack. At the same time, the US has greater deterrence vis-à-vis Iran than Israel does, including second strike capability following Iranian retaliation. For that reason, it can be assumed that if Iran decides to respond to an American attack, its response will be restrained and careful, in order to avoid dragging the US into an escalating response. In any case, an Iranian military response against American targets is expected to lead to an American counter-response, and to a chain of actions and counteractions.
Last, policymakers must recognize that future airstrikes may incur much higher costs for the United States than did the 1981 attack for the Israelis. Such attacks against Iran would substantially undermine U.S./Iranian relations, perhaps leading to increased terrorism, to disruptions in the world oil market, or to an Iranian decision to intervene in Iraq in support of the Shiites. The CIA reported in 2004 that Hizballah ‘‘would likely react to an attack against it, Syria, or Iran with attacks against U.S. and Israeli targets worldwide.’’66 Striking North Korean nuclear facilities could be even worse; as General Gary Luck put it, ‘‘If we pull an Osirak [against North Korea], they will be coming south.’’67 American policymakers may be better off relying on more peaceful means of counterproliferation, such as diplomacy, inspections, and economic sanctions. These tools promise fewer costs and dangers and have demonstrated more success than military action.
Iran most definitely is not. Indeed, in part because Washington obligingly removed the main regional strategic counterweight to Iran by ousting Saddam, Tehran’s power and influence has been on the rise for the past decade. It has significant allies and clients in the region, especially among its Shiite brethren. Hezbollah is the most notable one, but pro-Iranian elements in Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain are not trivial assets. Tehran could make life in the Middle East even more miserable for the United States than it is currently, and the clerical regime would have every incentive to do so in response to air strikes on its nuclear installations.
The main fallacy in the professed hawkish case for limited war is that the United States would be in complete control of the escalation process. The reality is that Iran could greatly escalate the military confrontation. And one cannot imagine people in Congress like Tom Cotton, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham (or the warhawk contingent in the news media) keeping their cool and adhering to a limited war agenda if Tehran or its clients retaliated by attacking a U.S. ally in the Middle East—much less if such an attack killed Americans.
The instant that such an incident occurred, the current proponents of a limited war would demand a full-scale U.S. military campaign to overthrow the Iranian government. And at that point, we would be in a new Middle East war that would make the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts look like minor skirmishes.
There is no question that Iran will respond to a U.S. attack, probably in ways that America’s Middle East cheerleaders (primarily in the Gulf States) won’t expect or appreciate.
Iran has a vast array of short range ballistic missiles and land attack cruise missiles. [5] While analysis of these missiles has focused on their potential threat to American naval vessels, they could pose a much more serious problems for ground installations around the Gulf, including both military and economic targets. Attacks on oil installations could have a wide effect on global oil prices, although the global economy is certainly better suited to weathering price shocks now than five or ten years ago. Of course, the Iranians surely appreciate that missiles, once fired, cannot be launched again, and that any such attacks run the risk of incurring escalation from the United States. Iran can also attempt to close the Straits of Hormuz through mining, small boat, and missile attacks, although any serious effort in this regard would expose Iranian military forces to near total attrition.
Iran’s political options are more intriguing than its strictly kinetic tools. When the United States removed the Baathist regime in Iraq, it effectively conceded Iranian influence on the country. Tehran will undoubtedly step up its efforts to destabilize both Iran and Afghanistan. Iran is unlikely to begin supporting ISIS, but it can certainly curtail the cooperation we’ve seen over the past months. It remains well within Iranian capabilities to increase support for Iraqi Shiite militias, as well as for the Assad regime.
The broader political environment will also shift against the United States. U.S. relations with Russia have gone sufficiently south, and the U.S. attack against Iran itself would be sufficiently destabilizing, that we can almost surely expect Russia to militarily support Iran in the form of aircraft and air defense systems. These systems would, in the medium and long term, make Iranian defenses considerably more lethal, and its nuclear program far more robust. Moreover, if Russia opens up the Iranian defense market, we can expect China to follow. The sanctions regime cannot survive a U.S. attack on Iran.
When imposing the sanctions fails to alter Tehran's position, policymakers will revert to a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. One can imagine the words of a planner in the meeting: "If we are going to do this, let's make certain we get everything they have." I have done some rough "targeting" of nuclear facilities for which I can find satellite photos on the Web. By my calculation, an attack of relatively high certainty on nuclear targets would require 400 aim points. (An aim point is the specific location where an individual weapon is directed. Most targets would have multiple aim points.) I estimate seventy-five of these aim points would require penetrating weapons. But it is unlikely that a U.S. military planner would want to stop there. Iran probably has two chemical weapons production plants. He would want to hit those. He would want to hit Iran's medium-range ballistic missiles that have just recently been moved closer to Iraq. There are fourteen airfields with sheltered aircraft. Although the Iranian Air Force is not much of a threat, some of these airfields are less than fifteen minutes flying time from Bagdhad. Military planners would want to eliminate that potential threat. The Pentagon would want to hit the assets that could be used to threaten Gulf shipping. That would mean targeting cruise missile sites, Iranian diesel submarines, and Iranian naval assets.
Moreover, much of the public debate regarding preventive action has focused on military-technical considerations: Does the United States (or Israel) have the intelligence needed to hit the right targets? Does either have the means to destroy those parts of the nuclear infrastructure located in hardened, buried facilities? Is there an optimal moment to strike, and when is it too late?These questions, however, are not the primary questions that need to be asked, and they highlight the fact that the accepted wisdom is based on an inappropriate metric for measuring the success of preventive action: the amount of destruction visited upon Iran's nuclear infrastructure may matter less than whether or not Iran decides to rebuild.The accepted wisdom also ignores context: preventive action that follows provocative Iranian steps, such as an announcement that it is leaving the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), could have a much different effect than action not linked to a perceived Iranian provocation. The accepted wisdom is also based on assumptions not grounded in the Islamic Republic's track record of retaliation after military attack, which is decidedly mixed. Nearly all retaliatory options entail considerable challenges and risks for Iran.