Iran’s War Games
BY JOHN BATCHELOR
July 18, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/36183
American observers have long anticipated the strategic offensive
by the Islamic Republic of Iran that began with Iranian proxies in
Gaza and Lebanon provoking Israel. The next weeks will see Iran
maneuver for the global crisis it wants to create by winter. The
confrontation at the United Nations Security Council over Iran’s
refusal to suspend nuclear fuel cycle processing will be the
presenting issue; however, the contest is decades in the making and
is best understood as Iran’s aim to defeat the United States and to
establish itself as the pre-ordained hegemon of the Persian Gulf
and ummah.
War planning by all sides is well advanced. Israeli strategic
plans are now on display. Iran’s strategic plans are discernible
because Iran has twice in the last months conducted war games that
describe what is ahead.
Last winter, Iran tested its strategic air defenses. Ahmadinejad
was out of view for about ten days as he participated in his role
as president along with his war cabinet and the mullahs. American
observers watched DOD signals traffic on the games and reached
several conclusions: 1. Iran expects America to launch air attacks
against Iranian command and control, air defenses and nuclear
weapons-making and ballistic missile sites by winter, perhaps as
early as October 2006. 2. Iran has constructed deep and hard sites
in which its command and control will ride out American attacks
through the winter months, when American tactical strikes will
struggle with the heavy cloud cover over Tehran. 3. Iran’s national
command leadership is prepared to approve offensive strikes against
American and coalition assets in the Gulf, in the Iraq theater, in
the Arabian Sea. 4. Iran believes the U.N. Security Council will
work to broker a ceasefire; when it does, Iran will emerge
triumphant and the remaining American strategic options will be
minimal.
Last spring, Iran accelerated its war planning during naval war
games in the Persian Gulf. Again, Iran was demonstrating its
capabilities knowing that American signals intelligence was
watching and recording.
What the Iranians demonstrated was that in the event of the
expected American air strikes, Iran will respond with weapons and
forces in the Persian Gulf. They also showed that they have a navy
with surface and submarine warships that are capable of crippling
civilian shipping indefinitely.
The Chinese-designed Silkworm missile C-802 that struck an
Israeli warship last week was launched by Iranian agents in
Lebanon, and Iran possesses weaponry that is capable of striking at
American warships in the Persian Gulf. Iran’s major strategic goal
in a sea battle is to cripple an American strategic asset, a
supercarrier.
Iran is also prepared to launch an amphibious assault against
the Gulf States. The Islamic Republic has the weaponry to strike at
the depots, pipelines, refineries and oilfields of the Arabian
peninsula as well as the Caspian Sea basin.
In the event that American air strikes become unbearable, the
Iranian national security apparatus is prepared to launch a
strategic ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead: accordingly, as
part of the 2006 naval war game, Iran conducted a practice of
national command and control procedures for the launch of a nuclear
warhead. The range of the Iranian ballistic missile is up to 1200
miles, which puts Jerusalem in range.
Iran’s war games plan looks to be on schedule and well suited to
the paralysis of the Europeans and the U.N. Security Council. Stare
at burning Haifa and Beirut and (eventually) Damascus and know that
Iran is on the march. The Teheran regime is supremely confident. It
believes that Allah has prepared its victory over the American
demon it calls “World Arrogance.” It believes that the ruin that
follows this conflict will prepare the entry of the Twelfth
(Invisible) Imam and the delivery of the faithful to Paradise. The
Tehran regime believes unshakably in what it calls the “Day of
Judgment.”
What is to be done? A Wall Street trader who lives on risk
converted his assets entirely to cash on Thursday July 13 and yet
then, that night, while reasonably buffered from the panic in
worldwide markets, found he felt sick to his stomach. My own
recommendation is to read over a towering American hymn from the
age of the American Revolution: “Jerusalem, my happy home, when
shall I come to thee?” asks the opening stanza. “When shall my
sorrows have an end? Thy joys, when shall I see?”
