Stardate 20040622.1846

(Captain's log): Jon writes:

Do you think the recent be-headings in Iraq & Saudi Arabia is out of desperation or a widening of the war? Also do you think we will take out Iran's Nuke capacity before the election. I dread the thought of Iran having even non deliverable nukes.

I think his question includes an implicit assumption that there is a unified enemy controlled centrally, and that the acts of these groups are intended to contribute to its strategy. It seems to imply that these groups see themselves as part of a larger struggle, and that they are responding to the overall state of the war.

I don't think it's like that. There is no central control at all. Some of the larger groups have operated in ways which indicated that they have something of a strategy, but there is no overall strategy. The groups doing these things are only dimly aware of the overall state of the war, and aren't really thinking of themselves as being part of a force trying to win the war.

Frankly, I think that the recent beheadings are copycat. Daniel Pearl was beheaded, and then a couple of years later, another group beheaded someone, and now other groups have noticed how cool it looked in the video, and the kind of prestige it brought to those who did it, and are imitating the others.

Quite honestly, I think that's mainly it. It's happened before.

There were a rash of airline hijackings in the 1970's like that, made by unrelated groups who were not coordinating with one another and didn't even really share the same goals. One group did it, and other groups read about it, and decided to try it themselves. It was only after a few cases where the hijacking was pretty much a fiasco for the group responsible, and after changes in airline security which made even the attempt more difficult, that it stopped.

It may sound strange to put it this way, but there are fads and fashions in terrorism, just as there are in clothes and toys and music. Right now beheadings are in fashion for terrorist groups.

With regard to Iran, it's impossible for someone working from open sources to really estimate what the situation really is. They may already have produced enough fissionables for several weapons. Perhaps they are within a few months of producing enough for one. Perhaps they are years away.

I certainly can't tell, and though our intelligence people have a lot more info than I do, even they probably don't know for sure.

The Iranians have been working on this for a very long time. How many facilities do they have? Where are they all located? If they've already produced enough fissionables for one or more warheads, would they not move that away from the enrichment facilities, and if so, where did they put it?

I don't think it's likely we'll attempt to take out Iran's nuclear program, either before or after the election.

If you try, you have to get it all. If you only get part, you're in deep trouble. If we take out the production facilities, but if they have already produced enough fissionables for one or more bombs and we don't manage to get that, too, what would they do next?

And even if you did get it all (and you could never really be sure) there would have to be a more general followup. If we take out Iran's nuclear program, we also have to take out the Mullahs. If we don't, then we maximize the chance that they'll retaliate against us, possibly with tragic results. Even if they can't retaliate with nuclear weapons, there are a lot of other things they might do we wouldn't like.

That doesn't necessarily mean we'd have to invade, the way we invaded Iraq. Every military problem is different. We only used a handful of men on the ground in Afghanistan; we used more than three divisions in Iraq. What would be needed for Iran? I don't know. It's possible it would be even larger than what was needed in Iraq.

Or it might be a lot smaller. It doesn't necessarily have to be us who takes out the Mullahs; perhaps we could somehow induce the Iranian people to do it.

But one way or another, if we launch such an attack on Iran, there had better be a plan for how to de-Mullah-ize Iran as soon thereafter as possible, with a high degree of confidence. And if our military planners think the only way to do it is with large masses of troops, then we'll have to wait. We don't have the forces to handle that; we're near our limit now.

Of course, we could ask our allies for help. I'm sure they'd be glad to contribute substantial forces for a multinational effort. (heh heh heh... Sorry about that.)

Update 20040623: The Happy Carpenter comments.

Update: Brad Wardell is worried about other consequences of this new fascination for decapitation of helpless prisoners. Will it lead to dirty war?