Brawner: How would you handle Iran?

By STEVE BRAWNER

Stephens Media

Problems like Iran — they are why presidents leave office looking like they have aged 20 years.

The Iranians are now very close to having the ability to develop nuclear weapons, which presents whoever is in the Oval Office with two choices, neither of them good ones. There is action without war, which may not be enough. And then there is war, which may be far too much.

On the one hand, there is the president’s current path: Economic sanctions accompanied by threats of military action.

Maybe it will work, but Iran has a lot of oil and a lot of buyers. Certain countries such as Russia and China don’t seem interested in an embargo, so, frankly, Iran doesn’t need our stinking dollars.

Meanwhile, the Iranians are fortifying their nuclear development program, which is buried deep inside mountains. Each day that the United States tries to rally the world community to support economic sanctions, Iran gets closer to having a bomb while also making it harder for anyone to stop it from having a bomb.

Not surprisingly, Israel is getting antsy. Iran would be the second Islamic nation in that part of the world to possess nukes, but the first, Pakistan, has theirs pointed at India. Iran’s crazy-eyed president has called for the destruction of Israel and questioned the existence of the Holocaust, and what’s perhaps scariest is that he’s not really in charge. Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is clearly sending President Obama a message: We’re going to act regardless of what you do.

Sounds like we ought to just bomb them before it’s too late, right? Except we may not be able to just bomb them. It’s difficult — not impossible, but difficult — to drop bombs through a mountain, which means there may be more work to do after those bombs are dropped. The Iranians may not just capitulate and apologize for their nuclear weapons program. They may fight back, leading to a broader confrontation that sets the Middle East ablaze and results in a wave of terroristic bombings on American soil.

Americans have gotten used to the idea that our mighty military can roam the globe and take care of business with acceptable losses of enemy lives, limited losses of American lives, and no disruption to our daily lives. We haven’t even paid for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We just passed the costs down to our children and grandchildren.

But Iran is not Iraq, which had been devastated by the first Gulf War and then a decade of effective global sanctions imposed by a U.S.-dominated world. And it’s not Afghanistan, which is a loosely organized collection of primitive villages (that the United States has yet to bend to its will after a decade).

Iran is an oil-rich Islamic theocracy with a strong and politically powerful military untouched by combat for the past 30 years. Its economy is relatively prosperous and its population is young — and, by the way, not that anti-American, at least not until the bombs start dropping.

This could be total war. Many, many people might be killed. Civilians might have to be drafted. Packed football stadiums could be blown up. The Middle East — goodness knows what it would look like when it was over.

There are a few issues — and only a few — where I feel pretty confident which direction the country should go. The federal government must move toward a balanced budget. No veteran who needs help should be denied it. The United States should develop alternative energy sources for a variety of reasons. College football needs a four-team playoff.

But this Iranian question — that’s a tough one. Wait, and Jerusalem — or eventually, New York City — could be reduced to ashes by a nuclear bomb. Attack, and the United States could find itself fighting World War III.

It would be enough to put gray hairs on a president’s head.

Steve Brawner is an independent journalist in Arkansas. His e-mail address is brawnersteve@mac.com.