Unthinkable by Kenneth M. Pollack

countries have been going over Iran with a fine-tooth comb and the discoveries of Natanz, Arak, and Fordow suggest that they have learned something from their past mistakes. I may not be 100 percent confident, but I am more comfortable than I once was.
    Yet each time I work through the air strikes option, I cannot get it to work out right. As you have read, I am concerned that air strikes will prove to be nothing more than a prelude to invasion, as they were in Iraq and almost were in Kosovo. I note that even Matt Kroenig, a passionateadvocate of air strikes, shares my fears, writing, “In the midst of such spiraling violence, neither side may see a clear path out of the battle, resulting in a long-lasting, devastating war, whose impact may critically damage the United States’ standing in the Muslim world.” I find I concur with the way that Tom Donnelly, Dany Pletka, and Maseh Zarif, three people normally found on the rightward side of the political aisle, put it in their analysis of the problems of containment: “We agree that escalated confrontation with Iran—and there is undeniably, a low-level war already being waged by Iranian operatives or proxies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere—would throw an already volatile region into chaos, perhaps spread and involve other great powers, and place a heavy burden on over-stretched American forces and finances. The costs of war are all too obvious and painfully familiar.” 2
    I fear that Iranian retaliation will prove more than we are willing to bear or that Iran will choose to reconstitute its nuclear program—and will do so as a weapons program, without the constraints of the NPT. Both seem like quite high likelihoods based on past Iranian practice, Iranian public and private statements, and the behavior of other, similar regimes under similar circumstances. If either proves to be the case, let alone both, I think it will be difficult for the president to avoid shifting to an invasion. I was there, in the room in 1999 when the Clinton NSC reached the conclusion that the NATO air campaign was not accomplishing its mission and therefore the United States would have to invade Kosovo if Milosevic did not back down before the ground force was deployed and ready. It was a grim moment.
    If the United States attacked Iran to destroy its nuclear sites and the Iranians retaliated in ways we found too painful to bear, or they stood up from the rubble, brushed off the dust, and vowed to rebuild and this time to get a bomb—the fatwa be damned—I do not believe the president, any president, could just stop. The president would have to defend the American people and the American homeland against attack, retaliatory or otherwise. Likewise, if the president commits the nation to war to defend againstwhat he will have to say is a grave threat to our vital national interests, he is going to have to finish the job with ground troops if air strikes alone fail to get it done.
    CONTAINMENT. As with air strikes, I start with the history. My reading of history is that nuclear deterrence works. Certainly, it has never failed—at least not yet. I am persuaded that the logic of nuclear deterrence is so simple and dramatic that it is compelling and the vast majority of people will be swayed by it. However, I do not think that nuclear deterrence is easy, perfect, or self-sustaining. While I have no idea just how close the world came to a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Kargil War, I don’t particularly like taking any steps in that direction.
    Similarly, my reading of the history of the containment of Iran is that it has worked quite well. Amid our fourth decade of containment, Iran is weak, isolated, internally divided, and externally embattled. It stirs trouble in the region as best it can, but it is no threat to the territorial integrity of any other country and its unconventional warfare campaigns have tended to be lethal nuisances