It's difficult to imagine that anyone in the administration is even comtemplating such a move. Being former military, I understand the need for military planners to prepare for such a contingency.

But it sounds as if the civilian heads are giving it serious consideration, which I think helps explain why some of the military brass at the Pentagon have been talking to Sy Hersh. It's one thing to plan for it - it's quite another to give it serious consideration as a viable first option (using nukes as a preventative measure).

dear tom,

i don't think ANYone around here ever thought that it'd be a good idea to use nukes in ANY conflict, be it pre-emptively or retaliatory or in a third (4th, 5th, ...) way(s) that i can't think of right now.

nukes are good for m.a.d. (mutually assured destruction) and other deterrence scenaria but not for actual usage. to messy - physically (you might want to actually access the area with your own troops) and politically (if you use them you loose every sympathy even if the cause is a good one).

similar to d.u. (depleted uranium) shells -- yeah, they're more effective in combat but the fall-out is an instant "nono". and the u.s. military (or other "western powers") don't NEED d.u. ammo to win wars.

but ... thanks for the links.

--raf*

"The lesson of the Danish cartoons is the clearest reminder that what is at stake here is the credibility of our civilization."

This is everywhere in the rightside blogverse. the cartoon wars are constantly held up as evidence of the intractability and basic eevulness of Islam and as a kind of opener in the coming apocalyptic war of civilizations. i don't get it.
the credibility of our civilization? phew.
i think i am a jeffersonian, actually.
we're pretty rare.

and the correct non-moonbat terminology is not 'blow up the whole bloody place, mate, and we'll see where the chips fall later'--it is 'turn Iran into a plain of black glass and slant drill under it'.

i apolo for the lack of capitalization, L., but least i am not writing in haxxor. ;)

eponymous, it is being wargamed and simmed--like everything. but one thing tom's links don't mention is the civilian casualties involved in a preemptive strike--some facilities are incorporated into university campuses and population centers--are we going to warn iranians to evacuate?

Raf: I incline towards laconic understatement when I'm truly pissed off. Helps me stay focused.

raf: actually, i believe the DoD has mostly moved away from depleted uranium in the last couple of years. methinks they went to a liquid metal aloy... will have to pull out my old society of mechancial engineers magazines to dig up what the alloy is.

interesting side note: some oil equipment is designed to drill through a surface layer of glass.

*raf --

"i don't think ANYone around here ever thought that it'd be a good idea to use nukes in ANY conflict"

Personally, at Tora Bora, I would have considered tac-nukes. Variety of reasons.

Otherwise, this stuff is just wacko.

but one thing tom's links don't mention is the civilian casualties involved in a preemptive strike--some facilities are incorporated into university campuses and population centers--are we going to warn iranians to evacuate?

Tactical nukes are being considered for their bunker-busting power, ie. for use on facilities located deep underground, in specially designed bomb-proof bunkers, that a conventional strike might not sufficiently damage. The "secret" facility at Natanz is believed to have such an underground installation, possibly built with Soviet help. It's located 100 miles south of Esfahan, and 25 miles northwest of a village called Deh-Zireh.

Oh, and yes, I agree nukes are to be avoided.

dear matthew,

nukes are ALWAYS wrong to use - even if militarily a good idea (like tac nukes @ tora bora) the political fall-out is never worth it. moral highground & all that ...

apart from all that - i do think it to be RIGHT to not use a.b.c. weapons for sheer ETHICAL reasons. one simply doesn't DO IT. period.

--raf*

Raf Bey

Merely asserting Nukes are ALWAYS WRONG (above all in all caps like that) just doesn't cut it.

I personally am not in favour of using nuclear weapons as tactical weapons because I do believe it is a losing proposition (one will lose more in way of influence and the like than one will gain - all things being equal, which they are not always), but I would hesitate to write "always."

I personally can imagine a situation where the US or UK or France might well be moved to use nuclear weapons against Iran. I would hope my imagined scenario would never come to pass, but I would not exclude it from a realm of reality.

As to the present situation in Iran, this strikes me as a loser. Iranian reaction would be rabidly nationalistic in the main, which would likely mean for bad things in Iraq for US troops, and a vast destabilisation of the Gulf region.

The gain, a potential and probably temporary set-back in the Iranian nuclear program.

It strikes me that only to the most simple minded fool does this seem like a good idea.

However, at the same time, there does not appear to be very creative thinking with respect to what might be done to delay the Iranian program.

Perhaps there, on the other hand, and it is occuring covertyly like it should.

ya abu l-maal,

while i share your ability to " imagine a situation where the US or UK or France might well be moved to use nuclear weapons against Iran", i can't for the life in me think of ANY situation in which that would actually be NECESSARY.

i never said that it's not gonna happen. i said that a.b.c. weapons SHOULDN'T be used in ANY situation.

cheers,

--raf*

Ya Faqih

Necessity is a funny thing. I am convinced I could think of things I think necessary that you would not (leaving aside the extinguishing of my lumpier American relatives, a project I still contemplate for the greater good of mankind, never mind the Umma).

I am aware you did not say it would never happen, but that it should never happen.

I am differing with your learned self on the should.

There are situations I can see where necessity might arise.

I hope this does not happen, for the sake of everyone.

I also rather fear that the present American Administration is of such stunning incompetence that it might well stumble into using the bloody things with no more thought than some semi-literate backwoods bedu might use a gun to shoot a bumbling teenager pretender of camel raider.

Sadly, as well, the Iranians seem to be 'blessed' with a President whose boundless stupidity comes close to the American President.

If only we could strike a deal to send both of the ghrabaayain to some Island to beat each other senseless or something equally pleasing.

"nukes are ALWAYS wrong to use - even if militarily a good idea (like tac nukes @ tora bora) the political fall-out is never worth it. moral highground & all that ..."

Nuclear weapons have no special mystical value, they are just very big explosives. Since I think war should be a conservative affair, their use should be avoided.

OTOH, to be absolute about it is not necesssary if one is not a pure pacificist.

First, the proposition is demonstrably wrong. "the political fall-out is never worth it. moral highground & all that ." The only time such weapons were used in anger, the using party held the moral highground (they put the bad guys among their enemies on trial) and the political fallout was the near-immediate surrender of the Axis. I can accept a moral problem in how it was used, but they did work, politically, morally and militarily.

Why Tora Bora? Because it would have 1) probably succeeded tactically, including binLaden/Zawahari(?) 2) few if any non-combatants would be killed and literal fallout minimized, 3) send a message that destroying American city or military centers will make us loony and dangerous (but really not actually hurt as many innocents as conventional bombing in the rest of Afghanistan due to the locale; also world sympathy mostly in our favor in our action in general), 4) get the revanchinst energy out of American systems ("we really nuked 'em"), helping prevent followup stupidity like Iraq and the whole transformational thing, which politially rode on ravanchist sentiment.

Of course if my geographic info is off, it wouldnt be good, but that was one case where it seemed to come together.

Also, if aliens are invading earth and are impervious to anything else including negotation, nukes should be used.

Well, they did use a daisy cutter there, which is as close as you can get without actually using the real thing.
The problem with Tora Bora was that they didn't continue the pursuit. For the life of me I can't figure out why. Even a drooling moron like Bush should have been able to figure out that you have to be relentless when tracking down your number one enemy, else you are made to look like an ass.
But I guess that's what makes him a drooling moron.

Pantom

Vague memory suggests the troops on hand were largely Afghan and not enthusiastic about pushing the last mile.

This is one of those areas that goes well beyond my expertise, and where I am willing to merely hold on to some general moral rules of thumb along the lines of no genocide, etc.

I agree with Mathew that our Faqih is making, as the Fuqaha are wont to do, excessively sweeping and conclusive statements. I nevertheless am inclined to agree with his guts, if not his overall analysis.

L., my secret hypothesis is that Bush believes what you believe. that economics is key to transforming MENA.
witness his threatened use of veto in DPW.
have you seen him so exercised about anything else?

zum, if we leave the university and populated research sites intact, we had might as well not do anything.
i think Mark Steyn is a bot. i could write a program to generate his verbage.

if ibn bush were to commit acts of regime change in Iran, it certainly would make for an interesting map. Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan all in a row. Pick up Syria and one spans from the Med to the Arabian Sea. i wonder what goods could be transported over such a route? certainly the proposed rail link(s?) between Iraq and Iran would prove timely!

having recently taken an engineering course focusing on the development and construction of atomic weapons, i cannot muster a strong moral stance against them (tactical, yes, but moral, no). now i can only think "COOL!" quite amazing weapons, really. they can fit in a suitcase or be as big as a skyscraper. they can make a little pop or blow up the whole world. (literal) fallout and radiation can be near zero or so much that no life in currently known forms will ever walk the planet again. amazingly conclusive weapons. truely mesmerizing to watch. fascinating to design.

to quote from a play I once acted in, "Atom. Atom. What a beautiful word."

Yeah, they were, but they had sent over a division of mountain troops from upstate NY somewhere along the way, who somehow never made it over to Tora Bora. Many incomprehensible things happened. They all trace back to an inexplicable unwillingness to go the last mile, not on the part of the Afghans, but on the part of the US.

BTW, re the map: I've speculated, and a right-wing poster on the Straight Dope, Brutus, also speculated, that one of the motives in invading Iraq was to surround Iran. Certainly looking at a map gives that impression.

L., my secret hypothesis is that Bush believes what you believe. that economics is key to transforming MENA.
witness his threatened use of veto in DPW.
have you seen him so exercised about anything else?
Bah, he believes no such thing. If the fool understands anything, he thinks in terms of violence.

The DPW veto threat was an issue of rare principle.

come now, L!

principle?

business, sure! but principle?

Well, I am tired, one or the other.

dear all,

my argument re: a.b.c. weapons is that they are so loathed universally, that any use of it - however prudent tactically and however there "won't be any radiation or 4th generation genetic defects", etc. - the moment you use them, the rest of the world will dislike you.

the usage of atomic bombs in japan in '45 is STILL condemned by large parts of politically thinking global population and one of the reasons for anti-u.s. sentiment.

a.b.c. weapons are PERCEIVED as ethically wrong, as close to "devilish" as possible. and that's what i meant with "political fall-out". use 'em and you're screwed.

most of you guys are in north america - come over to the mideast or europe and you see what i mean.

btw - matthew - there are STILL people in japan dying off the radiological fall-out from hiroshima/nagasaki. and in vietnam they get 12-toed babies from agent orange...

yeah ... overall bad idea.

and - really - not necessary. a tac nuke in tora bora wouldn't've worked any better than a daisy cutter. many taliban/ussama-boys would've survived deep in the caves. and it would've contaminated the area ... next you have goat herders getting leukemia ... etc.pp. AND every little disease within a 500 mile range would've been BLAMED on "result of american nuclear bombs" for decades to come.

hence - don't use it.

--raf*

jinnilyyah: zum [zurn?], if we leave the university and populated research sites intact, we had might as well not do anything.

Tactical nukes wouldn't be needed against normal research facilities, they'd only specifically be needed for bunker-style facilities. Natanz in particular is where the actual uranium enrichment takes place, and displays the telltale signs of an underground facility. Regardless of that I don't think even those seriously considering nukes would plan to drop one on a populated centre.

I disagree with Matthew that "nuclear weapons have no special mystical value, they are just very big explosives." They definitely have symbolic value. They escalate the conflict, for one. Second, it would stink of racial/religious discrimination to the victims, eg. "they would never use it against Europeans, but Asians are different to them". Using them at Tora Bora might have meant no Iraqi invasion, but only because the entire world would have been too shocked by the use of nukes to tolerate it ("who knows what they'll do next?").

Raf Bey

While I hate to argue with a Faqih, if only in spirit, I must note a point or two:
my argument re: a.b.c. weapons is that they are so loathed universally, that any use of it - however prudent tactically and however there "won't be any radiation or 4th generation genetic defects", etc. - the moment you use them, the rest of the world will dislike you.

Well, on the last, I would rephrase it to something more concrete as the Know Nothing Faction of the US political sphere already believes they are hated and thus why should they care.

The costs, regardless, with respect to Tac Nukes, are likely to usually to excede your gains.

the usage of atomic bombs in japan in '45 is STILL condemned by large parts of politically thinking global population and one of the reasons for anti-u.s. sentiment.

This, however, is bollocks.

The phrase politically thinking global population is wooley headed bollocks, and while the US use of the bombs on Japan may feed some portion of anti-US sentiment, I rather think those who hold the bombs against the US would find a dozen and one other reasons as well.

They are not the sort of people the US will ever convince, so, frankly, the US should have a fuck them attitude vis a vis their opinions.

I personally, I may add, lack a strongly felt position on the usage of the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima (other than vaguely having the sensation from superficial reading that perhaps one bomb was unnecessary).

a.b.c. weapons are PERCEIVED as ethically wrong, as close to "devilish" as possible. and that's what i meant with "political fall-out". use 'em and you're screwed.

Well, yes, there is a whole nuclear weapons are wrong sentiment.

It is a large one, and should be taken into account. Regardless, only one part of the equation.

most of you guys are in north america - come over to the mideast or europe and you see what i mean.

Well, in Europe they do tend to piss and moan and piss and moan about such things (although as I recall the 80s, there was much selectivity about whose weapons they were pissing and moaning about, on the part of the Left activists).

As for the Middle East.... Well, lots of people seem vaguely happy about Iran working on this - I guess a natural sort of "it would be cool if our Cousins, those odd ball Iranians had something to stand up to the big boys with."

btw - matthew - there are STILL people in japan dying off the radiological fall-out from hiroshima/nagasaki. and in vietnam they get 12-toed babies from agent orange...

Yes, bad things happen and happened. Lots more died from the murderous regime in Imperial Japan, for example.

In any case, I believe that as a general matter, analytically we can all agree given shakey intel and a weak position in Iraq, that the US would be engaging in a staggeringly bad move to use tactical nuclear weapons against Iran.

Which gets one back to thinking about what to do with Iran. Luckily I claim no great insights on the looney bastards.

On Iran, I think a nuke is a bizarre step, dangerous on any level, loony, deeply risky morally, legally, miltarily, etc. and perhaps simply an exercise in feeling strong after failing in Iraq.

I dont want to grant some mystical taboo to their use, however. I do agree that there is some sense that the USA is hypocritical to denounce retail murders in terrorism yet justify wilfull wholesale mass slaughter of a city or two. Zawahiri and.or bin Laden made an appeal to that.

On the other hand, the use of "STILL" hated is problematic as the first use in 1945 didnt originally result in mass hatred of USA by the victors of WWII or greatly among the third world that sat it out (the war, that is, except as a levee source and playing field). Almost everyone -- on the winning side at least -- was relieved at the time that it hastened the end, although there were thoughtful reservations and condemnations from a few.

Personally I have reservations about the Japan thing as well, but without strong opinions.

As to persons still being ill from it, that can happen, which is another reason why it should be avoided except in exceptional circumstances. Which the Iran situation is certainly not.

But to turn the tables, raf* -- arent you one who stresses there are no instrinsic standards and that the high standards are things that are agreed by humanity? In this case, the leading powers of all stripes (eg permanennt security council members) are/have been mostly nuclear armed and ready and have never condemned its use, just its proliferation. Thus the standard, if only human agreement is the highest standard, is that there is a place for nuclear weapons in the scheme of things.

Actually that is not a basis that is compelling to me personally, I like natural law and such abstract things and beliefs in intrinsic standards as soruces of value (without necessarily imposing them), but if the standards of political value is that of human international consensus, nuclear weapons for some peoples at some times, as a resort of some kind, win as a general principle.

The situation in Iran disturbs me to no small extent. I've already heard Gulf voices advocating a preemptive strike ("Better 3 months of chaos than 15 years of uncertainty.") and I think that sounds like a recipe for disaster; Afghanistan and Iraq are certainly not perfect today, and Iran would necessarily be given far less attention by America later. I recognize how uncooperative its government has been so far, but I hope America keeps pushing the UN in the way it has been content to do so far. Only if diplomacy completely breaks down should the military option be contemplated at all. I don't actually mind the stick being dangled during said diplomacy, but its use should not be premature, a la Iraq. Keep in mind that Iran could try and hit out at targets across the Gulf as well as inside it- including offshore oil production facilities and American battleships- using (its thankfully inaccurate) surface-to-surface missiles.

hello everyone

raf wrote:

"and - really - not necessary. a tac nuke in tora bora wouldn't've worked any better than a daisy cutter. many taliban/ussama-boys would've survived deep in the caves. and it would've contaminated the area ... "

Well not exactly.

The U.S. military could achieve the same effect with conventional munitions in the class of Daisy cutters to MOAB bombs with sequential precision targetting. The disadvantage is that this requires, more or less, complete control of the air to accomplish and X number more sorties per hardnened target with the number of sorties depending on the bunker depth and other countermeasures. The reliability isn't there either so you need "extra" sorties but they are pretty effective weapons.

Why didn't we use it at Tora Bora ? Because this is a one-time "ace in the hole" capability that we don't want to give away the details of so that countries like Iran could then further improve their bunkers.

Bunker-busting tactical nukes have the advantage now of being individually " dial-up" from a an unknown micro-atomic explosion to (at least) one kiloton. These things are, in the world of nuclear weapons, firecrackers but they do transmit a shockwave through earth very effectively and you only need one sortie to completely demolish an underground facility. Commanders can adjust the explosive power for the individual target and to control for the fallout.

The symbolic-political cost of using these tactical nukes, however low yield, remains very, very, high.

I recommend reading William Arkin. I've had some contact with him and he really does know what he is talking about when it comes to operational planning and military bureaucracy:

http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/04/despite_denials.html#more

A bit more link-farming: Billmon has a speculative look at why Iran (and specifically Ahmedinejad) might be looking to provoke a confrontation, and Blood and Treasure presents the "pub fight" analysis of Iran's current diplomacy:

US to Iran: Are you making nukes?” Trans: “did you spill my pint?

Ahmedinejad: we’re going to wipe Israel off the map;
Trans: Yes: and I FUCKED YOUR MOTHER.

US: drops hints of nuclear first strike:
Trans: You did spill my fuckin’ pint.

A: Israel will wither and die!
Trans: Every time I fuck your mother she pats me on the head. That’s why I’m so short!