Wargaming Iran

My friend Peter Berkowitz has a fascinating piece in the July 13th issue of the Weekly Standard about the internal deliberations within Israel regarding a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. Peter was just there for a few weeks schmoozing with a variety of high-level analysts and security officials; the report he offers of these conversations is quite interesting. After the jump I've reprinted a long excerpt regarding the possible military and political costs of a strike, and how they might be mitigated. Even on the heroic assumption that the attack went exactly as planned, Israelis evaded Iranian air defenses and kept their losses to a minimum, and Iran's nuclear program was set back substantially, Israel would face considerable costs, both military and political. The military costs might be serious but would be... [read full story]                    

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