rssSubtle Shift From Adm. Mullen on Iran Strikes?
Monday, April 19, 2010 at 1:59 pm
- 8 Comments
To take one more crack at Adm. Michael Mullen’s comments after a Columbia University address yesterday, it’s certainly clear that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff took pains to keep any military option against Iran as a last resort. But he may have shifted his emphasis about what hypothetical military strikes might accomplish.
According to Reuters (via Laura Rozen), Mullen said military strikes — presumably meaning missile strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities — would go “a long way” toward delaying Iran’s nuclear program. That’s tonally different than some of Mullen’s comments earlier this year that threw cold water on the efficacy of military action. Consider this February comment to the press, shortly after Mullen toured the Middle East:
We owe the secretary and the president a range of options for this threat. We owe the American people our readiness. But as I’ve said many times, I worry a lot about the unintended consequences of any sort of military action. For now, the diplomatic and the economic levers of international power are and ought to be the levers first pulled. Indeed, I would hope they are always and consistently pulled. No strike, however effective, will be, in and of itself, decisive.
My emphasis. In fairness, it’s possible to reconcile the two statements — while no single strike could be decisive, a bunch of them could go a long way toward slowing Iran’s nuclear program. But Mullen used to talk about what military strikes couldn’t accomplish, and now he’s venturing toward musing on what they can – while still cautioning that they still carry a big risk of unintended consequences and ought to be the very last resort. If Mullen was looking to tamp down Mideast speculation that a misinterpreted memo from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates meant the U.S. had few military options against Iran, that’s one way to go about it.
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Comment posted April 20, 2010 @ 12:00 pm
Why oh why do we not try to get it right for once.
I was in Iran last month and saw what any “intelligence” organisation that had done a small part of their homework should have seen a long time ago. The Iranian regime is finished amongst the Iranian people. It is staying in power through brute force and massive funding of mercenaries. The masses in Iran do not want nuclear arms. They want a peaceful life and decent relationships with the rest of the world and most importantly they do not want the current regime.
Why not go for the long term solution for a change…
Work with the Iranian people to give them what they want, get rid of the tyrants together with the Iranian people and do away with the problem once and for all.
A strategic solution that avoids blowing people up and instead of creating sworn enemies in that country for the next N years, gives us an ally in that crucial part of the world!
Comment posted April 20, 2010 @ 2:15 pm
The people of Iran massively support their nuclear program and have a long history of deeply resenting foreign imperial powers that tried to keep Iran backward. The Russians similarly threatened to invade Iran if Iran built railroads, and the British threatened sanctions and violence if Iran nationalized its oil. The Iranian people remember their history.
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