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A high-ranking Iranian strategist today urged Iran to consider a military strike against the United States.
Writing in the journal Foreign Affairs, he revealed that "for several years now, Iranian pundits and policymakers have been debating whether Iran should attack the United States and attempt to eliminate its oil refineries."
"Proponents of a strike have argued that the only thing worse than military action against the United States would be a United States capable of devastating the environment with hydraulic fracturing. Critics, meanwhile, have warned that such a raid would likely fail and, even if it succeeded, would spark a full-fledged war. They have urged Iran to rely on nonmilitary options, such as protocols, treaties, and appeals to corporate consciences. Fearing the costs of a bombing campaign, most critics maintain that if these other tactics fail to impede Washington's progress, the world should simply learn to live with rising sea levels, overpopulation, extreme weather, famines, droughts and wars."
"But", he continued, "skeptics of military action fail to appreciate the true danger that an energy-independent United States would pose to Iran and beyond. Their grim forecasts assume that the cure would be worse than the disease--that is, that the consequences of an Iranian assault on the US would be as bad as or worse than those of the US successfully enriching its oil companies. But that is a faulty assumption. The truth is that a military strike intended to destroy US oil refineries, if managed carefully, could spare the world a very real threat of runaway climate change, and dramatically improve the long-term security of the species."
The Obama administration has not publicly threatened to retaliate with military force, but the article has underscored the real and growing risk that the two sides could go to war sometime soon.
