Some More Practical Options
Fortunately, additional defense-related options exist. Though they may not keep Iran from building a bomb, they can help make the neighborhood safer.
For starters, we can beef up the Proliferation Security Initiative, a multi-national effort to break up networks trying to spread weapons of mass destruction technologies and materials to terrorists and other bad actors. The initiative has succeeded in interdicting shipments of dangerous materials, and it's our best hope of stopping delivery of a covert nuclear weapon.
Continued success on this front requires that we keep one step ahead of the bad guys, by beefing up intelligence assets and modernizing our Coast Guard and naval forces.
We also need to get serious about Missile Defense. We're already working with friends and allies to establish a mix of air-, land- and sea-based defenses that can destroy ballistic missiles in flight. We should put these efforts into overdrive to protect our friends in the region.
To further pose a credible military deterrent to Iran, the United States also must pump up its special operations and human intelligence resources, and arrange ready access to the Middle East.
Today, our special ops are overstretched. The Pentagon should stop using these troops for foreign training assignments and other jobs that can be handled by conventional units. And it should bolster their ranks and expand human intelligence assets, ensuring that they have the language skills, area knowledge, and detailed and accountable intelligence needed to operate in Iran.
Finally, the Pentagon should nail down basing options in the region. That doesn't mean permanent bases -- just agreements with friends who will let us use their territory, waters and air space to launch and sustain operations against Iran, should they become necessary.
There are no easy solutions. But appropriate military options exist. To be able to exercise these options successfully -- and to provide maximum deterrent effect -- we must start making the right military investments now.
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We made a huge mistake by using force far too quickly in Iraq. This should teach us a painful lesson and already has limited our options (given our depleted military resources and spent political capital among our allies).
We need to be careful about using diplomatic threats given our reduced ability to back it up and the reduced fear Iran has about our attacking them.
All that said, aggressive actions to counter their acquiring materials, proactive attacks on potential reactors they are building, using Israeli intelligence and their forces to make attacks are all key tactics.
In addition, we need to work hard to gain the unilateral support of our European allies and attempt to minimize the influence of China.
This is a marathon not a sprint.
>> "We made a huge mistake by using force far too quickly in Iraq. This should teach us a painful lesson and already has limited our options (given our depleted military resources and spent political capital among our allies)."
The mistake we made in Iraq was not one of speed - but of not identifying with clear, objective terms the enemy, and subsequently using all available forces to crush him. Furthermore, the identification of Iraq itself as a primary enemy (On a list of potential targets, they stand at 10 or 13, at best) was a mistake. What the US needs to do is identify it's enemy -- Islamofascism in all of it's forms -- and state in unequivocal terms the morality of its cause. It then needs to use all available force against those enemies -- the respect that the US has lost in Europe and elsewhere will follow.