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you covered my fears, too.

I think the plan is too dangerous to implement.

But, what else is there?

The students cannot just have arms given to them. We dont want martyrs.

In my opinion, the only other option is a massive aerial assault on the nuke plants.

And THAT will turn the students against us, too. And, it will give the MEK green light to go in without our consent/advice/control

If we let Israel do it, we ignite the whole Islamic world. If we do it, we ignite 75% of the Islamic world.

Either way, if Jimmy Carter had only let us go in 25 years ago.....

Thought-provoking post, and thanks for making it. I would be surprised to see MEK put 100,000 boots on the ground myself but it's been a long time since I've seen the last theater analysis and things may have changed. Our price for their safe sanctuary in Iraq was a disarmament that may or may not have been particularly effective. Even so, my guess it that they aren't capable of much more than a Zarqawi-style terror campaign in Iran. They aren't going to take on the Iranian army, and if they did they'd do so from a sanctuary that we'd be caught obligated to defend from the inevitable counteroperations. Touchy business to avoid starting a second Iran-Iraq war with the latter far less capable of a coherent fight than in Saddam's day. The first resort of the mullahs against a serious threat will be to attempt to unify the country against the external threat that I am afraid is how the MEK will be perceived. It will certainly be so portrayed.

The classic treatment (so far) has been an attempt at a Kennon-esque containment and isolation. Unfortunately a venal, anti-American Europe and China showed how easily an operator such as Saddam with offers in the form of commercial contacts and outright bribery can get around that tactic. I shall not invoke the name of the UN in this context lest you break out in hysterical laughter.

We can, of course, engage their Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon, and we may need to do so at some point, but I think the head of this snake is in Qom and Tehran, and it is there that a resolution must be effected.

These are radicals who are eager to reclaim their primacy in the Islamist drive against the West from the Wahhabi Sunnis, and will, if I am not mistaken, feel compelled to continue to increase both rhetoric and activity, searching for the line that Saddam finally found. At that point we will have a casus belli - I really think they're both stupid and fanatical enough to push it that far - and at that point we will have to seek a level of military operations that will suffice to overturn the government without engaging in a land war. I do not see invasion as a viable option. But we did manage a regime change in Afghanistan short of that, and it may be that options along those lines may offer the least sanguinary means of ridding the world of a truly malevolent group of men who have never felt serious opposition. All IMHO and from an observer undoubtedly less qualified than your source, so take it with a bucket of salt.