The costs will be terrible:Economic. An attack on Iran will likely send oil prices overnight to $100 or even to $150. That will cause a worldwide recession perhaps as deep as the one triggered by the Iranian revolution of 1979.
Doubtful that such a spike would last very long. The Saudis have excess capacity and can make up the difference. Our strategic reserve can also provide some short term relief.
Iran might suspend its own 2.5 million barrels a day of oil exports, and might even be joined by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, asserting primacy as the world's leading anti-imperialist. But even more effectively, Iran will shock the oil markets by closing the Strait of Hormuz through which 40 percent of the world's exports flow every day.
Iran's economy is already in bad shape. Suspending exports also means losing revenue, which would have serious domestic repercussions. It could destabilize the country. Any Iranian attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz would be met by overwhelming force the likes of which Iran and the Middle East have never experienced. Iran would experience tremendous destruction and more than likely would fail to close the strait.
The U.S. Navy will be forced to break the blockade. We will succeed but at considerable cost. And it will take time -- during which time the world economy will be in a deep spiral.
BS. The Iranian Navy would be wiped out in a matter of hours.
Military. Iran will activate its proxies in Iraq, most notably, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Sadr is already wreaking havoc with sectarian attacks on Sunni civilians. Iran could order the Mahdi Army and its other agents within the police and armed forces to take up arms against the institutions of the central government itself, threatening the very anchor of the new Iraq. Many Mahdi will die, but they live to die. Many Iraqis and coalition soldiers are likely to die as well.
There is little love lost between the Iranians and Iraqis. They fought an 8 year war against one another, in which millions died. The Mahdi army would be commiting suicide.
Among the lesser military dangers, Iran might activate terrorist cells around the world, although without nuclear capability that threat is hardly strategic. It will also be very difficult to unleash its proxy Hezbollah, now chastened by the destruction it brought upon Lebanon in the latest round with Israel and deterred by the presence of Europeans in the south Lebanon buffer zone.
Let them stick their heads out and we will lop their heads off.
Diplomatic. There will be massive criticism of America from around the world. Much of it is to be discounted. The Muslim street will come out again for a few days, having replenished its supply of flammable American flags most recently exhausted during the cartoon riots. Their governments will express solidarity with a fellow Muslim state, but this will be entirely hypocritical. The Arabs are terrified about the rise of a nuclear Iran and would privately rejoice in its defanging.
BS. The Muslim street didn't come out when we invaded Iraq. Most of the Muslim world is Sunni. They have no great love for the Shi'a Iranians.
"His conclusions are nonsense and imbue Iran with far more power and influence than it really has."
Could it be this is exactly as he designed the essay to read? For what reason, I can only speculate to be this: how to call an end to the jihad without wiping out every Muslim on the planet?