| #1 What would President Reagan do in this case? In the Nicaragua harbor mining and the Grenada and Panama liberations (and a few semi-secret Delta Force operations), he relied on fait accompli. That is he went on television after the operations were started and THEN gave the pretext. I would like to think that President Bush learned from that. However, a winter intervention in Iran would have been a better option. Iranians would be less likely to turn against the government in warm weather. And I believe that it would be in US interests to seek Iran military professional assistance in tossing the Ayatollahs. We will see. But telegraphing our options would be foolish. If Iran was pacified, then the US could target Hizbollah and other arms of Shiite power. |