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IRAN: REALITY, OPTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES.

PART 3, REGIONAL AND GLOBAL CONSEQUENCES OF U.S. MILITARY ACTION IN IRAN

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY

AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

NOVEMBER 14, 2007

Serial No. 110–182

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.oversight.house.gov

(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California, Chairman

TOM LANTOS, California

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland

PETER WELCH, Vermont

TOM DAVIS, Virginia

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

BILL SALI, Idaho

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

PHIL SCHILIRO, Chief of Staff

PHIL BARNETT, Staff Director

EARLEY GREEN, Chief Clerk

DAVID MARIN, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts, Chairman

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

PETER WELCH, Vermont

TOM LANTOS, California

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

DAVE TURK, Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on November 14, 2007 ...................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Berman, Ilan, vice president, policy, American Foreign Policy Council ...... 79

Gardiner, Colonel Samuel B., USAF (ret.), former faculty member of

the National War College, the Naval War College and the Air War

College ............................................................................................................ 12

Pillar, Paul, Ph.D., former National Intelligence Officer for the Near

East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005 and Deputy Director of the

CIA Counterterrorism Center ...................................................................... 68

Van Riper, Lt. General Paul K., USMC (ret.), former Commanding General of the U.S. Marine Corps Combat Development Command, first

president of the Marine Corps University and Commanding General

of the Second Marine Division ..................................................................... 87

Wilkerson, Colonel Lawrence B., USA (ret.), former Chief of Staff and

Senior Advisor to Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Special Assistant to the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former

Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College ......................................... 5

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Berman, Ilan, vice president, policy, American Foreign Policy Council,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 82

Gardiner, Colonel Samuel B., USAF (ret.), former faculty member of

the National War College, the Naval War College and the Air War

College, prepared statement of .................................................................... 15

Pillar, Paul, Ph.D., former National Intelligence Officer for the Near

East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005 and Deputy Director of the

CIA Counterterrorism Center, prepared statement of ............................... 71

Van Riper, Lt. General Paul K., USMC (ret.), former Commanding General of the U.S. Marine Corps Combat Development Command, first

president of the Marine Corps University and Commanding General

of the Second Marine Division, prepared statement of .............................. 89

Wilkerson, Colonel Lawrence B., USA (ret.), former Chief of Staff and

Senior Advisor to Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Special Assistant to the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former

Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 8

(1)

IRAN: REALITY, OPTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES. PART 3, REGIONAL AND GLOBAL CONSEQUENCES OF U.S. MILITARY ACTION IN IRAN

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2007

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN

AFFAIRS,

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:25 p.m., in room

2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John F. Tierney (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Tierney, Lynch, Higgins, Yarmuth,

McCollum, Hodes, McDermott, Shays, and Duncan.

Staff present: Dave Turk, staff director; Andrew Su and Andy

Wright, professional staff members; Davis Hake, clerk; Dan Hamilton, fellow; Christopher Bright, minority professional staff member;

Todd Greenwood, minority legislative assistant; Nick Palarino, minority senior investigator and policy advisor; and Mark Lavin, minority Army fellow.

Mr. TIERNEY. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs hearing entitled, ‘‘Iran: Reality,

Options and Consequences. Part 3—Regional and Global Consequences of U.S. Military Action in Iran,’’ will come to order.

I ask unanimous consent that only the chairman and the ranking

member of the subcommittee be allowed to make opening statements. Without objection, so ordered.

And I ask unanimous consent that the hearing record be kept

open for 5 business days so all members of the subcommittee will

be allowed to submit a written statement for the record. Again,

without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. Shays, I am going to submit my remarks for the record and

just abbreviate them. I suggest that your remarks also be allowed

to be submitted.

I want to again welcome all of our witnesses and thank them for

subjecting themselves to the delays, but also for being gracious

enough to come in. We are here to hear what I view as an extraordinary group of witnesses testify on a subject of increasing importance, the possible consequences of American military action

against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Today is the third hearing in

a series that the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign

Affairs has undertaken to examine U.S. foreign policy toward Iran.

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In our first hearing, we heard experts describe the current conditions, the make-up, and the complexity of Iranian society, including

the largely positive public opinion there toward the United States.

In our second hearing, we heard insider accounts from former senior diplomats and intelligence officials about missed negotiating opportunities with the Iranians over the past few years.

Today, we are extremely fortunate to have before us a group of

top military, diplomatic and intelligence experts who will provide

the subcommittee with what the public and the Congress have

needed for quite some time, an unvarnished discussion of what

could happen should this administration, before exhausting all diplomatic avenues, act to commit American forces in war against

Iran.

Make no mistake about it, some like to refer to air strikes or limited military action or other sanitized and neatly controlled terms,

but that vocabulary will be meaningless to the people on the receiving end of our force. The Iranian Government and the Iranian people will see any such action as war, and we can expect that they

would act accordingly.

Although some Members of this administration and their supporters have loudly opposed attacking Iran, none of them, to my

knowledge, have explained what potential consequences we as a

Nation would be left having to manage, not only over the next year,

but over decades and generations to come.

History shows us, unfortunately, that it is far easier to rattle a

saber than it is to clean up the consequences of a war. One need

only look at a map to understand Iran’s centrality to a whole host

of U.S. national security interests. We have a map over there to

our right.

We are in the middle of an expensive and bloody war in Iraq and

an equally difficult and dangerous campaign to build the entire

government and infrastructure of Afghanistan. One is at Iran’s

western border, and the other its eastern. We have hundreds of

thousands of soldiers who have fought and continue to fight in

these two countries. We have invested hundreds of billions of dollars and diverted critical military resources.

We heard at our second hearing the positive efforts Iran played

in helping to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. We have also

heard repeatedly about Iran’s involvement with the Shi’a militia

groups in Iran.

If the United States attacks Iran, how will Iran and its allies retaliate? And what impact will this have on the safety of our troops

and the future stability of both Iraq and Afghanistan?

Instead of hard-nosed diplomacy and efforts to improve relations

with Iran, or at the very least putting in place controlled mechanisms to avoid having small confrontations or actions spiraling to

major hostilities, this administration has been issuing threats and

condemnations.

If you look at the map of Iran carefully you will see that Pakistan and Turkey also border Iran—two countries that are absolutely vital to regional and global security. And many of our closest

allies in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, lie directly across

the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

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But as we will hear from our witnesses today, the potential consequences of military action in Iran do not just stop with those

countries directly surrounding Iran. For example, how will attack

on yet another Muslim country further erode the U.S.’ broader and

long-term efforts to win over hearts and minds in our global efforts?

How will the Arab-Israeli peace process be affected?

How will China and Russia react? Will they, for example, take

advantage of these American actions to swoop in and scoop up further trade and diplomatic opportunity?

How will the United States and global economy react to actual

or threatened disruptions in oil supplies, especially at a time when

global supplies are stretched to the maximum and the U.S. economy show signs of a troubling softening?

Everyone agrees that the dilemma posed to us in dealing with

Iran is extremely difficult and complex. There are serious and inherent dangers, for example, in an Iran with nuclear weaponry.

Among other concerns, a nuclear Iran could serve as a catalyst to

a proliferation surge in the region and pose a more threatening

presence in the region more generally. Iran has also supported

groups aligned with terrorist sympathies. And we certainly need to

continue to carefully explore the role that Iran has played in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. We need to take all of these

developments extremely seriously.

Still, as our two previous Iran-focused hearings and numerous

other forums have shown, there are significant alternatives to war

that have not yet been exhausted or adequately and skillfully pursued. These alternatives should be considered as opposed to using

military action as a first option or until we are directly threatened.

But I worry that, unfortunately, the same rosy scenarios and foolhardy thinking that led us into Iraq in 2003 are gaining momentum once again with respect to Iran.

I ask the simple question: have we learned any lessons? If nothing else, I hope we have learned the importance of having our eyes

wide open as we contemplate the possible paths forward, especially

when one of those paths has such pervasive consequences as war.

That is what our hearing today is all about.

The witnesses here today have been asked to testify because of

the breadth and depth of their experiences. At least four of the witnesses have served in uniform and collectively bring a wealth of

personal and professional experiences. I know they bring a patriotism borne of personal sacrifice and a deep love of our country and

its rich heritage and strength of ideas.

I have no doubt that the members of this subcommittee and the

American people will benefit from the opportunity to learn from the

decades of collective military, diplomatic and intelligence experience before us today. And to do so before the drums of war drown

out the ability to have a reasoned and thoughtful discussion.

I want to thank the witnesses again for being with us today. We

look forward to your testimony.

I now yield to Ranking Member Chris Shays for his opening remarks.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this third

hearing and for holding the first two.

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The decisions we make about our future relations with Iran must

be based on bipartisanship at home and discussions with our allies

abroad. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has described

Iran’s nuclear program as more worrisome than the crisis over

North Korea’s nuclear weapons. He has predicted that if Iran secures nuclear weapons, nonproliferation efforts may cease to be

meaningful and a world of multiple nuclear centers will be created.

And he has asked: what would the world look like if the terrorist

bombs in London on July 7th had been nuclear and 100,000 people

had been killed? Perhaps more poignant, Kissinger has said: I am

not recommending military action against Iran, but I am recommending not excluding it.

Today’s hearing will focus on the possibility of a military strike

against Iran. While the central reason for such a strike seems

straightforward, to prevent this state-sponsored terrorism from acquiring nuclear weapons, the outcome of such a strike does not. So

what would happen if the United States bombed Iran? The truth

is, no one really knows for sure, just as no one really knows for

sure what would happen if Iran acquired a nuclear weapon. Of

course, none of us want either event to occur. But we must recognize the stakes are enormously high when nations like Iran

espouse a philosophy that is irrational. They threaten the survival

of their own population, as well as the rest of the world.

These concerns are shared by the majority of the American people. When asked recently whether Iran poses a serious threat to

the world, 85 percent of Americans answered yes. Dealing with terrorists leaves responsible leaders with stark choices that will have

to be made to protect the American people and the rest of the

world.

But this hearing is about hypotheticals, so let us talk in

hypotheticals for the moment. If the United States were to attack

Iran’s nuclear weapons facility, Iran would consider such an act an

act of war and retaliate. This retaliation could come in the form of

a strike against our allies, retaliation against United States and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and maybe even Europe, and

possibly a wave of terrorist attacks against United States both at

home and abroad. Perceptions of the United States would further

deteriorate in the Middle East and in other Muslim countries

around the world. The bottom line is, we would be at war with

Iran, which would be devastating, because what the United States

and our allies do not need right now is to open another front

against a terrorist state.

Many experts disagree how soon Iran could acquire a nuclear

weapon. Some say in 5 years and others say 10. Whatever the time

delay, there is little disagreement Iran is intent on acquiring the

capability. And if Iran succeeds and builds a nuclear weapon, what

then? The Middle East would become even more unstable, the rich

oil region would be dominated by a terrorist state that has announced its intent to annihilate one of our staunchest allies, Israel.

As Secretary Kissinger observed, other nations would want to acquire the capability, and nonproliferation would cease to be a coherent policy. Indeed, these are just some of the consequences of

Iran’s obtaining nuclear capability.

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Last week the Crown Prince of Bahrain said that the Iranians

are seeking to develop nuclear arms, and called on world leaders

to find a diplomatic solution. I agree with the Sheikh; the United

States has an obligation to find a solution other than war, and we

as Congress have an obligation to support the current administration and whatever the administration follows in their efforts to find

this solution.

But in the meantime, we cannot allow terrorist states to acquire

the means to blackmail the entire world. So to return to Kissinger’s

insight, while we should not be recommending military action, we

should be recommending not excluding it either. We welcome all

our witnesses today and look forward to their testimony.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Shays. We are fortunate to have

with us this morning Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colonel Samuel

B. Gardiner, Dr. Paul Pillar, Ilan Berman and Lieutenant General

Paul K. Van Riper.

We are going to start with the testimony of Colonel Larry

Wilkerson, who is the visiting Pamela C. Harriman professor of

Government at the College of William and Mary, as well as professional lecturer in the honors program at George Washington University. His last positions in government were as Secretary of State

Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2005 and associate director of the State Department’s Policy Planning staff.

Before serving at the State Department, Colonel Wilkerson

served 31 years in the U.S. Army, including as Deputy Executive

Officer to then-General Colin Powell when he commanded the U.S.

Army Forces Command in 1989; Special Assistant to General Powell when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989

until 1993; and as Director and Deputy Director of the U.S. Marine

Corps War College in Quantico, VA, from 1993 until 1997.

Colonel Wilkerson holds two advanced degrees; one in international relations and the other in national security studies. And

before the Colonel starts, I want to invite anybody who wants to

take their jacket off to do so. It’s pretty warm in here with the

lights in here.

Mr. SHAYS. We are talking about witnesses as well.

Mr. TIERNEY. Witnesses as well. And ask unanimous consent

that Mr. McDermott, who is not a member of this particular panel,

but who has joined us here today, be allowed to participate. Without objection, so ordered.

Colonel Wilkerson we will be happy to hear your remarks.

STATEMENT OF COLONEL LAWRENCE B. WILKERSON, USA

(RET.), FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF AND SENIOR ADVISOR TO

SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN POWELL, FORMER SPECIAL

ASSISTANT TO THE CHAIRMAN OF THE U.S. JOINT CHIEFS

OF STAFF, AND FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE U.S. MARINE

CORPS WAR COLLEGE

Colonel WILKERSON. Thank you Mr. Chairman, and thank you

for having me here. And Ranking Member Shays and other members of the subcommittee, thank you.

I would like to start and preface just by saying I am a soldier.

That is the perspective I am going to be speaking from. I am a

strategist. I was educated as a strategist. And that is an important

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distinction. Strategists aren’t trained by instrument. They are educated. It is a very, very meaningful distinction as a matter of fact.

And what I want to—the perspective I want to come from is that—

you have my written testimony. I just want to focus on one aspect

of it. That aspect of it is, let us assume political, diplomatic, informational, cultural and other instruments of our national power

have failed and we do have to use military force. Despite the lack

of a substantial and ready link component, because we wouldn’t

have one—it is tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere—

what will be the consequences of using such force, because it would

be limited to air and Naval power, perhaps complemented by a few

Special Operating Forces to prepare us? That live purpose is the

only ultimate objective I can conceive of, as Ranking Member

Shays has pointed out, to use military force against Iran.

The result of using such force in my view would be disastrous.

I am a soldier. I am speaking from the intellect and the heart.

Land-based air power coupled with sea-based air power and small

Special Operating Forces deployed in Iran would conduct what I

would call a network centric top campaign that is using high developed target maps that devastate the existing grids in Iran; railroad, air, electricity, gas, information, communications, commanding patrol and so forth. Or in a more limited way, these forces

would concentrate, take out Iran’s air defenses, as probably they

could, and then do what damage they could do to the nuclear facilities that we are aware of or that we suspect.

My question in both cases: widespread strikes and use of more

focused strikes would be to what purpose? At best, the limited

strike scenario would set back Iran’s nuclear program a year or

two, perhaps a little longer. More likely, it would spur the Iranians, as strategic bombing did the Germans in World War II, to

round-the-clock, determined efforts that would swiftly make up the

lost time, might even make the program even faster. We may recall

that German production actually increased after massive bombing

raids by the Allies in World War II. The more widespread strikes,

while devastating—and they would be—would solidify a nation of

70-plus million people, a great number of whom are under 35 years

of age; a nation that is anything but solidified in its views right

now, particularly amongst that age group. And the uniting factor

would be nationalism and a visceral hatred for America. The ranks

of the Revolutionary Guard would swell. Asymmetric warfare at a

time, a place and with a means of Iran’s choosing, not ours, would

break out wherever U.S. forces were vulnerable, but particularly in

Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait and elsewhere at a minimum.

But at the end of the day, what would America have gained by

doing this? My answer is very little, except that we would have

fallen into one of military history’s most common traps: we would

have reinforced strategic failure, one of the oldest most consistent

failures throughout military history. From the Persian to the British empires, there exist enough examples to give one pause. From

Xerxes to Mark Anthony, from Napoleon to Hitler, from World War

II to Vietnam and World War I, history is replete with leaders who

simply could not say either tactically, operationally or strategically

enough, and sacrificed more blood and treasure by adding to that

failure. Unless we are prepared to invade Iran with strategic

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ground forces, thoroughly defeat the hundreds of thousands of

guerrillas that we would most likely encounter, occupy the country

for at least a decade or longer, more and deeper failure is the most

likely consequence. That is the only conclusion as a strategist and

as a military man that I can come to. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Colonel Wilkerson follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Colonel.

For everybody’s information, there is a vote scheduled and a motion to adjourn. There is a single vote on that. We are going to continue to keep the proceeding along. So if people want to go vote and

come back, we will continue in place on that.

Our next witness is Colonel Sam Gardiner, U.S. Air Force, retired. Colonel Gardiner is a war strategy scholar and former faculty

member of the National War College, the Naval War College and

the Air War College. Colonel Gardiner has designed and participated in numerous war game simulations involving Iran, including

one we broadcast on CNN in early December.

Colonel.

STATEMENT OF COLONEL SAMUEL B. GARDINER, USAF (RET.),

FORMER FACULTY MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL WAR COLLEGE, THE NAVAL WAR COLLEGE AND THE AIR WAR COLLEGE

Colonel GARDINER. What I have is a net assessment. Essentially

it is from the net. What I am going to say is nothing classified. I

have told Iranians directly to their face that they need to fear the

Americans will strike. What I am telling you, I have told them.

This is the headline we want to avoid. The headline of the future

in which a President is faced after a series of U.S. actions with a

decision to go for regime change. He is faced with no other option.

There are two military objectives we normally see set out when

we talk about conducting a strike against Iran: punish the Iranians

for terrorism. This is new. It has more importance than it did 6

months ago. The second, obviously, is to set back the nuclear program.

Let me talk a little bit about targets and the likelihood of success. In the punishment category, obviously the Revolutionary

Guard units come to the top of the fore. Interesting about the Revolutionary Guard units we don’t hear much talked about is they are

prepared for an air strike. They are heavily bunkered and heavily

re-vetted. It would be very difficult to put punishment on them.

This is the same unit, but spread out.

The second option: go after the terrorist training camps. Not

much infrastructure there, and not much density of personnel. Not

a very good target. By assessment of the punishment option, here

is what I would say after we got through with that: no serious

damage done to the Guard units; the strikes on the terrorist training camps doesn’t do any damage; Iran continues enrichment and

doesn’t change its view of the world.

OK. Let us go after the nuclear facilities, is the other alternative.

You need to understand the one big weapon that plays a role in

this. This is the penetrating 5,000 bomb conventional weapon. The

first target that comes to mind is the Natanz enrichment facility.

This is the way it looked 5 years ago. The two halls will be buried

with 2 meters of concrete, 18 meters of dirt, 60 feet under ground.

This is the way it looks today and the way the United States would

have to target it, with this conventional penetrating weapon probably putting two weapons on top of each other.

The next target would be the nuclear research facility at

Esfahan. Interestingly, what is happening in Iran right now is,

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they are moving from just dig and cover to tunneling. It makes targeting much more difficult and harder for us to destroy even nuclear facilities now. This is the kind of targeting we would have to

go on. Obviously, the heavy water facility in Iraq would be targeted. And again, what one finds is tunneling and making the targeting difficult.

Here is the third, the final facility I am going to talk about,

which is the missile test facility in Parchin where they also do

weapons testing. Again, what you see is heavy tunneling to interfere with targeting. This is another interesting point about

Parchin, and I raise this; I do not know the answer to this: they

are more careful about protecting the facilities there than they are

about protecting the nuclear facilities. I suspect it has to do with

chemical weapons. I will mention that later.

Bushehr would not be targeted. No reason to kill Russians. It is

not important to the nuclear program.

Here is my assessment after that. We can destroy 3 to 5 years

of construction. We know how long it took to build those. But the

effect on the nuclear program is what Wilkerson said, we may slow

it. As a strategist, I would say, you don’t take military action when

you don’t know the outcome. It is very questionable.

The next thing that comes to mind is, if you are going to strike

the Iranians, then you got to make sure, this would be the argument, that you get their ability to retaliate so that they can’t come

back. These are the F–14s at Esfahan, the Alert F–14s. We want

to strike those. More shelters and bunkers, heavily sheltered and

bunkered Air Force. It could be destroyed. This is the main Naval

base at Bandar Abbas, three Russian supplied Kilo submarines and

a mini-submarine. Those would be targeted in this elimination of

the retaliation capability. The missile patrol boats in Chabahr

would be targeted. The Iranians have a series of anti-ship missiles.

These are the probable locations. The anti-ship missiles include the

old Silkworm as well as the C–805 that was used by Hezbollah to

attack an Israeli ship. They are heavily bunkered. They are stored

in bunkers. They have sites that are re-vetted when fire dropped.

We would probably strike the missile launch areas, the same

launch areas that the Iranians used during the Iraq-Iran war

where they probably have some Shaab missiles. After all that happens and most of the aircraft would be destroyed, large Naval vessels would be destroyed, but we would be facing small boats, terrorists, chemical capabilities and some missiles.

Let me talk about consequences. Iranians have a number of options. Little or no response, and this is an interesting one, I am

going to talk a little bit about this because that is a powerful option, what I call the ‘‘low DNA’’ violent attacks; and then a broader

response, no response, very interesting. And my metaphor is the

Danish cartoon example in which the Middle East and even Europe

became enraged by those cartoons. You will find the same thing

happening here. Some governments might even be threatened by

the severity of the reaction. And again, that is without any Iranian

retaliation. We have said the Iranians are—if we attack them, according to the National Intelligence Estimate—like Iraq that we

can expect a major improvement or increase in terrorists. We have

said that there is a high likelihood that they would initiate attacks

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inside the United States. We would find we would be asked to escort ships in the Gulf. We would be asked during this process to

provide additional missiles to Israeli and Gulf states. And the oil

pipelines that are in Iraq would be vulnerable and we could very

easily see that as being targeted. We would see additional infiltration into Iraq from Iran. And we would see additional U.S. casualties because of that. We could very well see more Naval mines in

the Persian Gulf. Not a heavy mine capability, but just a few. We

could see the Iranians use speed boats to threaten oil tankers. We

could see insurance rates and oil prices jump. Most people talk

about a spike, but it is important to remember that may not be in

the Iranian interest. Recall, during the Iraq-Iran war, we actually

had a price plateau. That is something that they would more likely

want to see.

The range of things they could do beyond that is broad and will

probably depend on the severity of our strikes. But involved in this

we have to understand is they have threatened attacks inside the

United States. Remember, Iran has WMD now. This is not something we were talking about. They probably have this range of

chemical capabilities. This special storage facility at Esfahan is

probably where they store them.

When we talk about Iran providing nuclear weapons to terrorists, I think we have to be able to answer the question: why haven’t

they given chemicals to terrorists? I can’t answer that question, but

that is an important question to answer. It brings me back to

where I started. It is possible for a President to be put in a position

where he has no options because the sequence of events where it

is not just that our options aren’t successful, but we are at a point

where we have to do regime change because his options are no

longer limited by the violent extreme war tactics.

[The prepared statement of Colonel Gardiner follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much, Colonel.

Our next witness is Dr. Paul Pillar, who served for 28 years in

the Central Intelligence Agency, including as National Intelligence

Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, and

as Deputy Director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center. He holds

a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Princeton University, and currently serves as a visiting professor of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University.

Mr. Pillar.

STATEMENT OF PAUL PILLAR, PH.D., FORMER NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE OFFICER FOR THE NEAR EAST AND SOUTH

ASIA FROM 2000 TO 2005 AND DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE

CIA COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER

Mr. PILLAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.

As Mr. Shays correctly noted in his opening comments, no one

can accurately predict exactly what the consequences of any U.S.

military strike on Iran would be. But in my judgment, there are

good grounds for assessing that the risk of major damage to U.S.

interests from any such action are substantial and that the probability that such damage would occur is high.

I am going to hit highlights from my written statement in four

areas. The first is the likely Iranian regime’s response. A U.S. attack probably would make acquisition of nuclear weapon capability

appear all the more attractive and even necessary to Iranian leaders and would motivate them to work even more assiduously to acquire such a capability sooner rather than later. One of the likely

principal reasons for Iranian interest in such a weapons capability

is as a deterrent against external threats, which in Iranian eyes include first and foremost the United States. A U.S. military attack

therefore would be for Iranians the most dramatic possible demonstration of a need for such a deterrent. An instructive lesson, in

addition to what Colonel Wilkerson mentioned about World War II,

was Iraq’s response to the Israeli air strike in 1981 that destroyed

the Iraqi nuclear reactor of Osirak. That response was not to give

up nuclear efforts but to redouble them.

Iranians, as you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Shays mentioned as well, would consider any military attack on their territory

as an act of war, and they would respond in times and places of

their own choosing. Colonel Gardiner has already covered a whole

range of plausible possibilities. I would just highlight two in particular. One would be responding inside Iraq where Iran over the

past 4 years has assiduously cultivated influence with a wide variety of Iraqi groups. So far, Iran has not fully exploited its position

in Iraq to make maximum trouble for the United States. But following a U.S. military attack on Iran, Iran would have less reason

than it does now to exercise any restraint at all. The other likely

form of asymmetric Iranian response would be international terrorists, including possibly attacks to the U.S. homeland as well as

against U.S. targets overseas. Iran retains a formidable terrorist

capability in the form of its own state agents, as well as the help

from clients such as Lebanese Hezbollah. In recent years, it has

held that capability mostly in reserve. But a U.S. military strike

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against the Iranian homeland would be just the sort of contingency

for which this reserve capability has been retained.

As for other political consequences inside Iran, any U.S. military

strike would be a boon to an Iranian hardliner such as President

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose political strength rests in large

part on a message of threat from, and confrontation with, the

United States. A U.S. attack would also make it substantially more

difficult for Iranian leaders of any political strength to do anything

that could be interpreted as a concession or a positive gesture toward the United States.

And I might add finally that an attack could also be expected to

affect long-term attitudes of almost all Iranians. Just as Iranians

still today, more than half a century later, refer resentfully to the

U.S.-instigated coup that overthrew a populous Iranian prime minister in 1953, a military attack, which of course would be an even

more open and violent act of hostility, would be a new source of

long-term resentment helping to poison relations between Iran and

Washington for generations.

Turning to the surrounding region and repercussions that would

extend beyond the Middle East to the rest of the world, most governments in the Middle East would oppose U.S. military action

against Iran, both in their public rhetoric and in their privately exposed sentiment. The Gulf Arabs, for example, do not focus their

attention on the distant possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon.

Iran has conventional superiority over them anyway. They worry

more about such things as resistance among their own Shia minorities. And they would also have to worry about how their conspicuous ties with the United States would work to their disadvantage

in the event of another intensely unpopular U.S. military operation

in the region.

And intensely popular indeed would be not just in the Gulf but

elsewhere through the Middle East. Like the war in Iraq, it would

be widely viewed by many people in the region as an assault by

the United States, the leader of Judeo-Christian West, against

Muslims. This perspective toward the Iraq war would increase the

likelihood that an attack on Iran would be seen similarly.

When you look at repercussions going beyond the Middle East,

again a look at the Iraq war gives us clues as to the likely impact

of an attack on Iran. Much of the world would view such an attack,

like they view the operation of Iraq, as an unprovoked and unjustified exertion of raw power by the world’s only super power. And

given particularly the unhappy experience we had with allegations

of weapons programs in Iraq, as well as U.S. tolerance of nuclear

weapons in the hands of ourselves and our allies, many would see

the U.S. action as a blow not against proliferation of weapons, but

against a Muslim country with a regime that Washington doesn’t

happen to like. So the dominant global consequence in my judgment, especially in the broader Muslim world, would be an increase

in anti-Americanism which has been documented in so many polls

so far over the last 4 or 5 years with regard to the impact of the

Iraq war. Another U.S. military offensive in the Middle East would

strengthen and lengthen this unfortunate trend.

All of this is speculative and hypothetical, of course, but in

weighing the risks of an action as drastic as a military attack on

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another state, we cannot afford to limit ourselves to only what is

readily measurable. Some of the consequences of such an action

would be no less serious and no less detrimental to U.S. interests,

even if they can only be inferred and not forecast with certainty

and precision. And in that regard, I would note that any hope for

benefit of such action also cannot be forecast with certainty or precision either.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Pillar follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Doctor.

Our next witness is Mr. Ilan Berman, who is the vice president

for policy of the American Foreign Policy Council. He is a member

of the Committee on Present Danger and author of, ‘‘Tehran Rising: Iran’s challenge to the United States.’’ Mr. Berman is a consultant for both the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Berman.

STATEMENT OF ILAN BERMAN, VICE PRESIDENT, POLICY,

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY COUNCIL

Mr. BERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And let me take the opportunity before I start to thank you and to thank Congressman

Shays for the opportunity to be here. You have my written statement, and I would like to submit it for the record.

I just want to walk through a couple of points that I made therein. From the outset, I think I should be clear: I am not here to advocate in favor of a military option with regard to Iran. Personally,

I think that such an option, if it is attempted, would have tremendous consequences, adverse consequences, for the United States, for

American interests and for American allies in the region. In part

that is because there are a lot of things that we don’t know or can

predict, reasonably predict, as Dr. Pillar said. The first is the question of knowledge gaps with regard to the Iranian nuclear program.

We know that, over the past two decades, the Iranian regime has

placed a premium on building a massive national nuclear endeavor,

pursuing both uranium enrichment and plutonium separation. But

there is a great deal of actual intelligence that we still don’t know

about that program. And as a result of that, as a practical matter,

this means that the idea of denuclearization, complete elimination

of the Iranian nuclear capability simply is not on the table. Rather,

the best that we can hope for, the best that we can hope for is to

delay and to defer Iran’s nuclearization but not to derail that

project completely.

The second issue that needs to be taken into account relates to

potential responses on the part of the Iranian regime. And we

heard from the previous witnesses a rather exhaustive list of what

could happen. I would only add my voice to that list and say that,

with regard to Iran’s capability to project asymmetric harm on U.S.

troops and coalition partners, with regard to Iran’s ability to increase its support, ratchet up its support for terrorist groups as

well as Iran’s strategic location atop the Strait of Hormuz, this is

a pretty dramatic countermeasure on the part of the Iranian regime that can be harnessed.

The third, and in my estimation the most decisive,

counterindication for military action actually has to do with the situation within Iran itself. By all indications, the Iranian regime is

wildly unpopular, polling at a very, very low success rate and popularity rate. But the nuclear issue is not. The nuclear issue is actually a very popular issue. And it is in fact a popularity that transcends both ethnic and sectarian lines in Iran. And this means, as

a practical matter, that even though this is an issue that has essentially been harnessed by the regime—it is a regime initiative,

not a populous initiative—it is one that is both supported by ordinary Iranians and by regime hardliners, although for very different

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reasons. And as a result, this means that external action on the

part of the United States or another country would be seen as an

unacceptable external intrusion. It would harden domestic opinion

in support of this program. And it would actually have the practical

ancillary effect of strengthening rather than weakening the regime’s hold on power, which I think we can all agree is probably

not the desired outcome.

But I think it is important to point out here that the elephant

in the room is the character of the Iranian regime itself. Nuclear

technology is not inherently good or evil. Its ultimate disposition

rests upon the character of the regime that will wield it, and what

it plans to do with it. And we know that the Islamic Republic is

the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, and its intentions

are, to put it plainly, malignant. And this is why the White House,

this White House, as well as politicians from both sides of the aisle,

have spent a lot of time insisting that one of the world’s most dangerous regimes should not be allowed to acquire the world’s most

dangerous weapon. And, by the way, they are joined by a growing

slice of the American public in this viewpoint. The latest poll by

Zogby International released just last week suggested that 52 percent of Americans now support the idea of military action to prevent Iran from going nuclear, although the reasons for their conclusion that this is a good idea would vary.

I would point out that there is a number of issues that need to

be raised when we think about the ultimate disposition of the military option and about whether or not to take it off the table. Personally, I believe that it cannot be taken off the table for a number

of reasons. First of all, because without the credible threat of the

use of force, the United States will undermine the other economic

and diplomatic strategies that it is currently pursuing. Simply put,

Iran is not likely to bend to sanctions if it thinks that all it has

to do is weather the sanctions, but then there is nothing else coming down the pike. And as a result, the regime will become convinced that there will be no consequences to its continued intransigence. So this is not a constructive position for us to take.

Without the credible threat of the use of force on the part of the

United States, you also have what amounts to a dangerous domino

effect that will begin to take shape in the region, indeed is already

taking shape in the region, in which a growing number of Iran’s

neighbors feel compelled to pursue a nuclear program of their own

in an effort to counterbalance the emerging Iranian bomb. And the

end result of this, I want to be clear, will be not one nuclear Iran

but many.

Also, without the credible threat of the use of force, the United

States will need to rely upon a deeply flawed deterrence paradigm

for dealing with the Iranian regime. This is a paradigm that fails

to account, at least in its current state, for communication gaps between Washington and Tehran; fails to account for a lack of understanding of Iranian strategic intentions; and, most of all, fails to account for this new and deeply troubling messianic discourse that is

beginning to emerge on the part of at least one segment of the Iranian political system. And I would argue that in particular, all

these elements, but that last one in particular makes Iran

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undeterrable in the conventional sense of the word, if you are a fan

of game theory and deterrence theory like I am.

And the last point here is that, without the credible threat of the

use of force on the part of the United States, Iran will soon be able

to extend a nuclear umbrella to terrorist groups that it supports.

And the practical consequence of this will be a vastly greater reach

and wake for groups like Hezbollah and the threat that they and

others can pose to America, to American forces, and to American

allies. And at the end of the day, it is clear that the military options for dealing with Iran is at best deeply flawed. At worst, it is

dangerous. Any calculus of a potential cost, however, I believe,

needs to be weighed against thelikely result of us doing nothing.

And those results in my estimation are the emergence of a new regional order in the Middle East dominated by an atomic Islamic republic. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Berman follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Berman.

Our final witness is General Paul Van Riper, who served with

distinction for 41 years in the Marine Corps, including as Commander General with the U.S. Marine Corps Combat Development

Command and the first president of the Marine Corps University

and the Commanding General of the Second Marine Division. General Van Riper received numerous decorations, including the Silver

Star with Gold Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, Purple Heart,

and the Legion of Merit.

General, I have to say, I read all of your testimony and found it

incredibly informative and quite a history on that. I know you

won’t be able to read all of that into the record, but I hope people

take the opportunity to read it on their own and go to the Web site

and whatever because it was incredibly informative. We look forward to your remarks.

STATEMENT OF LT. GENERAL PAUL K. VAN RIPER, USMC

(RET.), FORMER COMMANDING GENERAL OF THE U.S. MARINE CORPS COMBAT DEVELOPMENT COMMAND, FIRST

PRESIDENT OF THE MARINE CORPS UNIVERSITY AND COMMANDING GENERAL OF THE SECOND MARINE DIVISION

General VAN RIPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the

subcommittee.

I welcome this opportunity to speak with you today. Your effort

to widen public discussion about the direction of our Nation’s defense policy is, in my estimation, long overdue. I am going to summarize the three issues which I discuss in the longer paper, but encourage the Members, as well as those outside, to look at the extracted material that I include in the third section which speaks

to a different way or a different method of attacking difficult national security problems.

Let me speak first to a national discourse. Americans need to

know that war is much too serious a matter to leave to the generals or for that matter the senior elected officials. The decision to

wage war and the manner in which it is conducted must be the

concern of every citizen. Today, I do not detect the same wide interest in issues of national security among our citizens as we have

seen in the past. Someone recently observed, and I think correctly:

The military is at war; the Nation is at the mall. We must reverse

this indifference. Only through open and candid discussion can we

develop better national defense policies.

To my second topic, developing these national security strategies,

if we truly are in a global war against radical Islamic insurgents,

and I am convinced we are, we must think in terms of a global

strategy. We must view the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and

the potential for conflicts in such trouble spots as the Horn of Africa, Southeast Asia and Iran as part of our global concerns. Thus

the United States requires a well thought out and generally understood strategy for the ongoing worldwide war. Let me note, the administration speaks of a global war on terrorism. Terrorism along

with global warfare is simply a method. What we have is a global

insurgency. We now have so many national strategies that our efforts are diffused, some might even say confused. One contemporary source shows nearly 30 national strategies. The public is

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largely unaware of all these documents. But if they were, they

would find a bewildered array of policies, goals and objectives.

Even as a professional soldier, many of these individual strategies

perplex me. In the totality, they are beyond my comprehension.

The story of how we arrived at today’s sad state of affairs is important to understanding how we might improve our situation, especially when there is talk of war in Iran. If there is time during the

question and answer portion of the session, I would like to outline

that story for members of the committee. In one sentence, I am

convinced that the advancement of any number of non-ideas over

the past 15 years undermined much of the conceptual work done

after the Vietnam war, and directly contributed to the faulty decisionmaking leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

My third issue, we need a new approach to tackling difficult national security problems. America is a nation filled with problem

solvers who seem to favor analytical or engineering methods. An

analytical approach is a powerful one for those difficulties whose

underlying logic will organize a system that is linear and structurally complex. It is inadequate for such a class of problems, and

Iran would certainly fit this, whose underlying logic or organizing

system is dynamic, nonlinear, interactively complex or, as some literature refers to them, working problems. Interactions of these

sorts of systems can and often do produce unanticipated and disproportionate results. What leader could imagine in June 1914 the

two pistol shots fired in Sarajevo would set in motion all of the

events leading up to the horrors of the First World War? To understand these complex problems, we ought to grasp that taking action

in national security settings frequently creates multiple reactions

that for any practical purpose are unknowable beforehand. Appreciating this, our Nation’s leaders should be more humble when

forecasting the results of specific actions in the international arena.

Certainly this should be the case when we contemplate confronting

Iran or any other nation with military force.

Until we undertake a discourse about the contemporary U.S.-Iranian situation that includes authorities from many fields, I will remain unconvinced that any projection about the effects of military

action are anything other than conjecture. The chairman’s opening

testimony and this subcommittee’s meeting on October 30, 2007,

serve as an excellent example of how to begin to grapple with the

complex problems presented by Iran. I urge the subcommittee

members to continue to view the current situation with Iran as a

wicked problem that is interactively complex. If the legislative and

executive branches would engage in a widened discourse on this

vital issue, I believe it would see American Government at its finest. Certainly this is a course of action that every American would

want. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of General Van Riper follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much. We really shouldn’t applaud. All the witnesses have done an excellent job in sharing with

us their information on that, and we spent a lot of time doing that.

We do appreciate it.

There is another series of votes, as you heard the alarm going

off, two votes in fact. I thought what I might do is ask my 5 minutes of questions here, and then we will take a little break, come

back and others can vote, and then we will do that after. But we

will suspend after that.

Let me just start by asking generally the panel, I think we can

assume that neither Iran or the rest of the world is unintelligent

and uninformed, and they are all pretty much aware of what the

U.S. military capabilities are. Given that fact, I think there is a

question as to what value is added to any diplomatic or other efforts we might make to resolve these issues by continuing very

loudly to rattle the saber and heightening intensity about rhetoric

about the military option. Anybody care to respond to that?

Dr. Pillar.

Mr. PILLAR. Mr. Chairman, in my judgment, it works to the detriment of the diplomacy in a number of respects. That is to say,

it makes it less likely the sanctions will work. No. 1, it makes a

nuclear deterrent seem all the more worth striving for in the eyes

of the Iranians. No. 2, it helps the political position of hardliners.

No. 3, it makes all Iranian leaders of whatever political stripe find

it politically more difficult to do anything that makes it look like

they are making nice toward the United States. And finally, it cements the view that, I am afraid, too many Iranian leaders already

have, that there is simply no hope of a better relationship with the

United States, even if they did improve their behavior on nuclear

weapons, Iraq or anything else. So it detracts from the diplomacy.

It does not enhance it.

Colonel GARDINER. I just had one thing. I think the thing that

they are concerned about is not the military instrument but the

fact that they believe it means regime change. I hear this from Iranians a lot. What we need to take off the table is regime change,

which we have not taken off the table.

Mr. TIERNEY. Let me ask another question. What do we make—

and, Colonel Gardiner, you mentioned this in your remarks—that

the Iranians presumably already have weapons of mass destruction

and biological and chemical agents? What do the members of the

panel make of the fact that they never shared those, to our knowledge, with any terrorist to date, and how does that line up with

a fear that they might share nuclear materials with them?

General, do you want to start, and we will move from right to

left.

General VAN RIPER. Mr. Chairman, I have no special expertise

on Iran or the Iranian situation, though I have played a red commander in a country very similar to that. I think it is something

we need to always fear. But I don’t think it calls, at this point, for

any serious talk about going to war.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Berman.

Mr. BERMAN. By way of explanation, I think it is worth remembering a historical anecdote from the recent past. In September

2005, about a month after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected esVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:18 Aug 24, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00109 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\51518.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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sentially to the Iranian Presidency, he addressed the General Assembly in New York. And most of you may remember this as the

speech in which he talked about the fact that he was surrounded

by a green light and nobody blinked for half an hour. The speech

that I was more interested in was the speech that he gave immediately afterwards. And in that discussion, he said, yes, my government, my country is pursuing this technology, nuclear technology,

and not only that, but we stand ready to share it with any and all

comers in the Islamic world. Just to be clear, proliferation is a declaratory state policy.

Mr. TIERNEY. That is Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comment, not necessarily state policy. If you understand the complexities of the Iranian political structure, I think it is very likely two different

things.

Mr. BERMAN. Well, that is certainly true. I would say that if he

had his way, and there is an awful lot of tea reading going on

about his exact place now in the hierarchy, I would certainly make

the argument that he is less of a marginal player than his predecessor in the decisionmaking structure. But that is obviously for

the experts to decide. I would say only that there is great merit to

taking statements like that at their word, especially because the

real center of gravity in the Iranian political system, Supreme

Leader Ali Khamenei, actually did not say that those comments

were out of line or that they were out of step. He actually confirmed them at a later discussion, a later time. So I think, on that

issue, there is probably more consonance than dissidence within

the Iranian political spectrum. It bears taking them seriously.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Dr. Pillar, why are you worried about

them having the biological and chemical if that is a concern?

Mr. PILLAR. We should be careful to distinguish between the rhetorical and what is actually in the self-interest of the regime. I

would note that not only has Iran not passed any of these unconventional weapons to clients in terrorist groups, but there is no

known incidence of any state passing any kind of unconventional

weapons, weapons of mass destruction, to a so-called terrorist client, even though this is what we talk about lots and we seem to

fear quite a bit. And there is a substantial record on this, including

most of the history of the Soviet Union, which of course had radical

clients, and they had all brands of unconventional weapons. The

reason is, when you ask, what would be the interest of such a regime to pass some such weapons to another group where they

would lose control, the interest simply isn’t there. It is all disadvantage rather than advantage. They lose control. And if they

were ever used, a group that is known to be a client of Iran, say

Lebanese Hezbollah, would automatically be assumed by Washington and everybody else that they would be acting on Iran’s behalf,

so there is simply no advantage to it.

Mr. TIERNEY. Colonel, do you have something you want to add

to that?

Colonel WILKERSON. I would just say two things: Rational leaders. We are not talking about Ahmadinejad; we are talking about

Khamenei and Rafsanjani, the Council in general; and two, deterrence, it works.

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. We are going to stand adjourned for a

couple of minutes. And again, I thank you for your indulgence.

The subcommittee is now back in session. Thank you again for

your indulgence.

I’m told that we have at least an hour before the next vote. We’ll

go to Mr. Yarmuth for your questions.

Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I was curious as to what—I think you may have all heard that

the military options would lead to some rather dramatic repercussions around the world. In your experience, what do you think the

odds are that those in the decisionmaking positions in the administration understand what you understand?

Colonel WILKERSON. I’ll take a shot at that, because I think I can

probably differ with some of the people here at the table, having

been somewhat recently in the discussion.

I don’t think they have any plan whatsoever to use force. I think

the rhetoric you’re hearing now, the hard noises, if you will, is designed primarily to try to regain some leverage vis-a`-vis Tehran. I

think Dr. Rice eventually has her orders to do something along the

diplomatic track that makes it different, and we’re just trying to

regain some leverage before we do that.

Whether that’s the right thing, I don’t know; and it presupposes

that we will remove this stipulation that they cease enriching or

any activities even resembling before we come to the table makes

a big difference. Because if we haven’t, then anything she might

embark on is useless.

Mr. YARMUTH. Other opinions?

And, actually, I want to know—I’m assuming they know what

you have just said and understand all of these potential outcomes.

Although, in terms of the Iraqi experience, it doesn’t indicate that

they particularly were aware.

Colonel GARDINER. It’s difficult to answer, but I’ll try it anyway.

It’s very difficult in the heat of decisionmaking—and I say this

from watching people make decisions even in the hypothetical situation of war games—to look at second- and third-order of consequences. I can promise you I can reproduce bad decisionmaking

very easily by putting people under pressure and giving them a

complex problem like Iran, or giving them a situation where you

see some Americans have died, what do we do? So there’s a real

dilemma as security issues become more complex that we find ways

for decisionmakers to bring sort of the second and third order of

consequences into their decisionmaking.

Mr. PILLAR. Mr. Yarmuth, rather than comment on that, because

you’ve correctly noted the recent exposure to Iraq should not give

us a lot of encouragement to assume that certain things are borne

in line by decisionmakers—although I suppose the silver lining in

that particular cloud is, given the recency of the unhappy Iraq experience, all of us—Members of Congress, the President and presumably senior people in the administration—are a little more attuned to these things.

But just one other comment to follow on to Colonel Gardiner’s

comments. We haven’t really addressed yet in this session directly

what I think is one of the main hazards that we face in this climate of extremely tense relations between the United States and

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Iran, and that is a military clash breaking out inadvertently, as escalation from some incident, even if neither Tehran nor Washington has planned it in advance. And it is in those situations that

the point that Sam Gardiner made about not bringing to bear some

of the secondary and tertiary consequences you’re likely to see.

Mr. YARMUTH. If either of you two would want to elaborate on

that, that’s fine. Yes, General?

General VAN RIPER. Sir, I take exception to what my professional

colleague, Colonel Gardiner, says about second- and third-order effects. This is what I tried to include in my written testimony. This

is typical, I believe, of American decisionmaking, that is, to think

that there’s any ability to trace these effects.

I normally use a very simple example to illustrate what I’m talking about in these non-linear systems, anytime you’re in an interactively complex non-linear system from a physics sense, and I’ll

try to illustrate. If you took a bounded problem, which is a chess

board, opening moves, there are 400 potential opening moves. At

the second move, it’s 72,000 potential moves. It then goes in the

third to 9 million, then to some 315 billion, and all the moves on

the board exceeds the number of atoms in the universe.

So the hubris that even in war games or in discussions that we

have any real idea of what’s going to happen in second- or thirdorder effects, the best metaphor for thinking about this is not like

the machinery, like what happens if we have a problem with an

airplane, but an ecology we really don’t—which we don’t understand.

The more we study an ecological system, the more likely we are

to do something in the positive. I would say what happened in the

case of Iraq, there was an assertion that if we put energy into the

system in terms of invasion, it would be all a happy outcome. We

did not understand that system of the Middle East.

And what I would urge is the only way you get to the inside in

these problems is through a wide discourse with people with great

and varying backgrounds, to try to first frame the problem, what

is the problem. We’ve narrowed it here this afternoon to nuclear

weapons. That’s a pretty narrow view of it, and in even some of the

testimony that’s been given by witnesses it comes down to an either/or. I think we’ve got to widen this system we’re looking at and

have a wider discourse to get to the real issues.

Mr. YARMUTH. May I just followup real quickly, Mr. Chairman,

and just ask, where does that go on? Is that type of thinking and

analysis typical of what goes on in the White House or the Defense

Department, any White House or Defense Department?

General VAN RIPER. I’m obviously not privileged to know what

happens in those locations. I think as we look at our history, certainly in the early stage of the cold war, there were these sorts of

discussions, both academic, those from the political arena, military,

economists, historians, all brought together to wrestle with these

problems. And it’s what happens, it’s in the discourse you begin to

understand the logic of the problem; and until you understand the

logic, there is no counter-logic, i.e., no answers. They’re mere assertions.

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And that’s what I think we’re seeing. We’re seeing mere assertions. If I do X or Y, this is the likely outcome, or this is the risk.

Not so.

Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, General. Thank you, Mr. Yarmuth.

Mr. Hodes, you’re recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. HODES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m going to pass it this

time.

Mr. TIERNEY. Ms. McCollum, you’re recognized for 5 minutes.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to take this discussion that we’re having—I want to take

this discussion and just get into it a little deeper.

So a lot of us feel it’s very likely that some minor skirmish or

event could cause military conflict to escalate into something much

broader. So there might not even be time for the Congress to debate before this administration or any administration would react

to events on the field.

But this environment that we’re in currently right now is—it’s

very harsh, and the rhetoric is very, very heated. So any minor

skirmish, taking the rhetoric with it, I see the escalation happening

potentially very, very quickly, and it’s very worrisome.

So under what instances do you think we might see something

escalate so that we could be prepared? I mean, the whole issue

with the Iranian Guard comes up quite a bit, with them supplying

weapons or them crossing the borders, but do you know—I mean,

have we put circuit breakers in place?

You talked about the cold war. I mean, there were opportunities

for governments to talk to each other. Are there circuit breakers in

there so that we could stop an incident from escalating out of control? Do we have any diplomatic back channels? And I’d like to

hear a little bit more about how you think the State Department

and the Pentagon can anticipate the threat and try to work to get

ahead of it, to set up some of these safeguards and back channels.

Then the other incident that could happen is the Nation of Israel

has talked about leaving all of its options on the table with Iran.

What would our reaction be to that? What should our reaction to

that be in order to keep being drawn in and to work with Israel

to keep them from being drawn in to raising the confrontational dilemma there?

Thank you.

Colonel WILKERSON. I’ll be brief. I just want to—back to your

question, Mr. Yarmuth, the untoward incident occurring is also a

concern of mine; and I think the circuit breaker we have in place,

the best circuit breaker is Admiral William J. Fallon, ‘‘Fox’’ Fallon.

I think he’s imbued with all of the possibilities that might happen

in the Persian Gulf region; and I think his Commander’s vision out

to his naval forces, who are the forces in proximity most apt to

start something outside of Iraq, is just that: to avoid it, to avoid

it, to avoid it. We don’t want 15 British sailors to be replicated with

15 American sailors or whatever.

That said, I’m still very concerned about the proximity of forces,

as I’m sure he is. It probably keeps him up at night thinking about

how close they are and how an event like you were just describing

could take place and be across its belly.

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I take some confidence from the fact I do not believe the Vice

President is in charge of national security policy anymore. I believe

others are. The Vice President is still a very influential voice visa`-vis those policies, but I don’t believe that, as in the first administration, he’s basically in charge of them. And so that gives me some

confidence that military commanders, Secretary Gates and others,

will take the kinds of actions that are necessary to tamp something

like this down fairly swiftly and, even more importantly, to prevent

it from happening in the first place.

Mr. BERMAN. If I may, I think you hit upon something that’s

critically important here, which is sort of where are the most likely

flash points. We’ve had a discussion now for about an hour and a

half of the question of the nuclear program and is that a casus belli

and what can we do.

I happen to believe that Iranian involvement in Iraq, in operation against Coalition forces in Iraq, is the most immediate place

where the rubber meets the road, where there’s a potential for a

crisis, particularly because of the reports that I hear from Coalition

commanders, from combatant commanders about the degree of Iranian involvement in the funding of both Shi’ite and Sunni militias

active now against the Coalition.

My recommendation would be to say that there is much work

that still needs to be done to forge a serious counterinsurgency

strategy, not simply against the Sunni insurgency as we’ve done,

and discussed, and debated, but also about Iranian infiltration into

Iraq; and that, actually, if you’re talking about circuit breakers, has

the ability to contain a skirmish if it does come out, and prevent

it from expanding into a full-blown conflict.

Mr. PILLAR. Ms. McCollum, if I can comment on both parts of

your question and, one, with regard to circuit breakers, although

I’m happy to have someone like Admiral Fallon as the internal circuit breaker in our government, I think your question implies partly an argument for dialog and engagement with the Iranians; and

if we can’t have something as full-blown as the hotline that we did

with Moscow for years and years, at least talking to them beyond

the extremely limited talks we’ve had between Ambassador Crocker and his counterpart in Iraq would be one way to get a circuit

breaker.

On your second question, with regard to what Israel might do,

my comment here would be the perceptions of the Iranians and

other people in the region, again, would matter most. And the

widespread perception would be anything Israel does would have

been done with U.S. connivance; and there would be some actual

physical, logistical, operational basis for assuming that, including

possible use of Iraqi air space, where we’re the people who really

control it.

Colonel GARDINER. If I could add quickly to two of the points.

One of them is there’s reason to be optimistic after some of the

events of the last week.

The release of the Iranians that have been captured, a portion

from Mosul; the public announcement by military officials that we

have had less IEDs, less attacks; and then Admiral Fallon’s testimony in Financial Times. That is a major circuit breaker that was

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put in. We’ve narrowed—we’ve pulled back from the edge with the

Iranians, and I think that was an important thing.

As far as Israel is concerned, if I can go back to sort of the military dimension of the problem, they—the Iranians—would have left

over the capacity to do us severe damage if Israel does that without

our involvement because they do not have the capability to destroy

all those retaliation capabilities. We must make it clear to Israel

that we won’t tolerate them doing this by themselves.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. McCollum.

Mr. Shays, you’re recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Again, Mr. Chairman, I really appreciate you having this hearing; and I appreciate our witnesses. I learn more, frankly, from witnesses who don’t necessarily get classified material because then

they can talk about what we all read in the New York Times. I

can’t talk about what we read in the New York Times because I’m

told sometimes at a classified briefing. So it’s—sometimes I choose

not to be—get those briefings.

But I want to ask a number of questions. First, I think if we

ended up using military force in Iran, it would be a huge setback

for us in the world. I don’t know if we are going to position ourselves where that appears to be the only option.

Do you all agree that you have basically three ways to deal with

the issue: You talk, through diplomacy; you have sanctions and embargoes; and you use military force. Are those basically the three

categories? Is there another one I can add?

General VAN RIPER. Mr. Shays, I think anytime we begin to categorize, again, we narrow down the horizon. I think at this

point——

Mr. SHAYS. Are you going to give me another option besides

those three? I only have 5 minutes. Is there another one that I am

missing?

Mr. TIERNEY. I’ll give you a little longer time if the gentleman

wants to respond.

General VAN RIPER. If I did, sir, I would be doing the same thing.

I’d just be adding to your categories.

What I’m suggesting is that we do something like the Future of

Iraq Project that was done by the State Department prior to the

invasion of Iraq but was never utilized. We have a wider discussion

that brings those sort of folks in, and these are mental models for

constructing——

Mr. SHAYS. But you’re arguing for the diplomacy and the talks

and that. That’s fine, but I’m just asking, is there any other than

those three? And you’re not adding to the list.

General VAN RIPER. Sir, what I’m coming from, I’m coming from

Clausewitz’s dictum. It’s usually translated as ‘‘war is a continuation of politics by other means,’’ meaning you supplant the other

means.

The better German translation is——

Mr. SHAYS. You’re making an argument to me, I think, that you

can avoid using military force by other means.

General VAN RIPER. With a mixture of other means is the better

translation.

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Mr. SHAYS. If the answer is no, I’d like to get on to the more important question.

You have basically three ways to deal with it: diplomacy and all

the art of dialog and so on; you have sanctions; and you have military use. And you have all these options within each group, and

you disagree with my categories, and that’s fine, but those are the

three that I know.

Colonel WILKERSON. I’d throw one more out there——

Mr. SHAYS. OK, fine.

Colonel WILKERSON [continuing]. Mr. Shays, and that’s what I

would call information, and that’s what you’re doing right now.

Mr. SHAYS. Good. I think that’s a good one to add. Thank you

very much.

In the end, I happen to believe that you should have embassies

in every country, and there should be no requirement on what you

do to get an embassy. In other words, we should have one in North

Korea, we should have one in Cuba, and we should have one in

Iran. I think to me that’s one of the big lessons I’ve learned in the

past years.

If we had an embassy in Iraq, we would have known how pathetic, for instance, their infrastructure was; and, to be honest with

all of us, we don’t just have State employees in our embassies. So

it would have been hugely helpful.

What I take—I found myself reacting, Dr. Pillar, to your comments that, you know, tell me a country—there is no record of any

country giving a nuclear weapon to a terrorist. And I’m thinking,

well, that’s true. And so I thought, well, that’s kind of convincing.

Then I thought, there was no record of any country or terrorist organization attacking the Twin Towers and bringing down the Twin

Towers and taking—attempting to take four planes. There was no

record of it. We could have said we don’t need to fear that. So I

don’t take the same comfort you may take in it because, frankly,

there aren’t a lot of countries that have nuclear weapons.

As we expand the list, it’s very possible that we will see a new

paradigm. I, for instance, think that, you know, Al Gore is right.

There is this inconvenient truth of global warming. And I think,

frankly, too many of my Republican colleagues don’t want to deal

with it.

I, frankly, think too many of my Democratic colleagues don’t

want to deal with the inconvenient truth of the 9/11 Commission

which talked about Islamic terrorists who would do us harm. I feel

like we’re dealing with a different group, and I don’t think those

old rules—so I’m just responding to your comment about it.

North Korea and Pakistan gave weapons to Libya, Iraq, or—excuse me, technology to Libya, Iraq and Iran. Have they given them

to any other country that we know of? Mr. Berman, any others?

Mr. BERMAN. I’m sorry, sir. It doesn’t roll off the tongue. If you

give me a moment, I will try to come up with a list. I will say that

the level——

Mr. SHAYS. But those are the three, primarily, correct?

Mr. BERMAN. The primary ones, yes, sir.

Colonel WILKERSON. There were others involved in the AQ Khan

network, but I’m not even sure I can talk about that here.

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Mr. SHAYS. OK. Unfortunately, you had a classified briefing, so

you can’t do it.

I think the thing that I found the most significant is that a military attack might set back a nuclear program 2 to 5 years. That

was I think given by you, Colonel Gardiner, and do you all agree

that’s the extent of what would happen?

Colonel GARDINER. Could I—I said the construction 3 to 5 years.

See, we can’t know how——

Mr. SHAYS. If other words, if you don’t bomb—if you don’t kill

their scientists and their technology, you’ve just dealt with the construction aspect?

Colonel GARDINER. That’s the only thing we can be precise about.

Mr. SHAYS. And so the reason why it worked a bit in Iran was

it wasn’t their scientists building the plant—the weapons grade

material plant—in Iraq when Israel bombed it. In other words,

there it lasted far more than 3 to 5 years.

Colonel GARDINER. No, it actually accelerated. I’ll go back to——

Mr. SHAYS. I heard his comments. But, with all due respect, they

did not build a weapons grade material plant. They stopped and

didn’t build one, correct? They did other things. They needed to

still get the weapons grade material, correct?

Who is—and, gentlemen, I’ll end with this—who is the gentleman that was—was it you, Mr. Pillar, or the other statement,

was it you, General Van Riper, who said that it accelerates the effort?

Mr. PILLAR. The experience after the strike on the Osirik reactor

was Iraq switched from a plutonium cycle to a uranium cycle, and

then we saw what the result was 10 years later.

Mr. SHAYS. But the problem was that they needed to get the

weapons grade material; and so the effort to prevent them from

getting the weapons grade material plutonium, that succeeded,

didn’t it?

Mr. PILLAR. Mr. Shays, I was making a point about the effect on

incentives.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. But I’m making another point, and you can answer that. They did succeed in stopping them from getting the

weapons grade material, correct?

Mr. PILLAR. No, sir, they didn’t. Iraq redoubled its efforts, using

the uranium rather than plutonium.

Mr. SHAYS. And did they have weapons grade material?

Mr. PILLAR. They came—they came scaringly——

Mr. SHAYS. No, the honest answer is no. They had the technology

to build but not the weapons grade material, correct?

Mr. PILLAR. As of 1991, you’re right, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Shays.

Mr. Hodes, do you want to continue passing or do you want to

go?

Mr. HODES. No, I’m ready.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Hodes for 5 minutes.

Mr. HODES. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Gentlemen, thank you for being here today.

I really have no idea who my colleague, Mr. Shays, is referring

to when he suggests that there are people here who don’t underVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:18 Aug 24, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00117 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\51518.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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stand the threat of terrorism that we face and are dealing with, especially in the post-9/11 era.

It seems to me, to use a term that General Van Riper mentioned,

we have an interactively complex situation in the Middle East now,

made worse by our quagmire in Iraq. We have a resurgent Taliban

and Al Qaeda. We have not enough force and effort in Afghanistan.

Pakistan is in turmoil, with an ongoing question as to how it will

shape up. We have involvement with Iran and Syria, with

Hezbollah and Hamas, and a festering Israeli Palestinian situation;

and, in the middle of that mix, we have the possibility of a nuclearweapon-armed Iran, which adds to this stew.

Do any of you have confidence that the United States currently

has an adequate and articulable national security strategy to deal

with this situation?

Colonel WILKERSON. Directly answering your question, yes and

no, they don’t.

Mr. HODES. Thank you for that. That’s a great start.

Colonel WILKERSON. They have a horde of them, as was pointed

out by one of the panelists, and none of them make a lot of sense

to me. And I’ve read most of them, if not all of them, and this is

most discouraging.

Back to a point made earlier, there is only one place in your government, including you and this body, where strategic thinking

goes on on a routine basis. That’s in the policy planning staff of

that pinko Commie bunch of people at Foggy Bottom. Nowhere else

in your government does strategic planning go on.

So that’s part of the answer to the question why we don’t have

a coherent, reasonably logical strategy for dealing with all the challenges we confront, not the least of which is terrorism presented by

people like Al Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiya and others who are intent

on doing us harm, which I might add is probably an insignificant

number of people in the world, and yet we’re not focused on that

very insignificant group of people. We’re instead running it across

the globe.

You didn’t even mention in your litany probably one of the most

serious things happening today, and that is in the heart of Europe

where people are planning—using the civil liberties that exist

there, which in some countries even exceed our own—using those

to do planning to get together to do the kinds of nefarious things

that Al Qaeda did to us and they have done in Madrid and Bali

and London. And battle-hardened veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan

are going to Europe to fill their ranks out. This is very dangerous.

Mr. HODES. Anybody else want to comment on whether or not

you believe there is a comprehensive national security strategy?

General?

General VAN RIPER. Sir, as I mentioned in my testimony, I did

a Web search; and I found 29 strategies the U.S. Government’s produced to have national security or national security strategy in

them.

Until the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, there was no place

those of us in uniform could go to find a national security or national military strategy. That was rectified; and, in 1988, the first

national security strategy was produced. For those of us who

taught strategy, that was a wellspring, because we could go back

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and talk about how you could come from that document, work your

way through military objectives and military action if needed.

We had—before, we had a deficiency. Now, we have this excess.

As I indicated, I don’t know what they say. If we were permitted

to return questions to the panel, mine would be, how many panel

members have read any one or even one of these strategies?

Most important, though, even if we’d all read them, how many

American citizens have read them? How many American citizens

understood them?

Even as a 6-year-old, in World War II, I had some glimmering

that we were fighting in Europe first and then we’re going to fight

in the Pacific. As a teenager, I understood what we were attempting to do in terms of the cold war with Korea; and certainly during

the cold war, I understood and with my fellow students could talk

about massive retaliation, flexible response.

When I go on campuses today, I don’t see those sorts of discussions about national security. As I said, the Nation’s at the mall.

Only the military’s engaging in this in small, small groups. We

need a national discourse.

Mr. HODES. Let me just followup. To the extent that anybody can

discern from the large number of strategies that you’ve talked

about some sense of a national security strategy, is anybody satisfied that what the administration is contemplating, talking about,

thinking about and doing about Iran fits in to any comprehensive,

articulable and organized strategy that would help bring Members

of Congress along or the disengaged American populace to understand what threats we’re facing, how we intend to face them and

why we’re doing what we’re doing?

General VAN RIPER. My response would be, absolutely not, sir.

Mr. HODES. Mr. Berman.

Mr. BERMAN. I would concur. I think what we have with regard

to Iran is not a strategy but several strategies that are being pursued by separate elements of the bureaucracy: economic punitive

measures, diplomatic measures, and others. There’s nothing resembling a coherent framework in which all of these can be integrated,

at least not as of yet.

Colonel GARDINER. Just two points to connect. One of them is

going back to the question on firebreak or circuit breakers. If we

had a strategy, it would help the Iranians understand our behavior

better. I do not know, I can’t articulate the U.S.’ red line for Iran,

meaning at what point we would use force.

It has been said we can’t allow them to have nuclear weapons,

but, in his last press conference, the President said they can’t have

the knowledge to produce nuclear weapons. By that red line, we

have crossed and we should be using force against Iran. We can’t

be that sloppy in our discussion of what our policies are with respect to Iran.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Colonel; and thank you, Mr. Hodes.

Mr. HODES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. I just note that in the General’s testimony, in a

line he said, in the last 6 years, the Defense Department seems to

have placed more emphasis on tactics and operations than designing meaningful strategy. I think that’s exactly what you were getVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:18 Aug 24, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00119 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\51518.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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ting at, is they might have tactics but what they were going to do

if they haven’t fit it into a strategy on that.

That’s why we’re having another series of hearings, this particular committee; and I think some of you are aware of that running

parallel with this on what is our strategy going forward in the full

world arena on that and this and a host of other issues and how

does it all fit in.

Mr. Lynch, you’re recognized for 5 minutes.

Colonel WILKERSON. May I just reinforce that for a second?

Mr. TIERNEY. Certainly.

Colonel WILKERSON. When Ambassador Richard Haas and Secretary Powell sent me over to the Pentagon to establish joint staff

liaison with the policy planning staff at the State Department, I

encountered the military building its national military strategy.

Rumsfeld subsequently forbade us at State to come back to the

Pentagon or the Pentagon to come to State. But when I encountered it, I asked the man in charge of building the national military

strategy how he was doing that in the absence of a national security strategy. He said, it’s tough.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Lynch, you’re recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I’m among a group of us here that believes that there should be

some dialog at some level with Iran. We are all very careful not

to undermine our State Department initiatives and the general policy, if you call it that, coming out of the State Department today.

Are there examples in the past where—I’m sure during the cold

war—there was talk about dialog going on? We’ve been approached,

some of us on this committee, by members of the Bundestag and

other members of the European Parliament to engage perhaps

some members of the moderate political bent in Iran. And yet there

is some reluctance there because of the position that the State Department has taken, and we don’t want to undermine their central

role in setting national policy.

What are some of the solutions that you might see in terms of

your own experience, your own knowledge of history and how we’ve

handled this in the past? Is there a way to go forward to establish

some type of dialog, even recognizing the absolutely offensive positions that have been taken by Ahmadinejad publicly?

Mr. PILLAR. Mr. Lynch, if I can respond, we don’t even have to

go as far back as the cold war. We have the sterling example in

Libya, which led to the tripartheid agreement between Libya,

United States and U.K., which in my judgment was a foreign policy

success for the Bush administration and the Blair government.

And what happened there was we talked to them, and there were

at that time secret, but now it’s been made public—and this does

go back to my personal experience, because I had the privilege of

being part of the initial rounds of secret talks that began in 1999,

which led then finally to the agreement which resulted in the dismantling of the Libyan unconventional weapons program and their

becoming a partner, rather than an adversary on terrorism.

So the two key lessons to take from that, No. 1, we talked and,

No. 2, we talked with an open agenda. We discussed everything of

concern to us, about terrorism, about Qaddafi’s rather erratic diplomacy and about unconventional weapons; and we also talked about

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the things that were on the Libyan’s mind as well. And we eventually had success, and I give the administration a lot of credit for

that, by the way.

Mr. LYNCH. Mr. Berman.

Mr. BERMAN. If I may, sir, I would add one caveat to Dr. Pillar’s

comments.

I think it pays to take a look at the political center of gravity

within the Islamic republic. It’s quite clear that the current nuclear

crisis is reaching a point in which the compulsion to do a deal on

our part is actually very great. We would like very much to avoid

a conflict. We would like to reach some sort of negotiated settlement.

I think—I often say there’s really only two things that you can’t

escape. You can’t escape geography, and you can’t escape demography. Iran is a country of 70 million people in which two-thirds

of the population, 50 million people, are 35 and younger, which

means they’ve lived all or most of their lives under the Islamic republic. And they are uniformly, according to all sorts of polls done

by both Democrats and Republicans, disaffected and discontented

with the current state of affairs.

I would be very careful to articulate a negotiated settlement that

makes those people, that constituency, view us as having abandoned support for them in favor of support for a regime that is,

frankly, unpopular and swimming against the tide of history.

Mr. LYNCH. OK.

Colonel WILKERSON. Can I just pick up on those very same

points?

Iraq is the hegemony in the Persian Gulf by demography, by size

and a number of other factors that a strategist would look at. We

recognize that. That’s the reason we overthrew Mossadegh in 1953

with Kermit Roosevelt, Frank Wisner, and a bunch of leftovers

from the OSS in World War II.

We then installed the Shah, and for 26 years we fed that hegemony. We fed it with $20 billion worth of arms from Richard Nixon

and Henry Kissinger. Read Robert Dowlick’s book and you will understand just how significant this transfer was. We almost decided

to give them nuclear weapons.

Then comes the revolution, and all of a sudden we’ve got a different set of people in Tehran. That doesn’t change the fact they’re

still a hegemony, and we need to recognize that. Iraq, of course,

balanced them for a while. We took Iraq’s side in the Iran-Iraq

war. We did. Iran would have beaten Iraq had we not done that,

even though Iraq had strategic, operational and tactical surprise on

Iran when it attacked.

So they are the hegemony. We need to recognize that; and we

need to deal diplomatically, economically and otherwise with coming to some kind of accommodation with that very real strategic reality.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Lynch.

Mr. McDermott.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

John Kennedy got into the Bay of Pigs——

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Mr. TIERNEY. I think you need to put your mic on. The ‘‘up’’ position is on.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. John Kennedy got into the Bay of Pigs; and

then, when it came to the Cuban Missile Crisis, he said to his

brother, hey, get everybody in here on all sides of this issue. Let’s

have a little talk about it before we go off in any kind of strange

way.

It seems to me we’re in a similar kind of situation here, and I

want to ask about a process that I hear people talk about, never

sat through one, don’t know what they really are. They’re called

war games. How many of you have actually participated in a war

game?

So you have all been through one.

The possibility—I know Mr.—Colonel Gardiner’s putting one on

CNN here shortly. What about having the Congress go through

that process over in the Caucus Room in the Cannon Building or

down in the basement of the Capitol and let us actually experience

it? Tell us what that would do for us in terms of us letting—if we’re

the ones that are supposed to declare war, like the Constitution

says—because what scares people like me is the people in the

White House right now says the President has enough authority to

go ahead and do whatever he wants in Iran. And I still believe the

Constitution is correct, that we have the right, but we really don’t

know what the options are.

I mean, this is as close to an exploration of the options as will

happen in the U.S. Congress. I’d like to ratchet it up one level. Tell

me about a war game for all of us.

Colonel GARDINER. I started teaching at the War College and became dissatisfied with the way students understood strategy after

the traditional teaching methods. I began war gaming because—for

two reasons. No. 1 is there’s a very fundamental thing about adults

learning. Adults don’t learn when they’re told. I mean, you will remember 10 percent of what I tell you within an hour, but within

2 days you won’t remember anything. If you participate in the process, if you experience the process, if you have a sense for the decisions, I will tell you that you will understand the situation better.

That’s the first thing I will tell you.

The second thing I will tell you, I know by experience and having

done this with people who have served in the White House, who

have been Chiefs of Staff in numbers of administrations, will say,

wow, I had no idea ’til we did this what I learned.

And I used in my briefing an example that came out of one of

those games for senior people, who said, I see now, if we start down

this road, eventually the President will be put in a position where

he has no choice but to go for regime change because the situation

will unfold to that thing.

I mean, that’s the kind of thing that I think you begin to see understandings for. I think, you know, there are techniques, and I

will—let me just build on what General Van Riper says, that he

used the term ‘‘wicked problem.’’ That’s a term that architects use,

and when architects talk about a ‘‘wicked problem,’’ they don’t

mean you back away from it. When architects say a ‘‘wicked problem,’’ it’s like the design of a room. You don’t find a solution analytically, but you try different arrangements till you say, wow, I got

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the furniture in a good place. The only way you can do that is by

trying, exercising, and participating, I think.

Colonel WILKERSON. That’s what diplomacy is all about.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. And is it possible—could you take 25 of us,

picked randomly from the floor, and put us through a war game

and come out with—and let the American people see it through television and the press and whatever watching it? General.

General VAN RIPER. Sir, I would encourage a step before that,

though I certainly would encourage what you are suggesting.

The term before was mentioned ‘‘strategic planning.’’ There’s a

wonderful book by Henry Mintzberg, called ‘‘The Rise and Fall of

Strategic Planning,’’ and what he points out, in all fields in our society—government, industry, academia—those in the senior leadership positions find themselves so busy with day-to-day activity they

walk away from setting the strategy and turn it over to the planners. And planners do what they do best, they plan.

The analogy I would use is the skipper of a naval vessel who

would say to his navigator, pick the port and chart the course. That

doesn’t happen. The captain picks the port and observes as the

navigator charts the course.

So, strategic planning, as he said, is an oxymoron. What we first

need is to involve the most senior leaders in this. Otherwise, it will

be the same thing. It will be a plan that they have no investment

in.

The second step, after we persuade the very top national leadership to be involved in your game, is to become informed on the

problem. There’s no use starting the game until we understand,

No. 1, what is the problem and what’s the context, how have we

framed it, how have we said it, how have we formulated it, and

then there might be some hope of gaining something from that

game.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. But we here are always trying to smell the forest from the back of a galloping horse. How do we do that first

step? How do we get the leadership and the committee chairmen

and whatever that might be necessary, or could we have some benefit from just using ordinary troops like us?

General VAN RIPER. I’m not optimistic at this point, and I’m on

this side of the committee from—for 60 years as I voted—I’m sorry,

it’s 50 years as I voted, but I’m not optimistic. And the reason I’m

not optimistic, before the term ‘‘information’’ or ‘‘information operations’’ was used, we hear that, we hear public diplomacy, strategic

communications. All that is in the realm of technical or tactical.

We, as a Nation, have lost the strategic narrative. Our President

has lost the strategic narrative. I find it sometimes hard to believe

what he’s telling, and I’m from his party. So until we regain the

strategic narrative, I’m not sure how we can tell our story around

the world and be credible.

So as much as I would encourage this intellectual activity prior

to the game, I fear we may have to wait for another year and a

half before it will be of benefit, which may, unfortunately, be too

late.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. McDermott.

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We’re going to allow one question per member of the panel here,

since we’ve gone through for the 5 minutes once, and I just want

to raise one point with the General.

The PBS program ‘‘Nova’’ and Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘‘Blink’’ features vignettes of the gigantic $250 million Defense Department

war game called the Millennium Challenge of 2002. I think you

mentioned—alluded to that in your remarks.

In it, they say that you revealed how, as the leader of the enemy

forces, you inflicted enormous and unexpected casualties on the

American fleet and ground troops, invading a country in the Persian Gulf. This apparently displeased the Pentagon leadership so

badly they stopped the exercise, refloated the sunken ships and revived the dead and started over with a script requiring you to do

as they expected. You refused.

Would you tell us what the lessons of that war game were and

the lessons of the Pentagon’s reaction mean to us when we’re considering what’s going on here in Iran?

General VAN RIPER. First, let me proceed by saying that was the

most corrupt thing I ever saw the American military do. The good

news is I never saw it before; I’ve not seen it sense.

I do not believe with the new leadership—and I’m very encouraged by the new Secretary, the new chairman. I’m very encouraged

with General Jim Mattis who took over the Joint Forces Command,

which is where this particular game was played, that we would

never see something like that.

Under the previous leadership in the Pentagon, they did not

seem the least bit interested in what might have been gained from

that particular game. There was an idea at the beginning, preconceived of how it was going to be. It was billed as free play. That

is, I, as the red commander, military commander would have a

great deal of latitude because they were so convinced these nonideas would work.

When they didn’t, they simply scripted it to a pre-ordained conclusion, which I would have had no problem with, until I saw them

brief congressional staffers and brief the media that this was still

a free play exercise and these, as I described them, non-ideas had

proved successful.

Unfortunately, those ideas are like a virus. They’re permeating

our military forces now, not to the good, and I think is one of the

reasons we haven’t had the serious strategic discussions from the

uniform side in the last 5 to 8 years.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Shays, your question.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I want to read you a quote from Mr.

Sarkozy, and I’d like to—and Chancellor Merkel, and I’ll like to get

your reaction. ‘‘There will be no peace in the world.’’ This is from

Sarkozy. There will be no peace in the world if the international

community falters in the face of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Iran is entitled to power for civilian purposes, but if we allow

Iran to acquire nuclear weapons we would incur an unacceptable

risk to the stability of the region and stability of the world.

And German Chancellor Merkel said, ‘‘Iran is ignoring U.N.

Sanctions Council resolutions. Iran is blatantly threatening Israel.

Let’s not fool ourselves. If Iran were to acquire a nuclear bomb, the

consequences would be disastrous.’’

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This isn’t President Bush or anyone else. These are two pretty

cautious leaders, for the most part.

My question to you is, can any of you see a circumstance where

you would recommend to the President of the United States to use

military force in order to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear

weapons?

I’d like each of you to answer that question.

Colonel WILKERSON. Let me start by saying that I would then

ask Mr. Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, as I did Joschka Fischer when

he made similar comments, how many German troops, how many

French troops?

Mr. SHAYS. Fair enough.

Colonel WILKERSON. And the answers were not very good.

Mr. SHAYS. That’s a great answer. Thank you.

Colonel GARDINER. I would answer it in probably not a direct

way that you would like.

What I would say is, we’ve got to keep reminding ourselves this

is not a crisis that is coming down on us immediately. They’re having trouble with the P1s. That’s a long path to make a weapon.

We’ve got to remember we’ve got some time. So I think that

there’s—I always preface this, we don’t have a crisis other than of

our own creation right now.

Mr. SHAYS. Neither of you ruled out military force, but you’re

suggesting that there’s time, you’re suggesting that other people

need to put their oar in the water, too, and so on.

Dr. Pillar.

Mr. PILLAR. Mr. Shays, I think you correctly identified in your

opening comments what I would regard as the main downside of

an Iranian nuclear weapon, and that is the impact on proliferation

elsewhere in the Middle East. And I agree with your earlier comments, that when you look at Egypt, Saudi Arabia and so on, there

might be a cascading effect. But exactly the point that Colonel Gardiner mentioned, there is not something we are facing now or probably even close to it.

And on the issue that was raised before about deterrence, deterrence works. It does not depend on a specific ideology or degree of

extremism or lack of it. Deterrence worked with the likes of Stalin

and Mao. And even though there is so much in the current Iranian

leadership which is anathema to us and extreme, they are not suicidal; and that is the basis for deterrence working, even with the

kinds of uncertainties that Mr. Berman correctly mentioned before.

We haven’t had the whole decades to buildup a strategic doctrine

like we and the Soviets did, but we’re dealing with that situation

in the south Asia, too, with the Indians and Pakistanis.

Mr. BERMAN. I’m sorry, I would take a very different view of the

feasibility of deterrence, for a number of reasons. Among other

things, because I find it facile to the extreme to assume that the

same value on human life that we impose upon our own society,

that we calculate as part of our strategic calculus, is applied on the

other side.

I think there’s plenty of evidence in the public record on the part

of not only Mr. Ahmadinejad, who is correctly perceived as not

quite the most stable player in the Iranian game, absolutely true,

but with regards to others as well, key senior players who are seen

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as rational, former President Rafasanjani, Supreme Leader Ali

Khamenei, that would give one pause if we were to seriously think

about whether or not it would be credible to assume that if this regime acquires a nuclear capability, we would, under any conceivable circumstance, be able to prevent them from utilizing these

weapons and be able to prevent them from acting hostilely or being

more emboldened.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me get the General’s answer. Thank you.

General VAN RIPER. War is certainly an instrument of policy; and

there are occasions, unfortunately, when it’s the Army instruments

going to work. I think in terms of Nazi Germany, there was no answer in that era. I don’t think, though others have used that analogy, that we’re at that point at this particular time.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Shays.

Mr. Yarmuth, do you have a question?

Mr. YARMUTH. Yes. First of all, since Mr. McDermott mentioned

Article I of the Constitution, I want to give him one of my buttons

here so that he can wear it around. I agree totally with his characterization of the authority.

I want to just followup on something Mr. Shays said, the whole

issue of preemptive war and whether the President’s mention of

knowledge of the atomic bomb—I mean, the formula of the atomic

bomb was published in a Madison, WI, newspaper 27 years ago. I

mean, everybody has access to how to do it. So that would be a

pretty low bar to reach.

I’m curious as to whether the issue of—whether just the mere

possession of atomic weapons sets a standard for preemptive war

which has serious ramifications in maybe other arenas. Are we at

risk if we were to engage upon military action simply because a

country possessed—no matter how dangerous—possessed an atomic

weapon? Does that have ramifications beyond that setting?

Mr. TIERNEY. Who were you asking that?

Mr. YARMUTH. I think Colonel Wilkerson seems like he’s anxious

to answer it.

Colonel WILKERSON. I just—I’ve got to run, and I just want to

make one comment. I think this may sound like semantics, but I

don’t think it is. It certainly isn’t for a soldier.

There’s a difference between preventive war and preemptive war.

Preemptive war, if it’s provable, is even recognized by Article 51 of

the U.N. Charter. This is preventive war. This is not preemptive

war. There’s no proof that the weapon is there ready to be

launched at the United States or Israel or anybody else. You’d have

a hell of a time proving that in a court of international law. That

might not be very comforting, but it does mean this is a different

calculus that we are starting with regard to war, and I would submit, as a soldier and a citizen, it’s a very dangerous calculus.

Mr. YARMUTH. Possession by itself would be inadequate without

proof that there was an imminent attempt.

Colonel WILKERSON. I think you’d need even convincing proof.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Hodes, I think you may be able to have one

question before we go to vote.

Mr. HODES. I’ll keep it to one.

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Given what we saw in our efforts in Iraq in terms of lack of planning and preparedness, what’s your sense on the level of preparation in military planning that has been done to defend against the

full range of potential Iranian reactions in contrast to planning for

U.S. offensive efforts on Iran’s nuclear sites? Dr. Pillar.

Mr. PILLAR. I’m certainly not privy to the plans. I think probably

on the military side there’s been more planning than on some of

the other dimensions we discussed, the political and the diplomatic,

but Iran, I think, has been a presumed foe in a lot of military planning that’s already gone on.

But the question would probably be things having to do with

availability of resources and so on, given our continuing commitments in Iraq.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Lynch, do you have a question?

Mr. LYNCH. Very quick one, Mr. Chairman.

Gentlemen, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan during the

1980’s, the United States, largely the CIA and largely in a secret

effort, supplied training to the mujahideen, supplied Stinger missiles to mujahideen, supplied training to the tribal leaders there,

Stinger missiles being used to shoot down Soviet helicopters. A lot

of that was just below the surface, but I’m sure a lot of folks, including the Soviets, knew where that was coming from.

Now we are trying to stop Iran from acting in a similar justbelow-the-radar effort against our own troops, supplying weapons,

supplying training against our forces. By our conduct in the region,

have we forfeited the moral high ground to complain about that

type of activity that’s going on right now?

Mr. TIERNEY. Who would you like to answer that question, Mr.

Lynch, because we only have time for one.

Mr. LYNCH. Anyone who would be crazy enough to answer it.

Colonel GARDINER. I will be crazy. I don’t know, but there is

enough in the open literature to suggest that the United States is

backing groups that are conducting operations inside Iran right

now, and there are a number mentioned, the MEK, the PJACK in

the north, sort of the offshoot of the PKK. The Iranians write about

it. The Turkish write about it. Seymour Hersh has written about

it in the New Yorker. There has to be an element of truth, in my

mind.

Mr. LYNCH. There’s a lot of activity going on around that Iranian

border, no question about it.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Lynch.

Mr. McDermott, your final question.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Colonel Wilkerson, you were in the State Department who created the plan for what we should expect in Iraq

after the war. It was thrown away by the Defense Department. Is

there anybody or has anyone done a similar thing about Iran that

is hidden somewhere or buried in a wastebasket somewhere or that

we can get our hands on?

Colonel WILKERSON. The Future of Iraq Project is well-known, as

you’ve just indicated. What is not well-known is that General Horr,

General Chris, General Zinni and a host of other Central Command commanders had some rather elaborate planning for what’s

called phase four should we go to war with Iraq, which everyone

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thought was at the top of Central Command’s list, for contingency

planning and deliberate planning.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. For going to war with Iraq?

Colonel WILKERSON. Right.

With Iran, the same thing exists. I would be willing to tell you,

almost, you know, take an oath to it, that the Central Command

Commander has on the shelf a plan for war with Iran, a number

of different iterations of that. He’s probably got it down, dusting it

off and working on it right now. And there is a phase four, and

that phase four would probably indicate to you everything we’ve

said here today, how astronomically difficult it will be with the resources we have to carry out that plan.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. But nothing at the State Department similar

to.

Colonel WILKERSON. I don’t think there is. I’m not aware that

there is. There are experts and so forth, but I don’t think they’ve

done the kind of planning with regard to that country that they did

with regard to Iraq.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much.

I want to thank my colleagues——

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Is it that the only Intelligence Committee can

get that data?

Colonel WILKERSON. They should be able to.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. I thank my colleagues for their questioning and

thank each one of the panel members. Colonel Gardiner, Colonel

Wilkerson, Dr. Pillar, Mr. Berman, and General Van Riper, thank

you all very, very much for your expertise.

This hearing will be replicated on our Web site for people to get

to see the transcripts of all three hearings, including all the testimonies here on http://nationalsecurity.oversight.house.gov/; and we

hope you will take advantage of it. The testimony you gave us

today, I think, was very significant and helpful as we try to determine policy moving forward.

Thank you again for your time and for your patience during the

various votes. Thank you.

Meeting is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 4:46 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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