[The results of the war game were particularly
troubling to Gen. James N. Mattis, who commands all American forces in the
Middle East, Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, according to officials who either
participated in the Central Command exercise or who were briefed on the results
and spoke on condition of anonymity because of its classified nature. When the
exercise had concluded earlier this month, according to the officials, General
Mattis told aides that an Israeli first strike would be likely to have dire
consequences across the region and for United States forces there.]
 |
Matt Dunham/Associated Press
Gen. James N. Mattis, who commands American forces in the
Middle East, was said to be troubled by results of the war game.
|
WASHINGTON —
A classified war simulation held this month to assess the repercussions of an
Israeli attack on Iran forecasts that the strike would lead to a
wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of
Americans dead, according to American officials.
The officials said the
so-called war game was not designed as a rehearsal for American military action
— and they emphasized that the exercise’s results were not the only possible
outcome of a real-world conflict.
But the game has raised
fears among top American planners that it may be impossible to preclude
American involvement in any escalating confrontation with Iran, the officials
said. In the debate among policy makers over the consequences of any Israeli
attack, that reaction may give stronger voice to those in the White House,
Pentagon and intelligence community who have warned that a strike could prove
perilous for the United States.
The results of the war
game were particularly troubling to Gen. James N. Mattis, who commands all
American forces in the Middle East, Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, according
to officials who either participated in the Central Command exercise or who
were briefed on the results and spoke on condition of anonymity because of its
classified nature. When the exercise had concluded earlier this month,
according to the officials, General Mattis told aides that an Israeli first
strike would be likely to have dire consequences across the region and for
United States forces there.
The two-week war game,
called Internal Look, played out a narrative in which the United States found
it was pulled into the conflict after Iranian missiles struck a Navy warship in
the Persian Gulf, killing about 200 Americans, according to officials with
knowledge of the exercise. The United States then retaliated by carrying out
its own strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
The initial Israeli
attack was assessed to have set back the Iranian nuclear
program by roughly a year,
and the subsequent American strikes did not slow the Iranian nuclear program by
more than an additional two years. However, other Pentagon planners have said
that America’s arsenal of long-range bombers, refueling aircraft and precision
missiles could do far more damage to the Iranian nuclear program — if President
Obama were to decide on a full-scale retaliation.
The exercise was
designed specifically to test internal military communications and coordination
among battle staffs in the Pentagon, Tampa, Fla., where the headquarters of the
Central Command is located, and in the Persian Gulf in the aftermath of an
Israeli strike. But the exercise was written to assess a pressing, potential,
real-world situation.
In the end, the war game
reinforced to military officials the unpredictable and uncontrollable nature of
a strike by Israel, and a counterstrike by Iran, the officials
said.
American and Israeli
intelligence services broadly agree on the progress Iran has made to enrich
uranium. But they disagree on how much time there would be to prevent Iran from
building a weapon if leaders in Tehran decided to go ahead with one.
With the Israelis saying
publicly that the window to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb is
closing, American officials see an Israeli attack on Iran within the next
year as a possibility. They have said privately that they believe that
Israel would probably give the United States little or no warning should
Israeli officials make the decision to strike Iranian nuclear sites.
Officials said that,
under the chain of events in the war game, Iran believed that Israel and the
United States were partners in any strike against Iranian nuclear sites and
therefore considered American military forces in the Persian Gulf as complicit
in the attack. Iranian jets chased Israeli warplanes after the attack, and
Iranians launched missiles at an American warship in the Persian Gulf, viewed
as an act of war that allowed an American retaliation.
Internal Look has long
been one of Central Command’s most significant planning exercises, and is
carried out about twice a year to assess how the headquarters, its staff and
command posts in the region would respond to various real-world situations.
Over the years, it has
been used to prepare for various wars in the Middle East. According to the
defense Web site GlobalSecurity.org, military planners during the cold war used Internal
Look to prepare for a move by the Soviet Union to seize Iranian oil fields. The
American war plan at the time called for the Pentagon to march nearly six Army divisions north from the Persian Gulf to
the Zagros Mountains of Iran to blunt a Soviet attack.
In December 2002, Gen.
Tommy R. Franks, who was the top officer at Central Command, used Internal Look
to test the readiness of his units for the coming invasion of Iraq.
Many experts have
predicted that Iran would try to carefully manage the escalation after an
Israeli first strike in order to avoid giving the United States a rationale for
attacking with its far superior forces. Thus, it might use proxies to set off
car bombs in world capitals or funnel high explosives to insurgents in
Afghanistan to attack American and NATO troops.
While using surrogates
might, in the end, not be enough to hide Iran’s instigation of these attacks,
the government in Tehran could at least publicly deny all responsibility.
Some military
specialists in the United States and in Israel who have assessed the potential
ramifications of an Israeli attack believe that the last thing Iran would want
is a full-scale war on its territory. Thus, they argue that Iran would not
directly strike American military targets, whether warships in the Persian Gulf
or bases in the region.
Their analysis, however,
also includes the broad caveat that it is impossible to know the internal
thinking of the senior Iranian leadership, and is informed by the awareness
that even the most detailed war games cannot predict how nations and their
leaders will react in the heat of conflict.
Yet these specialists
continue their work, saying that any insight on how the Iranians will react to
an attack will help determine whether the Israelis carry out a strike — and
what the American position will be if they do.
Israeli intelligence
estimates, backed by academic studies, have cast doubt on the widespread
assumption that a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would set off a
catastrophic set of events like a regional conflagration, widespread acts of
terrorism and sky-high oil prices.
“A war is no picnic,”
Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio in November. But if Israel feels
itself forced into action, the retaliation would be bearable, he said. “There
will not be 100,000 dead or 10,000 dead or 1,000 dead. The state of Israel will
not be destroyed.”
