Matt Bracken: A U.S. Ground Invasion of Iran Would Be a Disaster

Are you personally expecting a military invasion in terms of ground invasion of Iran, or is this unrealistic? Totally unrealistic. And, you know, you still see people like General Keane on Fox News talking about seizing Karg Island as if this is something that they could do. The pickaxe mountain is deep inside of Iran. It's not like Karg Island or Keshem Island or Chabahar right on the sea. This would be deep, deep into Iran. It's not going to happen. Even the generals, even if they weren't around at that time, do remember the entire history of Operation Eagle Claw, which was the fiasco which blew up at Desert One where the C-130 collided with the helicopter and the Americans had to evacuate. This was during the Iran crisis, Jimmy Carter. It's widely credited with destroying his presidency. Jimmy Carter didn't send the embassy staff in to be kidnapped. They were embassy staff, they were already there in 1979. So when the revolution happened, the embassy was seen as the CIA headquarters supporting SAVAK, the same guys that had pulled the coup in the 50s. So to the students, the radical students, the embassy was a legitimate target. It's the CIA headquarters, our enemy, the ally of the Shah. However, nobody can say, Jimmy Carter put them there. They were already there. So they're bystanders during the revolution. They're taken hostage for 400 days. When they did the operation, it turned into a fiasco. This operation you're describing, bringing in construction equipment, having a block, having blocking forces. So you're talking about like 82nd Airborne, Rangers, Special Forces, SEALs, all deep in Iran. If nothing else, this will require all of our aircraft. Anytime, going back to every war we've been in, if a pilot is shot down and he's got his radio on, all of the other air missions are scrubbed and put into rescuing that guy. Every other mission that's happening switches gears to now protecting, keeping the enemy away from that pilot. So if we're saying putting 500 or 1,000 troops into Pickaxe Mountain, they're somehow going to go into this mountain that they've never been inside of, blast through blast, atomic-proof blast doors somehow, like Tom Cruise and George Clooney kind of a movie. All while this immense air armada, hundreds of aircraft are constantly overhead to keep the Iranians from counterattacking, which still won't stop ballistic missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, and drones from being fired at the troops. This would not only be a massacre of the troops, but it would very likely wind up with a lot of captives, POWs, hostages. In the Vietnam War under the French in the 50s, there was a battle called Dien Bien Phu, where elite French paratroopers, the French Foreign Legion and others, were parachuted into a strategic spot where they could then block the operations of the Viet Minh, the communist revolutionaries, because the French were convinced we have superior artillery, our air power is unquestioned. Once we have this stronghold at Dien Bien Phu, we can use it to launch attacks in every direction and prevent Viet Minh operations. It'll be a great idea, big success. It was a disaster. The Vietnamese turned out to have much better artillery than the French were accounting for. Russian and Chinese even then helped supporting them. Eventually, the French troops at Dien Bien Phu all had to surrender, the ones that were alive, and they were marched out on camera. Even in that era, it was a big propaganda coup for the communists in Vietnam. It was a huge defeat for the French. It led the French to basically abandon any hope of keeping Vietnam in their empire. The baton was handed over to the Americans after that to prevent South Vietnam from going like the North and becoming communist. Dien Bien Phu was, let's send in a big force of elite paratroopers and we'll dominate them. We've got all the aircraft, we've got all the artillery, and it was a huge defeat. This is what is taught even like today in West Point and Annapolis. Things like the desert rescue that was a fiasco, the Dien Bien Phu experience, that putting these troops in can turn into a huge fiasco. I don't buy for a minute that we're going to try to take Karg Island or Keshem Island, forget it. It's bigger than Okinawa. If you put 5,000 troops in Keshem Island, nobody would even notice. It would be like a couple of tour buses, nothing. The island's so big, you could maybe occupy Keshem City right at the eastern tip. And then what? Put a Berlin Wall there and defend it? Keshem Island is called Missile City. They've spent decades honeycombing it. Above ground, it looks like worse than a lunar landscape. It's a tourist island for its geography, which is all jagged rocks. And underground, it's all Iranian Missile City. And a few thousand Marines are going to take that? It's a joke. The only plausible target would be the port of Chabahar outside of the Strait of Hormuz, near Pakistan, that we have attacked a few times and sunk ships there and so forth. But what would that accomplish? This would be like China invading just San Diego. That's it. So great, you just landed in San Diego. Now what are you going to do? It's like the dog that chases the car and the car stops. What is the dog going to do? Bite the tire? The guy gets out of the car with a gun, right? So we're the dog chasing the car. And if we catch the car and we land troops in Iran, it will be a disaster. And I think no generals will go along with this.