So remember, Ken Baer asked, "is there any person with real experience with the Iranians, diplomacy, or nonproliferation who has argued [that the military option should be off the table]?" I gave a couple in the last post. Here are a few more.
“I do not expect any kind of military solution on the Iran issue,” Hagel told a news conference. … “I think to further comment on it would be complete speculation, but I would say that a military strike against Iran, a military option, is not a viable, feasible, responsible option,”
Republican representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, former chair of of the Middle East and Asia subcommittee:
“Now, we are not going to go to war with — with Iran. So, that military option is probably off the table. Diplomacy, you have seen what has been taking place. We have been at this diplomatic maneuver for many, many months and many, many years, all to no avail. They have even built up their nuclear infrastructure. So, that leads us to the third tool in our toolbox, which is sanctions.”
Ret. Air Force Lt. Col. Sam Gardiner:
Gardiner, a simulations expert at the U.S. Army's National War College, after leading a “war game” on Iran: “After all this effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers. You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work.”
IAEA Director Mohamed El-Baradei:
“I don't believe there is a military solution to the issue. I think that a military solution would be completely counterproductive.”
Former UN Weapons Inspector David Albright:
Iran ‘could cause all kinds of disruption clandestinely in Iraq.' For that reason, and several others, he said there are no good military options on the table for confronting Iran. He also said loud external threats, especially from the United States, tend to backfire by sending Iranian moderates and reformers running under the banners of the clerical regime that Washington opposes.”
Richard Clarke:
“[W]e've thought about military options against Iran off and on for the last 20 years, and they're just not good, because you don't know what the end game is. You know what the first move of the game is, but you don't know what the last move of the game is.
More here, at the invaluable Think Progress.
