Seven Possible Outcomes of a U.S. Strike on Iran (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: The U.S. does look poised to attack Iran, possibly within days, so while we can probably predict what the targets are going to be – Revolutionary Guards, bases, missile storage depots, maybe nuclear sites – we don't know what the outcome is going to be. Here, then, are seven possible outcomes, ranging from the hopeful to the catastrophic. So scenario number one, the U.S. conducts a series of surgical precision strikes, trying to avoid civilian casualties, taking out Revolutionary Guards Corps bases, trying to decapitate the leadership as it were, possibly hitting some nuclear sites, and the regime collapses and there is a brief period of uncertainty and eventually a transition to democracy. That's pretty optimistic. If you look at the record of Western interventions in the Middle East, they haven't gone very well. Look at Syria, look at Libya, look at Iraq. There's always been chaos and confusion and bloodshed and terrible instability following most of these interventions. So I think it would be overly optimistic. Now, there is of course the figure of Reza Pahlavi, which some people are saying could be the future saviour. He would be a transition ruler, a kind of caretaker, before they have elections and Iran eventually rejoins the rest of the world. But as I say, that's optimistic. Theory number two is that the regime survives, but it feels heavily threatened and constrained by the huge U.S. military presence around the region. I mean, just look at this map here. You've got U.S. bases and facilities dotted all around the region, a massive amount of firepower, some of it stationed permanently there, some of it has been brought in in the last few days. Now, that could mean that the regime survives. Rather like Venezuela, it's still intact, but it's lost its leadership and it's forced to kind of change its direction of travel to moderate its behaviour and its policies. That is a possibility. It's what I call the Venezuelan model. Scenario number three, the regime collapses and there is a military takeover. Who's going to take over? It's not going to be the conventional army. That's unlikely I think, because all the power rests with the Revolutionary Guards Corps, the besieged militias. These are huge in number. They're deeply ingrained in the country. So there could be some kind of a military takeover that wouldn't really solve the problem for the protesters and probably not for President Trump either. But that is a possibility. Scenario number four, and these don't have to be mutually exclusive, this could be happening concurrently, is that Iran retaliates to any attack, as it said it's going to do. They've said, we've got our finger on the trigger. And they've got enough missiles left that they could lash out at U.S. bases around the region. They could hit Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE. So for example, in Qatar you've got Al Udeid Air Base, the coalition air ops centre from which the U.S. runs all its air operations all over the Middle East. They've got the naval base in Bahrain. There's plenty of targets. And even though there's a lot of U.S. and allied air defence in the region, some of those missiles would probably get through. Scenario number five is that Iran lays mines, sea mines, in the narrow choke point called the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly a quarter of the world's liquid natural gas and oil and oil-related products flow every year. So it would have a huge effect, this, on global trade and the economy. They do practice this. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards called Navy have got not just speed boats, patrol boats that can lay mines, but also fishing boats where they've got some of these things stored so they don't look like military targets, but actually they are, covertly. And there is a precedent here back in the tanker war of 1980 to 88 between Iran and Iraq, I'm old enough to remember it, where Iran sowed mines and the Royal Navy mine hunters had to help remove them. There is a real threat to shipping from this. Of course it would hurt Iran, and it would hurt, because its exports would be choked off, and it would hurt China, which buys a lot of Iranian oil. So it would be self-defeating, but in an act of desperation, it's a possibility. Scenario number six is that Iran retaliates, and using something called swarm tactics, in other words, masses of something, they're able to overcome the close-in defences of US warships and manage to sink a US warship. And I remember one US Navy captain telling me in the Gulf on board a warship, this was his nightmare. Now, they've got pretty good close-in defence, you know, an aircraft carrier doesn't just sail on its own, it's got destroyers, it's got all sorts of defensive means, and they've got cannons that can spit a huge amount of ammunition very fast to try and destroy things. But, Iran has conducted a lot of exercises in asymmetric or unconventional warfare, where it's looked at swarm techniques, where they would launch not just dozens, but hundreds of explosive drones, picking on, say, one target, or even multiple targets, and at the same time firing a lot of torpedoes to try and confuse and overwhelm the defences of the US Navy carrier strike group. If they're able to sink a warship, that would be complete humiliation for the United States. Imagine as well if US sailors and marines were captured and paraded in Iran. I mean, this would be a nightmare, similar to what happened to Jimmy Carter's presidency, when he tried to rescue the captured US diplomats who Iran had seized, and there was an abortive mission to rescue them in 1980 that ended in disaster. Scenario number seven, and this is the one that has really got people jittery in the region. The regime collapses, and what follows is chaos, with ethnic tensions coming up, bubbling up to the surface, the Kurds, the Baluchis, the Azerbaijanis, all looking after their own interests, so fissures that have been really papered over until now by the Islamic Republic starting to emerge, but also people getting their hands on weapons, scores being settled, the whole country descending into absolute murderous chaos and triggering a huge humanitarian and refugee crisis. This is one of the reasons, one of the main reasons why countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE are so concerned about this attack, because it's easy to start this attack, but how do you predict the outcome? And the worry here, for me certainly, as somebody who's spent a lot of time in the Middle East, is that Donald Trump, having marched his troops up to the top of the hill, now feels that he's got to do something or lose face, without really knowing what the outcome and the end state has to be.