U.S. Defense Department’s unclassified report on Iran’s military power

The United States Defense Department has released a 12 page unclassified report on Iran’s military power that describes Iran’s relative growing military power (including Iran’s nuclear program) and its efforts to become a regional superpower by supporting terrorist organizations and waging a proxy war against the United States and its allies.

Personally I think that the report is mind-blowing. Not because the information is new (we have tried to give most of this information to different stakeholder-states, including the U.S. for some years now), but rather because the report clearly reveals that the U.S. is very well aware of Iran’s military activities, but at the same time the U.S. seems completely lost regarding how to thwart Iran’s efforts to attain nuclear weapons and become the dominant military power in the region.

Just a couple of days ago Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a forum at Columbia University that “Iran getting a nuclear weapon would be incredibly destabilizing. Attacking them would also create the same kind of outcome.”

It is quite obvious that the Obama administration essentially has no strategy for dealing with Iran; they are only pondering two alternatives attacking Iran (which they are not really thinking about) and letting Iran attain nuclear weapons and hope for the best.

But there is a third alternative that would benefit everyone, and that is to support and empower Iran’s democratic and secular opposition in order to bring about regime change. But it seems that the Obama administration doesn’t even consider this as an alternative.

Loghman H. Ahmedi is the UK Representative of Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan.