“the Iranians could take Basra with ten mullahs and one sound truck.”

A retired four-star general told me [Sy Hersh] that, despite the eight thousand British troops in the region....

> Iran will cut Hezbollah loose. Principally, they operate out of southern Lebanon but are capable of terrorist acts outside that area. This is noted in the Hersh article.

> Oil prices will spike rapidly. $100/barrel is a reasonable baseline [I think this is optimistic]. The US would not, of course, bomb Iraq's oil & natural gas fields. That is, afterall, the prize.

> Looking at Figure 1, we see that Iran is not simply a Persian nation. In particular, there are substantial Kurdish (Sunnis) and Azeri (Shia') minorities. In fact, the US military is even now operating in these areas. How would these groups react? I suspect the Kurds would line up around ethnic/sectarian lines and secede from Iran. This would have implications for Turkey, which has a sizeable Kurdish minority in the west of the country.

> It is impossible to imagine that the Russians and Chinese, who want this matter referred back to the IAEA and oppose tough sanctions from the UN Security Council, would just sit back and do nothing. Specifically, the Chinese are doing business with Iran. There is a geostrategic alliance among Iran, Russian and China as reported in one of my favorite sources, the Asian Times. See The ties that bind China, Russia and Iran. It is hard to predict what Russian and China would do but the US would become even more isolated than they already are.

> Hugo Chavez is, generally speaking, a wild card. What a perfect excuse to justify his (apparently correct) perception of the US as an out of control aggressor and cut some part of oil exports.

> As Hersh reports, quoting a Pentagon advisor, "What will 1.2 billion Muslims think the day we attack Iran?”

> Unless the US could take out all of Iran's medium range missles, retaliatory strikes against Sunni-held oil & natural gas facilities in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, et. al. are possible. The entire Middle East could be engulfed in a Sunni-Shia' civil war. This is noted by Hersh.

> Last but not least, the strong ties between Iraq's Shiites and Iran would become a bond like cement. At any time, Iran could make the situation in Iraq much worse and solidify the nascent civil war there. In particular, look at Figure 1 again and consider this quote from Hersh