Pentagon rules out ground attack on Iran

Pentagon rules out ground attack on Iran
Officials find rugged terrain makes invasion virtually impossible
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Posted: February 17, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

Democrat leaders in Congress vow they'll move to block President Bush from invading Iran, but Pentagon officials say that won't be necessary, because they have no active plans for a ground attack.

In fact, officials tell WND they have war-gamed a full-blown invasion and ruled it out because of the difficult terrain in Iran, a mountainous fortress compared to Iraq.

"It's a non-starter," said one official.

He explains Iran is ringed virtually 360 degrees by towering mountains, and even if they were passable by artillery units, unstable salt flats and high desert wastelands stand between those mountains and Tehran, the capital.

"The Great Salt Desert outside Tehran is hundreds of miles of dry lakebeds that ooze a black sticky mud that's a lot like quicksand," he said. "It won't support tanks and artillery."

It was in the Great Salt Desert, known locally as the Dasht-e Kavir, that the 1980 military mission to rescue American hostages in Tehran was aborted. Dust storms blinded pilots and caused a U.S. helicopter to crash into a C-130 transport plane, killing eight crew members.

On the other side of Tehran lie the steep, jagged Elburz Mountains, which include Mount Damavand, the highest peak in Europe and Asia west of the Hindu Kush. The average elevation of that northern range protecting Tehran is twice that of mile-high Denver.

Critics of Bush's saber-rattling over Iran – which he accuses of arming insurgents in Iraq while developing a nuclear-weapons program – worry the president is looking for a pretext to also invade Iran and carry out regime change in Tehran.

"Congress should make it very clear that there is no previous authority for the president to go into Iran," warned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

But even strong promoters of the war in Iraq are not talking seriously about going "into" Iran.

"I do not think anyone in the U.S. is talking about invasion," said Josh Muravchik, a Middle East expert at the American Enterprise Institute who has argued for air strikes on Iran. "We have been chastened by the experience of Iraq, even a hawk like myself."

If the initial march to Baghdad was a cake walk, a march to Tehran would be a logistical nightmare, experts agree.

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