DEVELOPING PLAN B-THE RESCUE

The enemy always gets to vote and a wise commander plans for potential outcomes to his actions.

We spent the good part of the day addressing the possible Iranian reactions to a rescue. We tried to determine what the Iranian capabilities were to react, how long it would take them to be generated and how we could deal with them. Most of the answers came from LTC Lenahan after his due diligence. These were major issues in finalizing our assault and extraction plans.

At this level, certain options that might appeal to the military would be non-starters for the civilian bosses. Killing people, potentially a lot of them, causes a great deal of angst and often results in desired options coming off the table.

WHAT IF?

What can we expect the Revolutionary Guards and Iranian government to do if they learn of a rescue attempt? Most importantly, what can they do if we are still in the compound? We drill this from a variety of sources.

The Iranians hold daily media demonstrations to coincide with our East Coast news cycle. They put 100,000 folks in the street around the embassy for specific periods-but all in daylight. It’s clear that any rescue has to be well after dark.

The Mullahs have a fairly sophisticated alert system consisting of loudspeakers on roof tops to call out their folks. We guesstimate that it would take about 30 minutes for a sizeable crowd to gather at night. This means we have to be in and out in less than 30 minutes. Good luck Charlie.

We have excellent conduits inside the Iranian Gendarmerie system. This police force is pretty efficient and formidable. They also seem to be the best intel source everywhere in country-hence, we need to keep our ears on their system as the best chance for early warning of knowledge regarding our intrusion.

The Chairman is particularly concerned about the Iranian F4’s.

We gave them top of the line aircraft and systems and Gen Gast says they have some excellent pilots. Chairman asks Col Kyle to figure out how to neutralize the threat other than with a US air cap. Kyle is examining the option of using the AC130 over the airfield. We know where the F4’s are housed, but need to examine how best to engage them. Hopefully when they are still on the ground.

In sum, this is a clear requirement for the AC130 gunships to be in the mix on the night we do this. That means tankers in country…nothing is simple….