The Iranian quagmire: How to move forward

Abstract

As the writers in this symposium illustrate, dealing with Iran's nuclear program is one of the most important foreign policy issues of the day. Years of stalled talks, diplomatic dead-ends, and sanctions have made it difficult to see exactly where progress has been made and what efforts are worth pursuing. In this Global Forum, leading foreign policy experts weigh in from around the world on the options for how to move forward with Iran—from diplomacy to fuel swaps to military strikes. Whatever their proposed solutions, the writers express one common theme: We ignore Iran at our own peril. From the US, Thomas R. Pickering (2010), Lawrence J. Korb (2010), and Bennett Ramberg; from Turkey, Mustafa Kibaroglu (2010) ; from Iran, Kayhan Barzegar (2010); and from Israel, Emily B. Landau (2010). Over the months of November and December, this forum will continue at www.thebulletin.org.

“All options are on the table.” In 2010 alone, both Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak (Katz, 2010) and US Defense Secretary Robert Gates (Interfax, 2010) have echoed this mantra. For at least a half a decade, it has been uttered by many American and Israeli policy makers as they attempted to backstop diplomacy to get Iran off its nuclear weapons track. And for half a decade, the Mullahs have dismissed the threats as they selectively applied the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards and treated as theater the diplomatic efforts of the agency, the European Union, and the UN Security Council to halt the enrichment program. If nothing else, the revolutionary regime’s march to a nuclear weapons breakout capacity has provided a textbook case for countries wishing to cheat their way to a nuclear bomb.

So, ought the United States or Israel apply force in the event diplomacy continues to stall and suspicions about Iran’s weapons capabilities grow? From World War II to the present, countries facing adversaries determined to acquire nuclear weapons repeatedly grappled with this question and, World War II aside, they repeatedly found themselves fearing the choice they made—“don’t attack” versus “attack”—would be a bet that could go wrong, very wrong, risking national survival. Yet history has thrown a curve: Both strategies worked.

Understanding how and why they both worked in the past helps answer the question whether to apply force to Iran in the future. But as the narrative suggests, the Israel-Iran nuclear face-off poses unique challenges that history cannot easily answer, raising the specter of nuclear weapons initiation not by Tehran but by Jerusalem to prevent the sum of all its fears, the annihilation of the Jewish state. This grave possibility places Washington on the horns of a dilemma as Tehran’s very uncertain nuclear clock ticks: Should the United States, with its immense conventional air superiority, strike Iran or merely bear witness to the first nuclear war of the twenty-first century?

The ‘don’t attack’ template

At first blush, history pulls hard toward the “don’t attack” template. The reason? The nuclear age has nurtured a remarkable taboo (Tannenwald, 2007). Since World War II and despite the acquisition of atomic weapons by some 12 countries (including South Africa, Belarus, and Ukraine, which have since given up the nuclear bomb), no nuclear-armed state has ever ignited its arsenal in anger. Arguably no nation, whether democratic or totalitarian, even seriously unsheathed its weapons for use. More remarkably, nuclear states facing defeat, including the United States in Southeast Asia, China in Vietnam, and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, decided to accept the outcome rather than use their weapons.

That said, nuclear restraint did not prevent armed nations from much breast-beating. During the Cold War, both the Soviet Union and the United States postured with repeated explosive testing. They and others engaged in “atomic diplomacy”—subtle hints, threatening rhetoric, the movement of nuclear-capable units to intimidate and deter—in crises over Taiwan (1950s), Suez (1956), Berlin (1961), Cuba (1962); wars in Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East (1973) (Betts, 1987); as well as many crises and wars involving India and Pakistan. And, in defense think tanks, strategists crafted plans to use nuclear weapons both to preempt and to respond to deterrence failure (Kaplan, 1983). Fortunately, these events never required execution.

Nonetheless, throughout the atomic age, nuclear-armed states feared newcomers would either violate the taboo, or use their arsenals to intimidate. Concerned that diplomacy, sanctions, and threats would not suffice, many countries consequently plotted military action to forcefully eliminate incipient weapons development. But then apprehension intervened.

Examples abound. ¹ President John F. Kennedy feared China’s nuclear capacity would dramatically embolden the country’s leader, Mao Zedong. Bureaucrats began spitting out option papers—from sabotage to dropping nuclear weapons to stop the Chinese. But when push came to shove, the successor Lyndon B. Johnson administration stood down. Brakes were imposed due to concern over Chinese retaliation against Taiwan or other US allies, the entanglement of the Soviets, damage to Washington’s international prestige and alliances, and a setback to arms control with the Kremlin.

The pattern repeated elsewhere. India decided not to strike Pakistan’s emerging capability. It feared Islamabad would retaliate against New Delhi’s atomic power plants, exposing large populations to nuclear contamination from damaged installations. South Korea and the United States concluded that total war would follow an attack on Pyongyang’s installation, jeopardizing the lives of millions. And, in 1969, in the midst of its border conflict with China, the Soviet Union feared that an attack on China’s maturing program would bog it down in endless conflict with its neighbor.

Rather than attack, the United States, the Soviet Union, and India adopted a policy of “watchful deterrence”—monitoring, with nuclear weapons ever ready to strike back or preempt a coiled adversary. And so, with a mix of pride and bravado, a slew of ambitious and defense-minded countries acquired the bomb—but never used it.

Given the success of “don’t attack,” those promoting strikes against Iran must establish why the Mullahs would act differently. Consider: not even Soviet Russia and Mao’s China, two of the most odious and belligerent regimes in history, used nuclear weapons. And after World War II, neither did the defender of the West, the United States, which engaged in more atomic diplomacy than any other nuclear power. Both India and Pakistan, despite their deep animosity and the blood of multiple conventional wars, practiced nuclear abstention. And then Israel, a country that risked defeat in the 1973 war, eschewed nuclear use. History demonstrates that Cold War and regional nuclear deterrence, self-deterrence, conventional military capabilities, and diplomacy kept the world safe from nuclear war. Why wouldn’t this pattern apply to Iran?

The ‘attack’ template

Not so fast, “attack” proponents argue. There remains another chapter in this history, one that suggests that, short of a voluntary relinquishment of nuclear weapons, a military attack may be the best way to eliminate nuclear war. After all, “no attack” has left the world awash in every-ready arsenals.

The attack template has three versions: the World War II model, the 1981 Osirak model, and the 1991 Persian Gulf War model. The first embraced attack, defeat, and occupation of a suspected nuclear-arming opponent. It spared no effort to eliminate Hitler’s program. It marked the only instance when policy makers acted without equivocation (reflecting the nature of total war). The tack included multiple efforts to sabotage and bomb the Nazi-occupied Norwegian heavy water plant generating deuterium, a vital ingredient for Germany’s nuclear weapons reactor. The allies also struck whatever nuclear-related sites intelligence could identify in Germany itself. With victory, the occupying powers finished the job by destroying or carting away all remnants of Hitler’s enterprise and incarcerating his atomic scientists. After the war, Germany’s integration into the Soviet and American alliances tightly tethered the country to prevent proliferation.

Since 1945, history finds only one pure application of the World War II model, the 2003 American invasion, defeat, and occupation of Iraq. The episode marked a blemish on the total war model to halt nuclear proliferation. Washington put a stake into a nuclear cadaver. The difficult occupation added insult to injury.

The postmortem revealed that the elimination of Saddam’s atomic enterprise had come years earlier in the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The conflict demonstrated the benefits of a limited war model that did not include military occupation or forceful regime change, but rather the installment of inspectors with the authority to destroy nuclear contraband with occasional military strikes ² and a nuclear and related technology embargo for extra insurance.

The Osirak model applied an even more focused use of military force; Israel directed air strikes against Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 and Syria’s Dair Alzour site in 2007. Unlike the World War II or Persian Gulf War models, Israel’s successful acts stunted nuclear activities without defeat, occupation, or inspectors. The attack bought time—but it did not eliminate Saddam’s program. Rather, Iraq dramatically increased its nuclear investment from $400 million pre-1981 to $10 billion through early 1991 (Reiter, 2005).

Today, Syria could follow Iraq’s post-1981 path. Damascus has repeatedly rebuffed all IAEA efforts to reveal anything about its nuclear weapons enterprise (IAEA, 2010). And evidence has emerged that the Assad regime contemplated building another covert reactor ( Ynet News, 2010).

The risk of preemptive nuclear war

So what do the templates and variants mean for international efforts to constrain Iran? The military template finds that defeat and occupation will assuredly eliminate nuclear programs but at great military and economic cost. Limited war that defeats an adversary without occupation offers the opportunity to impose nuclear disarmament. However, absent installation of a new regime committed to nonproliferation, it requires the permanent placement of inspectors with authority to eliminate nuclear contraband. Military strikes on nuclear plants alone can buy time but cannot deny nuclear resurrection. Then there remains watchful deterrence. It too succeeded in preventing nuclear war without the risky and costly application of force. But the strategy comes with its own weak link—a bet on the durability of the nuclear taboo.

Seemingly, watchful deterrence would provide Israel with the best outcome at least cost. Certainly Jerusalem does not have the capacity to apply the World War II model; neither can it defeat Iran’s military as Washington and its allies did in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The Osirak alternative does not offer enough muscle to force the insertion of inspectors. It may buy time, but absent a regime change or a nonproliferation epiphany, it will not prevent the Mullahs from reconstituting the nuclear program—and seeking revenge. For Washington, determined to exit Iraq and bogged down In Afghanistan, watchful deterrence makes sense, relieving it of the burden of fighting yet another war.

But what if the consequence of US watchful deterrence were worse than taking the military plunge? The possibility emerges from the unique strategic and psychological sensitivities shaping Israeli-Iranian relations.

Tehran’s implacable hostility toward Israel and repeated calls for the Jewish state’s extinction alone raise troubling questions about the Mullahs’ nuclear intentions. The regime’s material support of Israel’s Gazan, Lebanese, and Syrian adversaries adds to the anxiety. Then there is the growing ballistic missile delivery capacity engineered to carry nuclear payloads and efforts to acquire effective air defense to curtail the Osirak model. Finally, Iran’s accumulation of nuclear weapons technology—not simply the materials production enterprise, but weapons design data, the techniques to fabricate explosives for a gun or implosion device, triggering elements, and the neutron initiator and reflector—suggests the Mullahs intend to make their country the world’s tenth active nuclear armed nation.

Collectively, these facts play on the Jewish state’s Holocaust-driven “never again” sensitivities. Other circumstances add to the angst—Israel’s small population, limited geography, continuing regional isolation, hostile northern neighbors, and never-ending conflict with the Palestinians. Lessons from past wars encourage its inclination to take on Iran. Israel’s 1967 preemption of Egypt worked; its 1973 failure almost cost the Jewish nation its state. Successful preemptive strikes on Syria and Iraq also tilt the balance toward action.

Furthermore, Israelis have little confidence that Iran will abide by the nuclear taboo or respond to nuclear deterrence even were Jerusalem to unsheathe its arsenal. Lurking is the apprehension that some Iranian leaders and/or those entrusted with nuclear management may have a martyrdom complex and may be inclined to beat Israel to the preemptive punch or convey weapons or material to Israel’s adversaries. Like all nuclear weaponizing states, Iran will confront command and control along with monitoring nuclear weapons material challenges. Further complicating matters is the concern that a nuclear Iran will incite Israel’s neighboring adversaries to aggression, emboldened by belief in Tehran’s nuclear shield.

These facts make Israel’s compulsion to apply the Osirak model compelling. But the difference here also is persuasive. Iran is neither Iraq 1981 nor Syria 2007. It has multiple nuclear sites and some are heavily bunkered. Three are key: The Esfahan Nuclear Technology Center, an industrial-scale uranium conversion center; the Arak facility, which houses the under-construction heavy water reactor that could provide a plutonium route to a nuclear bomb; and—what many see as they nuclear weapons lynchpin—the Natanz uranium enrichment plant sitting below some 23 meters of concrete and soil (Toukan and Cordesman, 2009). ³

Military experts remain divided about the Natanz facility’s vulnerability. Optimists argue that the 70 or so F-16 and F-15 Israeli aircraft, refueled in transit, could traverse the 950 to 1,400 miles to bomb all principal targets. Beating back interception—the electronic warfare elements of fighter aircraft could defeat ground and air interceptors—the bombers would have a better-than-even chance to deliver enough highly accurate bunker busting munitions (the Bomb Live Unit (BLU) 2,000 to 5,000 pound bombs, launched 15 kilometers from the target) to crush Natanz’s roof and destroy the fragile centrifuges below, as well as other more vulnerable installations along the way (Raas and Long, 2007; Simon, 2009).

However, destruction of Iran’s prominent facilities would not resolve the nuclear challenge. Tehran has scattered its atomic manufacturing among dozens of visible and, presumably, concealed sites. ⁴ Israel does not have America’s massive capacity to destroy all suspect targets, and its re-strike capacity could diminish over time. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has conceded that only short-lived benefits would result: Iran could reconstitute its nuclear program within as little as three years.

Assuming it cannot overcome the fear or genuine risk of living in Tehran’s nuclear crosshairs even were it to fully or partially lift the veil over its nuclear arsenal (Ramberg, 2010), this leaves Israel with a stark option: use its nuclear arsenal not simply to hit Iran’s nuclear plants but to eliminate or, in a remote corner of Iran, ignite a nuclear weapon to demonstrate the capacity to eliminate the regime that sustains them. The past affords examples of plausible use: In the buildup to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Israel, concerned about chemical attacks, made veiled nuclear threats against Iraq. In the 1980s, apprehensive over the Kremlin’s military involvement in the region, Jerusalem reportedly targeted the Soviet Union (Ginor and Remez, 2007). But it would be in the darkest hours of the Yom Kippur War, October 8 and 9, 1973, with Syrian forces threatening breakthrough, that Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir placed the country’s nuclear-capable Jericho ballistic missiles on strategic alert. Accounts differ as to whether Israel armed the missiles and nuclear-capable aircraft (Cohen, 2003, 2010; Farr, 1999).

History, of course, never tested Israel’s willingness to pull the trigger. Meir’s action prompted Washington to rush much-needed military supplies to the Israeli military. And in the days immediately after, Israeli forces regained their footing. Had they not, the pressure to save the country would have focused on executing the nuclear option that Meir had resisted.

For Jerusalem, the Yom Kippur War, which Israeli intelligence foresaw in the hours prior to Egypt’s attack, along with the near Syrian breach, proved another “never again” watershed highlighting the importance of preemption—versus bluff and threat—to assuring survival. In Israel’s mind, other countries may have the luxury to bet on the nuclear taboo reinforced by watchful deterrence, but the Jewish state does not.

This leaves the United States in a quandary. Washington does not share Jerusalem’s existential vulnerability. Its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left it breathless. It fears unintended political and economic consequences from further violent involvement in the Middle East. It still holds out hope that the combination of diplomacy, sanctions, bluster, military maneuvers, Iranian civil unrest, and nuclear engineering and production hurdles will break the Mullahs’ ambition. However, since 2002, when Iranian dissidents first revealed Tehran’s hidden nuclear program, these efforts have impeded but not halted Iran’s progress. In its September 2010 evaluation, the IAEA concluded, “While the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran, Iran has not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the Agency to confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities” (IAEA, 2010).

To meet the challenge, the United States is beefing up defenses across Iran’s neighboring states—coordinated through the Gulf Security Dialogue, the US government’s effort to liaise with the Gulf Cooperation Council on security matters (Congressional Research Service, 2008; US Department of State, 2010). The September 2010 announcement that Saudi Arabia will purchase US military equipment worth $60 billion illustrates the self-defense and deterrence Washington wishes to promote. However, Washington remains largely silent about formally extending its nuclear umbrella over the region, presumably to discourage the Mullahs from believing the US intends to throw in the nonproliferation towel. Were the US to move toward watchful nuclear deterrence, implementation would require nuclear-use declaratory policy, permanent deployment of new nuclear delivery forces in the neighborhood, and regular nuclear exercises in the Persian Gulf, among other approaches collectively dedicated to discourage Iranian atomic saber rattling or use.

“Use,” of course, would be too late for Israel and the “rattle” would be more than the Jewish state could bear even with American assurances, hence the ominous implications of reports that Israel has deployed nuclear-armed submarines off the coast of Iran (Goldberg, 2010; Sunday Times, 2010). In the event diplomacy and other measures stall, and the US concludes Israel would strike not to goad Washington to action but to save the state, the US is confronted with a stark choice: Apply a variant of the Persian Gulf War and Osirak models to destroy Tehran’s nuclear capability and other military sites with unrelenting conventional air power until the Mullahs sue for peace and allow inspectors to uncover and eliminate nuclear contraband—accepting the regional political, global economic, and terrorist risks that may follow. Or, assume the far graver risk, the first nuclear war of the twenty-first century.