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Sunday, January 22, 2006
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 A NUCLEAR IRAN: LET'S START THINKING LIKE RATIONAL ADULTS, SHALL WE?
As most of you know, the Islamic Republic of Iran will almost certainly be a nuclear power in the near future. The question of what is to be done about it is increasingly being asked in Washington, Jerusalem, and at UN headquarters in New York. The UN Security Council will soon be debating whether to level economic sanctions against the Iranians if they don't immediately cease their weapons program. Some are penly speculating about a pre-emptive military strike against the Iranian facilities.
Not only do the existing questions not have good answers, the proper questions are not being asked at all.
If Iran policy is going to be predicated on the question of what will be done to prevent that country from becoming a nuclear power, then any such policy is doomed to fail. This may be an unpopular viewpoint, but Iran WILL be joining the nuclear club. The questions we should be asking are "when, how, under whose control, and how do we deal with Iran once it does have a bomb?"
The reason I believe that Iran will soon have a weapon is simple; there is no reason to believe that it won't. All it takes to join the "nuclear club" is the determination that it is in a nation's national interest, and the will to do what is necessary to design, build and test a weapon.
Some of the poorest countries in the world have joined the nuclear powers - or come very close to having done so - with very few obstacles that they couldn't overcome. Pakistan went nuclear in 1998. India was believed to have a workable weapon in 1974. China tested their first bomb in 1964. North Korea is believed to have at least one, and as many as six weapons, as I write this, although they have not tested one. Even Brazil once came close to have a credible weapons system.
The one thing all of those nations had in common were crippled economies. In at least three of those countries, large percentages of the populations were starving to death. A backward economy is not only not a detriment to successful weapons program, it might be an incentive. For that reason, I do not believe UN sanctions will have much of an effect on Iran's plans.
Diplomacy is unlikely to work either. As I previously mentioned, a coountry will develop weapons of mass destruction if they believe that it in their national interest to do so. And it is hard to argue that Tehran does not see a nuclear program as being in their interest.
One should remember that Iran is one of the very few countries in the post-World War One world to have been repeatedly subjected to WMD attacks. During the eight year war with Iraq, Iranian soldiers and civilians were attacked with both nerve and mustard gases on several occassions by Iraq.
The continuing instability in Iraq brings with it the prospect of a regional war. If the United States leaves Iraq in the near future (which I inceasingly think that it will), and that country explodes into violence, there is little reason to believe that its neighbours will not be drawn in. Several of those neighbours, particularly Syria, are believed to have WMD programs. Furthermore, no one can predict what Israel would do in the event of a broad war in the Middle East and that anarchy that would bring.
Then there is the rhetoric and actions of the Bush administration. President Bush has made pre-emptive war and the "spread of democracy" official national security policy. In his 2002 State of the Union Address, President Bush included Iran in the famous "Axis of Evil." That Bush also made "regime change" official American policy in that same speech could not have escaped the notice of Tehran.
It also cannot escape their notice that The United States is currently occupying a neighbour on each of Iran's borders and has bases and troops in nearby Qatar and Kuwait. It doesn't particularly matter if you or I believe that the above constitutes a threat to Iranian security, you just need to know that they obviously do. And, as long as that is the case, all the diplomacy in the world is unlikely to change Tehran's view that a nuclear deterrent is necessary. Even if the United States offered Iran an iron-clad guarantee of non-interference - such as the one that ended the Cuban Missile Crisis - that would do nothing about a the nuclear arsenal that Israel maintains, and has declared that it would use.
Iran, like most developing countries, also takes strong exception to being told that they cannot nuclear weapons by the only country in human history to have actually used them on another nation. As a matter of fact, the country that makes this argument most forcefully is also the world's largest democracy, India. Having four of the world's largest nuclar powers - the US, Russia, China and France - along with others that could develop their own arsenals overnight - Britian, Germany and Japan - lecture it about the evils of nuclear weapons will not be taken seriously by Tehran.
Again, those are the Iranian perceptions, and diplomacy is not likely to change them in the near future.
The only other way to prevent Iran from testing a weapon is thought to be through pre-emptive military action. The Israelis have indicated that they are considering just that.
Israel's defense minister hinted Saturday that the Jewish state is preparing for military action to stop Iran's nuclear program, but said international diplomacy must be the first course of action.
"Israel will not be able to accept an Iranian nuclear capability and it must have the capability to defend itself, with all that that implies, and this we are preparing," Shaul Mofaz said.
His comments at an academic conference stopped short of overtly threatening a military strike but were likely to add to growing tensions with Iran.
Representatives of other nations havebegun rattling sabres, as well.
Germany's defense minister said in an interview published Saturday that he is hopeful of a diplomatic solution to the impasse over Iran's nuclear program, but argued that "all options" should remain open.
Asked by the Bild am Sonntag weekly whether the threat of a military solution should remain in place, Franz Josef Jung was quoted as responding: "Yes, we need all options."
French President Jacques Chirac said Thursday that France could respond with nuclear weapons against any state-sponsored terrorist attack.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Saturday that Chirac's threats reflect the true intentions of nuclear nations, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
"The French president uncovered the covert intentions of nuclear powers in using this lever (nuclear weapons) to determine political games," IRNA quoted Asefi as saying.
The diplomatic ramifications of these statements remain to be seen.
Pre-emption is not a military philosophy I disagree with. However, it must be efficent and cost-effective to be worthwhile. A strike that only furthers the wapons program or destroys the military that launches it would be disasterous. And is it not at all likely that such a strike would succeed. Even total war itself might fail against Iran.
Those who have advocated a pre-emptive strike envision one such as the attack on the Iraqi reactor at Osirak by the Israeli air foorce in 1981.
However, the Iranians watched that strike and they learned from it. Intelligence officials and scholars believe that Iran has responded by building mutiple facilities that conduct redundant research, so that if one is destroyed, the world could continue - perhaps even accelerated. It is also thought that several of the facilities are underground in hardened bunkers, and cannot be destroyed by air strikes. Others are believed to be in university campuses and in large population centers, making them impossible to strike without inflicting massive civilian casualties. And, again, due to the redundancies built into the program, such a strike would still not end it, or even significantly delay it.
Since Israel does not posses the force projection ability to get very many ground troops into Iran, an Osirak-type strike is the only option, short of launching nuclear weapons at Iran, available to it. Such a strike would not only fail, it would speed up the program, and invite retaliation, which I shall address later.
If the Iranian program is as widespread, redundant, and hardened as it is believed to be, a "surgical strike" would fail. The design of such a program would also make it impervious to sabotage. The only means to destroy it by military means would be the destruction of the Iranian government itself. That would mean a ground invasion of Iran.
I suppose that one could argue that the United States is perfectly positioned to launch such an invasion, with forces stationed in both Iraq and Afghanistan and elements of the US Navy in both the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Getting their troops there would not be much of a tactical issue.
Before I go any further, we should get some background on Iran.
Iran is geographically three times as large as Iraq and has a population nearly three times bigger. the country's terrian is much more like Afghanistan's that it Iraq's, with large mountain ranges just to the north of Tehran. It currently governed by an Islamic theocracy, but the long-term future of that government is doubt as the population is increasingly young, and does not share the attitudes of the aging mullahs currently in control.
As we have seen in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States attacked with a force large enough to dislodge the government, but insufficient to pacify the population, or prevent widespread insurgent action following the cessation of hostilities.
The sheer size of Iran alone would require a much, much larger landing force than was used in either Iraq or Afghanistan. There also aren't any rebel militias to assist in ground operations as there was in Afghanistan's Northern Alliance. Nor is there any organized domestic opposition that can assist with the political rebuilding. It is likely the government would retreat into the mountains long before the Americans reached Tehran, and would direct their defense of the country from there.
One of the great unknowns in any Iranian adventure would be the reaction of the population. While the younger generation is regarded as being pro-American, they are also very aware of their history, and deeply resent foreign - and particularly American - interference in their nation. They might "greet American forces as liberators," or they might unify behind the government they despise to repel the Western invaders, as happened in the Soviet Union when it was invaded by Germany in 1941.
Furthermore, finding and tearing up both the Iranian government and the nuclear program could take months, and kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians and tens of thousands of American soldiers. It would also allow the mullahs ample time to retaliate.
Former National Security Council Diretor for counter-terrorism, Richard Clarke has said that Iranian retaliation would take two immediate forms.
First, they would launch conventional missiles againt oil fields in both Saudi Arabia and Iraq. This would cause an oil shock and seriously disrupt the US economy. It would also be a strike against the powerful Sunni Arab financial power that Sh'iaa Iran loathes. It has not struck those targets before for fear of retaliation. But with over a half million American troops on it's territory, that fear would be gone.
Secondly, it is widely known that Iran controls the terrorist group Hezbollah. Hezbollah is even larger and better organized than al-Qaeda, and is believed by the Bush adminisration and terrorism experts to have large cells within the United States. One has to assume that those cells have pre-selected targets and plans to attack them. One further has to assume that any invasion of Iran would lead to the activation of those cells and "revenge strikes" against American civilian targets, presumably multiple ones across the country.
Just as America is capable of bringing war on Iran, Iran is capable of bringing the war back to them by other means.
A US invasion, assuming that it succeeded, would also break the American military. It could not pacify and fight an insurgency in a country as large as Iran while continuing to do so in Iraq and Afghanistan and meet it's NATO commitments at it's current size. Maintaining hundreds of thousands of American forces in Iran indefinately would almost certainly require a military draft. And it is seriously doubted that the American people would stand for that, particularly given the drop in poular support for the Iraqi operation.
"Regime change" in Iraq as a solution to the WMD dilemma is founded on a very dangerous assumption on the part of US policy makers. That assumption is that any democratic, freely elected government in Iran, or the Iranian people themselves, wouldn't want a nuclear capability. These strategists assume that the current program is a paranoid fantasy of the mullahs currently in power. And there is no evidence to believe that this is the case.
The populations of democraic countries tend to look to their programs as a symbol of national pride. This was certainly the case in India and Pakistan, which tested its weapon under a freely elected government. It was also true in France when, in 1967, it withdrew its nuclear forces from NATO control and established an "independent doctrine" for their use. There is no reason to think that a free Iran would feel or act differently.
What if, for example, a free Iran retained its anti-Israel policies and continued to insist on persuing a WMD deterrent? Consider that India was a democratic, nuclar power, and refused to establish diplomatic relations with Israel until recently. The only way to prevent that would be "regime change" in perpetuity - constant, repeated invasions of a democratic country. And that would send a very powerful message to the Muslim world. If we are not now engaged in a "battle of civilizations", we would almost certainly be then.
Even if diplomacy is tried, Iran will be a nuclear power. Even is sanctions are levelled, Iran will be a nuclear power. Even if the United States, Israel (or both) launch surgical air strikes against their program, Iran will be a nuclear power. Even if Iran is invaded and the mullahs torn from power, Iran could STILL emerge as a nuclear power.
If anything at all is to be learned from the last 60 years, it is that non-proliferation has failed, both in theory and practice. If countries as backward as Lybia can establish a credible program, then there are few that can't. We cannot safely assume that there aren't other rouge nuclear networks like the on operated by Pakistan's AQ Khan. After all, this is science that your average first year physics major is capable - no, actually required - of understanding. There is no way of putting the proliferation genie back in the bottle.
Iran is going to be a nuclear power. How do we deal with that fact?
As I see it, there are two ways. The carrot and the stick.
If it is the mullahs having nukes that we object to, time will take care of that. Currently, 60% of the Iranian population is too young to have any memory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. They also have seen that the revolution has done nothing to improve their lives. Nuclear technology is not the only thing proliferating in Iran. Information technology is also rapidly entering the country.
If we are worried about the mullahs, their days are already numbered. As a matter of fact, their policy of "exporting revolution" is already a thing of the past. As the older mullahs die, they will be replaced by younger, more western-oriented successors. President Ahmadinejad is an aberration in this trend. As the mullahs grow younger and more moderate, they will also evaporate. This is precisely what happened in Eastern Europe in the late 1980's, and, because of Iran's demographics, it happen at a much fater pace there.
Of course, that still leaves the mullahs with the bomb for a time. Perhaps as long as 15 years.
How that is dealt with depends on how pragmatic the individual players are. The United States and Israel, the countries most likely to attack Iran, could approach them and offer a dream deal. They would allow Iran the bomb - which they'll get anyway - and offer full diplomatic and trade relations. In return, Iran signs a non-aggression treaty with both the US and Israel and renounces its support of terrorism. Should the Iranians violate such a treaty, they would face certain, massive and horrible retaliation. Signing such a treaty and then violating it would negate support or sympathy from all but the most radical elements of the international community.
Unfortunately, my first proposal will probably never be proposed.
The second option is a return to Cold War strategic thinking immediately after the successful test of an Iranian weapon. This seems to be the position of France, a return to the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction. The knowledge that the use of such a weapon will result in their guaranteed destruction, that could moderate both their behaviour and their rhetoric. An insistence that any terrorist use of WMD would be presumed to be backed by Iran and will result in an immediate nuclear strike on them might actually make Iran a useful tool in the War on Terror.
Under the "Cold War option," the West maintains a firm deterrent against Iran and waits for Iraninan demographics to do the rest.
Regardless of which option is chosen, the reslt is the same; Iran has nuclear weapons and the mullahs are eventually gone. But if we want to be responsible about the crisis, we need to stop pretending that the Iranians can be stopped.
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