The recent International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran’s nuclear program has put Tehran back at the top of the list with China as the foreign countries that are seen as the biggest threats to the U.S. That was certainly an important theme the Republican candidates’ debates on foreign policy.
How much of a threat is Iran and what should be done about it?
Figuring out how much a threat Iran really poses is complicated by three factors. One is common to all international threat assessment; the second is associated with closed societies; and the third is unique to Iran.
What is known as the Realist paradigm is one of the major approaches in the academic study of international politics; it is the implicit world view of most journalists, opinion piece authors, and more less casual observers (including many political candidates.) In brief, the Realist looks at the world and sees an endless struggle for power in an anarchic world where armed might is the ultimate guarantor of security. “The strong do what they will; the weak suffer what they must.” The Realist warns us to always be alert to threats and ready to respond forcefully. “If you want peace,” advises the Realist, “prepare for war.”
The Realist answer to the question of who is a threat and what is the nature of that threat is succinct: capabilities imply intentions. We cannot know the what other countries are really planning on. They go to great lengths to hide their real intentions. But we can observe their actions and assess what they might be capable of. And the prudent observer (remembering that one person’s “prudent” observer is another person’s nervous Nellie) assumes that “they” deliberately developed those capabilities because they mean to use them.
The result is a systematic bias toward overestimating threats and a conflating of what could be possible in a few years with what is being planned or even what is possible now.
The problem of figuring out what those guys are up to is complicated when those guys operate within an opaque political system. In the case of Iran, the relationship between President Ahmadinejad, Supreme Leader Khamenei, the governmental ministries, the armed forces, and the Revolutionary Guards are extremely murky. If you can’t even figure out which of those guys is making the decision and whether all those guys are on the same page -- or even reading out of the same book -- it gets that much harder.
The recent allegations by Attorney General Holder that the U.S. has foiled an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador is a case in point. The evidence that the men who were arrested were up to something seems to many observers pretty convincing. But the evidence of links between the conspirators and anyone in Iran is far more tenuous and no one can say with certainty which, if any, elements of the Iranian system were involved or at what level the plot was hatched.
The third source of difficulty in assessing Iran’s dangers to the United States is the heightened sensitivity of our closest allies in the Middle East. Many Israelis take Ahmadinejad’s holocaust denial and inflammatory rhetoric denying Israel’s right to exist very seriously. They regard the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran as a direct threat to their lives. Saudi Arabia is extremely sensitive to threats posed by its Shi’a minority and the relatively impoverished Shi’a majorities in Bahrain and other Gulf States, and sees them as a potential fifth column that Iran can manipulate. Both countries have publicly and privately (see some of the cables in wikileaks) urged the U.S. to take an even harder stand. Israel and, to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia share intelligence with the U.S.; their deep suspicions color U.S. intelligence estimates.
I am not going to try to develop a “real” assessment of Iran. I am going to try to describe elements of Iranian behavior that work against U.S. interests and what some of our options may be.
Nuclear Weapons. This is at the top of everyone’s list of problems and is not just an American preoccupation. Western Europe has been as strongly opposed to Iran’s behavior as the United States. While Russia and China have typically opposed calls for stronger sanctions against Iran, they have made it clear that they oppose any attempt to develop weapons.
Iran has long had a nuclear program which it claims is strictly for peaceful use and hence legitimate under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The program is immensely popular in Iran, where it is seen as a matter of national pride, demonstrating the scientific and technological sophistication of Iranians. However, in addition to clearly civilian activities, for the past ten years Iran has also pursued technologies that are potentially directly related to weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports that have led to the attempts to both persuade Iran to stop and to punish them with sanctions have largely involved dual-use technologies. That is, technologies that could be used for legitimate civilian projects or for the development of nuclear weapons ... and capabilities imply intent, do they not? The most recent IAEA report goes further. The November 8 report documents persistent foot dragging and refusal to cooperate in some aspects of the inspections by Iranian officials and discusses aspects of the Iranian nuclear research program that are directly linked to the development of weapons.
So what? After all, seven countries (U.S., UK, France, China, Russia, India, and Pakistan) have confirmed their possession of nuclear weapons and no one believes Israel’s official insistence that it does not have nukes. (If Israel is believed to have them despite their denials, North Korea is the mirror image: their claims to already have them are widely regarded as dubious.)
One fundamental issue surrounding any country’s attempts to develop nuclear weapons is the disastrous consequences of their use. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass and indiscriminate destruction. They kill people and destroy almost everything for miles. They are only useful as a deterrent. People who think seriously about proliferation and nuclear weapons often talk about “the Nth Nation Problem.” So far eight countries have developed nuclear weapons and been prudent enough to avoid using them. But somewhere out there is the nth nation in the series of nuclear states whose leaders are irrational or delusional or whose internal safeguards are defective and permit an accidental launch of nuclear tipped missile. Therefore every nation that does develop weapons brings us one step closer to catastrophe.
The second fundamental issue surrounding any country’s attempts to gain nuclear weapons is that proliferation breeds proliferation. If Iran developed nuclear weapons, several of its regional neighbors such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Egypt would be subject to some internal; pressure to develop their own weapons to deter Iran. The diversion of a large amount of intellectual and engineering prowess and the diversion of money from human and economic development would be significant. And it would bring us all closer to that nightmare Nth nation.
There are two specific immediate consequences of an operational Iranian nuclear warhead that worry people. The first is the threat to Israel. The nightmarish “existential threat” is that fanatical Iranian leaders would unleash a new Holocaust by raining warheads on Israel. This specter leads some elements of the Israeli government to push the United States into attacking Iran by threatening to do it themselves. This fear is echoed by some of Israel’s supporters in the U.S., especially more conservative and hawkish politicians.
I think these fears are exaggerated. Some parts of the Iranian leadership, for example Mahmud Ahmadinejad, are very insular, poorly educated and given to extravagant rhetoric. But that does not make him insane and undeterred by the threat that a nuclear assault on Israel would be met by a larger nuclear counter blow on Iran. And the diffusion of authority and existence of multiple centers of power in the Iranian system guarantee that no single person could make such a far reaching decision on their own.
The second consequence of a nuclear Iran that people fear is bullying. A nuclear armed Iran, the argument goes, will be able to cow and intimidate its neighbors. I think this, too, is an exaggeration. I think the conventional wisdom that nuclear weapons are useful only as a deterrent, not a tool of compellance is right. I have a very hard time thinking of a plausible scenario. “All right, King of Bahrain and your lackeys, stop oppressing Shi’a Bahrainis or we’ll blow you up!” But “you” would include the Shi’a citizens of Bahrain.
Fulminating about the Iranian nuclear threat and beating the drums for the imaginary military option probably has the perverse effect of strengthening the argument in Iran for developing weapons as the ultimate deterrent. I think one motive driving Iran’s program is fear of attack from the U.S. Whether Iranians look at the last 60 years of relations with the U.S. or the fate of Qadhafi, they are likely to conclude that the U.S. is a military threat. The fierier the rhetoric, the louder the calls for muscular action in the Washington or Tel Aviv, the more nuclear weapons seem like a good idea.
What is to be done? I think we --meaning the United States, Britain, France and Germany who have played the leading roles in trying to deal with Iran’s nuclear program – are doing pretty much everything that can be done. The strategy has involved attempts at persuasion through negotiations leading to economic and technical support for peaceful nuclear power and economic benefits from removing existing sanctions interspersed with increasingly stringent multilateral sanctions on trade and investment in Iran aimed at directly impeding the organizations and individuals most involved with the weapons program. It is widely believed that there is also a covert dimension, sponsored by the Western powers and/or Israel. Over the past few years several Iranian scientists associated with the nuclear program have been assassinated by unknown assailants. About a year ago, in what is described as an act of cyber sabotage, the Stuxnet worm attacked and seriously harmed computers at a key Iranian nuclear site.
A frustrating difficulty with designing a strategy to counter an Iranian weapons program is figuring out who in Iran is behind it and what they hope to gain. That makes it much more difficult to come up with promises and inducements that would give Iran the rewards it hoes to get from the program or to devise threats and punishments that might actually lead the proponents to decide it wasn’t worth it.
The non-existent military option. As much as tough guy (and gal) Presidential candidates and self-proclaimed foreign policy experts love to talk about it, I do not believe there is a realistic military option for dealing with Iran. No one who has thought about it thinks an invasion or massive bombing campaign is remotely possible. Herman Cain has taken some flack for saying bombing Iran was unfeasible because there are lots of mountains in the country. Problem is not mountains but dispersed and hardened nuclear facilities, Iran’s air defenses, and the real possibility of retaliation. Although there is some speculation that the alleged assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador was meant to be implemented only as a response to a U.S. or Israeli assault on Iran, the more likely retaliatory moves would come in the Middle East from one or more of the anti-American or anti-Israel groups Iran supports.
Iran as Middle East trouble maker. When the revolution of 1979 led to the Islamic Republic, the leaders hoped the revolution would sweep the entire Middle East, replacing both traditional monarchs and secular nationalists with devout Muslims inspired by the Shi’a tradition. The fact that those Sunni doinated regimes were allied with the Great Satan U.S. or the equally satanic atheists in Moscow was a major bonus. The major tool for exporting the revolution became support for anti-establishment groups. In some cases this has meant money and arms for groups like Hizballah and Hamas; in others it has been more indirect attempts to support Shi’a minority organizations in the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a double boost for Iran. Saddam’s regime, secular nationalists who oppressed a Shi’a majority and had launched a war of aggression against Iran, was eliminated and his military machine dismantled. And the American occupation created a Shi’a dominated political system with many players who had close personal as well as religious and ideological affinities to Iran.
There are, I think, real reasons to be concerned about stability in the Middle East. There are also real reasons to support the emergence of more democratic regimes. Iran does not play a positive role on either dimension. Iranian influence and support goes to anti-regime actors in Lebanon, Jordan, and the Gulf States. And many of the forces Iran favors are not committed to democratic political development. There are good reasons for the United States to use the tools of diplomacy and statecraft to counter Iran.
But perspective matters. The alarmist fears of a “Shi’a Crescent” running through the Middle East are over blown. That really scary bogeyman who goes bump in the night is not an Iranian dominated Iraq. Overestimating threats is as dangerous as underestimating them.
“All politics is local” is a trite but true aphorism. Hizballah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, pro-Iranian factions in Baghdad are supported, not controlled, by Tehran. They will act in what they think is their own interest. If that coincides with something Iran desires, well and good. And if it doesn’t, Iran may make it more difficult, but at the end of the day they will go their own way.
In my view, Iran is a problem, not a looming threat. And if this understates Iran’s influence or ability to attack our interests, it may at least serve as a counterweight to the strident analyses that err in the opposite direction.
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