Iran: Confronting the Threat

n February 6, 2006, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs convened a panel of leading experts to examine the emerging crisis over Iran’s nuclear program and policy options available to the United States in confronting the Islamic Republic.

Below is a rapporteur’s summary of their remarks.

Iranian Capabilities

Ilan Berman

Vice President for Policy, American Foreign Policy Council

The U.S. government should brace for six concrete trends in the years ahead as a result of Iran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb.

First, we will see—in fact, we are already seeing—an expansion of Iran’s regional influence. In recent years, Iran has signed bilateral agreements with a number or regional countries, among them Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. These deals are an indication that the countries of the Middle East are preparing for a nuclear Iran, and that they do not expect the U.S. to stay in the region long enough to protect them.

The second trend that is likely to emerge in the near future is a new arms race in the Middle East. Countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have already shown signs of seeking expanded strategic capabilities in order to counterbalance a potential Iranian bomb.

The third trend that we can expect is greatly expanded proliferation. Iran is already a major “secondary proliferator,” and Iran’s radical new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made clear that he is willing to provide nuclear technology to any Muslim states that come seeking it. Prudence dictates that we take him at his word.

The fourth trend is increased terrorism. Iran is already the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, and if it has the nuclear muscle to back it up, Iran will be bound to feel greater freedom to export its radical revolutionary principles.

Fifth, we can expect an upsurge in strategic blackmail emanating from the Islamic Republic. Given its strategic location atop the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has the ability to virtually dictate energy terms to the United States and Europe.

The sixth trend is regime longevity. Iran today is in ferment, with rampant social discontent, unemployment and drug use. All of this, however, is likely to change if the regime acquires the bomb. The closer the Iranian regime gets to a nuclear capability, the more its leaders will feel that they can repress their domestic opposition without serious repercussions from the international community. An Iranian bomb, in short, will fundamentally alter the relationship between the regime and its population.

Since the extent of the Iranian nuclear program is not known, America must begin to develop a plan to deal with these six trends sooner, rather than later.

Kenneth Timmerman

Investigative Journalist

The threat from Iran is expanding. Iran first tested its Shahab-3 medium-range missile in 1998. It is also believed to have tested a missile with an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) warhead. And Iran is known to have tested a short-range ballistic missile off a barge in the Caspian Sea, indicating that it may hope to use a low-tech delivery system in order to attack the United States from 60 to 100 miles offshore, where detection would be difficult.

There is much that we now know about Iran’s nuclear capabilities. In its reports referring Iran to the United Nations Security Council for action, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) highlighted that Iran had a working relationship with A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani bomb. The Iranian regime bought plans and equipment from Khan’s network, indicating that the Iranian regime is not simply interested in nuclear power.

But what is not known about Iran’s nuclear capabilities is just as troubling. IAEA inspectors have indicated that Iran’s uranium (UF-4 and UF-6) is not of good quality, which makes enrichment much more difficult. What is not known is how much this complicates Iran’s nuclear efforts, and how long it will take to resolve. It is also not known if Iran has used the centrifuges it received from the Khan network to enrich UF-6, imported from China. If it has, Iran may have enough enriched uranium for 20-25 bombs. The biggest unknown, however, may be the existence of a parallel program using the same technology and being perfected in sites that are buried and unknown to IAEA inspectors. This idea is supported by the fact that the Iranians have in their possession a technical 15-page description of how to make hemispherical shapes out of enriched uranium, a key element in constructing a nuclear bomb.

Western Policy Options

Helle Dale

Deputy Director, Davis Institute for International Studies, The Heritage Foundation

Public diplomacy toward Iran is a difficult task. The state media is very tightly controlled, newspapers are arbitrarily closed, the Internet is filtered, and private satellite dishes are banned. But the Iranian people, especially the young people, have a great deal of discontent with the hard hand of the ruling classes. So much so that they will often defy the government in order to access outside news sources.

The U.S. can carry out better public outreach to Iran in several ways. First of all, a goal must be decided upon. Radio Farda today provides essentially the same news that Iranians can get from their state news agency. The content is repetitive and contains little analysis. If our goal were to simply broadcast news from a slightly different angle, this would be sufficient. But it is not. Incorporating Western values into news analysis could have a great impact on an Iranian public thirsty for thought-provoking debate.

Another problem is a lack of Farsi-speaking journalists. Radio Farda is thus forced to choose between people who simply speak the language but lack journalistic training or journalists who don’t speak Farsi. They often do not have both, which hampers the effectiveness of our broadcasts.

The Voice of America’s (VOA) Farsi television is also cause for concern. VOA, often criticized as a bloated bureaucracy, controls Radio Farda and has recently been cutting back Radio Farda’s budget. This comes at a time when more funding than ever should be devoted to public diplomacy in Iran. Radio Farda should be divorced from VOA and placed under a more flexible working environment.

Ultimately, vast improvements must take place in our public diplomacy toward Iran. The U.S. government should provide support and encouragement to Iranians who seek to move their country in a more pro-Western direction. This includes enhancing public diplomacy by using broadcast facilities both to beam uncensored news to the Iranian people and to serve as “surrogate radio,” telling people the news about their own country that their government does not want them to hear. The use of humor and satire is also effective, as are interactive programming, such as call-in radio where the telephone number is in an accessible third country.

These kinds of tactics could be very effective if properly funded due to the young age of Iranian society. There is a broad field of hearts and minds that could be won if we are smart enough to tailor our public diplomacy to reaching them.

James S. Robbins

Senior Fellow in National Security Affairs, American Foreign Policy Council

There is a body of opinion that nuclear weapons bring stability through deterrence. The thinking goes that if Iran becomes a nuclear state, somehow this would add to the overall stability of the region. After all, Israel is presumed to have nuclear weapons, and because the Cold War “balance of terror” worked so well, we can replay it on a smaller scale.

This is an extremely dangerous idea. It has only gained traction because its proponents focus on the high end of the conflict spectrum. But, as we learned during the Cold War, the deterrence model is based on many more variables than simply the assumption that countries will not employ nuclear weapons because if they annihilate a country, they will be annihilated in return.

One of the key assumptions in deterrence modeling, that of having rational actors on both sides, does not hold up well in the case of Iran. Maybe the Iranians are rational actors, maybe not. If they are not, or if they are working under a rational framework that is based on a radically different view of reality, then all bets are off.

Another assumption is that each side has full information about the capabilities of the other; in other words, transparency. Also, both sides must have a presumed or demonstrable second strike capability, meaning that a country can absorb the blow from the other side and then respond with sufficient force to annihilate the aggressor. This is necessary to forestall a first strike “bolt from the blue” scenario. In other words, just to get to deterrence you would need an arms race. Yet another requirement is open communications.

Furthermore, these issues are only at the high-intensity end of the conflict spectrum. But there are other aspects to this that make deterrence even more sophisticated. The value of nuclear weapons is to enable conflict at other levels of the spectrum by engaging the fear of escalation. That is the reason we had proxy wars during the Cold War.

If Iran succeeds in acquiring nuclear weapons, therefore, the U.S. would have to stop talking about regime change, at least by force. Iran, on the other hand, would be able to employ a variety of force options.

The bottom line? Deterrence is working fine right now. It is working in Iran’s favor. They are deterring us.

R. James Woolsey

Former Director of Central Intelligence

Is it possible to deter a nuclear-capable Iran, as we did with the Soviet Union during the decades of the Cold War? The simple answer is that Iran today is very different from the U.S.SR. The latter was rigid and bureaucratic, which made their actions fairly easy to predict. We knew exactly what their military capabilities were and that their leadership did not want to go to war. In addition, by the 1950s, the Soviet Union was pretty much a non-ideological enemy. Iran, on the other hand, is unpredictable, fanatical and religiously motivated. Deterrence worked on the Soviet Union, but it will not work against Iran. We need in effect to set aside not only most but all of the mind-set that we had during the Cold War about how to deal with a country like the Soviet Union.

Iran’s leadership is committed to an extremely aggressive, totalitarian worldview. Ahmadinejad has stated publicly that a world without America and Israel is possible and can be achieved. Ahmadinejad’s chief of strategy, Hassan Abbassi, has similarly explicitly indicated his wish to destroy Anglo-Saxon civilization. This is not the stodgy old Soviet Union we are dealing with; this is al-Qaeda as a state.

Military options should not be used unless they are for the purpose of preventing Iran from obtaining or developing a nuclear weapon. But if military action is the only remaining option, the Greek axiom that “if you strike at the king, you must kill him,” must be applied. All of the elements of state power in Iran, including its intelligence apparatus, must be completely destroyed.

Prior to the use of military force, however, a couple of things can be attempted. The U.S. must engage in targeted sanctions against Iran’s investments and imports. Ahmadinejad must be named as an accused before a specially convened international tribunal for his violation of the Genocide Convention (public advocacy of genocide is a violation). The U.S. government should also consider tailoring sanctions against Iran to areas with the greatest impact, including an embargo on the Iranian importation of refined petroleum products. The U.S. also needs to work with European allies in order to have them disengage economically from Iran. While this has not been successful in the past, the latest developments in Iranian behavior have increased the urgency of doing so.

The Military Option

IDF Representative

Name withheld for security reasons

Before analyzing the military option, it is necessary to talk about timetables. Here, the United States and Israel have some differences of opinion. For the U.S., the yardstick is how long it will take Iran to acquire enough fissile material for one nuclear device. Since the official assessment puts that point at five to ten years away, there is the perception that the United States still has time to deal with the problem. Israel, on the other hand, believes that once the Iranians overcome the technical difficulties they are currently facing, they could go underground, copy the enrichment capabilities in numerous other sites and operate a fully parallel clandestine program that would be much harder to uproot and destroy. Therefore, according to Israel, the critical time frame to try and stop the Iranians is within the coming year or so.

Does a viable military option exist? From an Israeli point of view, the only viable military option would be a one-time surgical air strike against Iranian nuclear sites. Israel has both the air capabilities and the munitions to carry out this kind of operation. It would not be without considerations and complications, however. Mid-air refueling would be necessary for all of the planes involved due to the geographic distance between Israel and Iran. Also of major concern would be the political implications of flying over states like Jordan, Turkey and Iraq. Another problem is that, unlike the Osirak reactor strikes in 1981, there are many targets, and some are deeply buried. One can assume, therefore, that Israeli strikes will not absolutely destroy the Iranian nuclear program. Rather, they would simply buy more time and make Iran’s ability to reacquire certain components much more difficult. The issue of a violent Iranian response also complicates the decision to strike. Iran will likely respond against Israel with terrorist attacks, and may also choose to involve American targets.

These problems do not make the military option impossible, only risky and complicated. The military option, therefore, should not be taken off the table. If Iran thinks this option has been eliminated, it will only serve to embolden their defiance.

Lieutenant General Earl Hailston, U.S.MC (ret.)

Former Commander, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Central Command

When it comes to military options against Iran, the United States has a long list of potential actions. From smart weapons and intelligence to special operations forces, the U.S. has the finest fighting force in the world. However, there is a great deal more to war than conventional forces. Iran is quite different from Iraq, both in terms of its size and in its terrain. Its population is four times that of Iraq. There are also accessibility problems; it may be politically difficult to access Iran from one of the bordering countries. Also, the coastline is very shallow, and it would be difficult to bring forces ashore. Overall, reaching Tehran would be much more challenging than reaching Baghdad.

There is also the question of defining the military’s exact mission. In what state do we want to leave their nuclear program? Can we find everything that must be targeted? Many of the nuclear sites in Iran are deeply buried, and we will not destroy or incapacitate all of them with precision strikes. Are we looking to change the regime? And if so, what are some of the unintended consequences that may present themselves? You are not going to do it without boots on the ground. Yet with boots come the related, unintended consequences of an occupation force. We also have other global commitments to think about. The U.S. cannot abandon its missions in other countries and fronts. Another unknown is the commitment of our allies in this potential war. Are we going into this alone or with support from other countries? Concerns about U.S. national will and funding for this mission also arise. If we hope to succeed militarily, these are all questions that must be answered well before we take action.