Foreign Policy In Focus

I'm one of those progressives who concedes that sometimes conservatives get the facts on the ground straight. (Their conclusions, almost never.) At the Tablet, Lee Smith of that redoubt of conservatism, the Weekly Standard, writes:

Amid all the different theories concerning the Iran plot … it is perhaps most useful to look at this recent effort as the final test Iran will face before it gets a nuclear weapon. [Emphasis added.]

At first I wasn't sure exactly what point Smith was trying to make. After reading the paragraph over a couple of times, I realized that what he meant by what's italicized is: "the final test that the United States will face before it likely fails to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapons." I hadn't seen that sentiment expressed before. Smith continues:

Seen this way, it is clear that the White House wouldn’t want to highlight Israel’s spot in Iran’s crosshairs, because no matter how many times President Barack Obama tells Israeli officials and Jewish audiences that an Iranian nuclear bomb would be unacceptable, his administration’s real policy position has just been exposed.

Said policy, which involves just calling

… for more sanctions against Tehran in response to an operation intended to slaughter hundreds of American allies [as well as Americans] makes it clear to everyone, especially the Iranians, that Washington isn’t going to do anything serious about stopping Iran’s nuclear-weapons program.

Why isn't it? Here, Smith's opinion is nothing you haven't heard before.

The problem is that Obama’s White House, like George W. Bush’s, fears that taking too active a role against Iran and its assets will put U.S. military personnel at risk of Iranian retaliation in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He then arrives at another novel (to me, anyway) insight.

That means that American strategists … no longer consider the U.S. military a deterrent to Iranian actions; rather, the presence of American troops in theaters where the Iranians also operate has effectively deterred the United States from taking action against Tehran.

The irony Smith has unearthed is undeniable. He sticks the knife in and twists.

U.S. involvement in the Middle East and Washington’s policy of not confronting Iran about its openly aggressive behavior have created a situation in which our troops are now effectively being held hostage, a situation that Iran underlines with each new act of aggression and terror.

There's nothing for it then but for either the United States or Israel to attack Iran, right? If you're disposed to consider that an option, consider first a policy brief based on an article in the Summer 2011 issue of International Security. Author Malfrid Braut-Hegghammer points out one of the issues with a preemptive attack.

The legitimacy and consequences of the 1981 [Israeli attack on Iraq's Osirak reactor] remain in dispute. Advocates argue that it was a preemptive attack and therefore permitted under international law. Critics claim that, as a research reactor, Osirak did not constitute an acute proliferation risk. … Recent evidence confirms that [it] was intended not to produce plutonium for a weapons program, but rather to develop know-how … for large-scale production of plutonium.

As you can see, the first problem was confirming that the target represented more than a threat in the distant future. As for the second problem

Israel's attack triggered a far more focused and determined Iraqi effort to acquire nuclear weapons. When the program was interrupted by the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq stood on the threshold of acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.

Ms. Braut-Hegghammer proceeds to speculate about the conditions under which a state might respond to an attack by resolving to bring its nuclear-weapons program to fruition.

Generalizing about the effects of attacking nuclear infrastructure is a difficult task. … A plausible hypothesis, however, is that the distribution of probable outcomes resembles a bell curve. At one end, states with minimal nuclear infrastructure may present a smaller proliferation risk [after its nuclear facilities have been attacked] because of the increased costs of developing a nuclear weapons capability. In the middle section, attacks on states that are moving toward completion of the fuel cycle may produce more mixed outcomes. On the one hand, developing a domestic nuclear weapons capacity will be more costly following the destruction of key sites. [On the other] attacks, however, may create a domestic incentive to build a deterrent to avoid similar strikes in the future. … At the other end of the curve, attacks on states that have mastered the complete nuclear fuel cycle may increase the risk of proliferation.

As for states such as Iran

… which are capable of producing fissile material but seem to lack elite consensus to proceed with a nuclear weapons program, an attack could accelerate acquisition of a nuclear weapon.

Mark Hibbs, now of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is a nuclear-journalism legend: no one tracked the AQ Khan-nuclear black market with more tenacity and in more depth. At Arms Control Wonk, he writes, regarding the difficulty determining exactly who makes the decisions about Iran's nuclear program that it is far from

… clear who key personel [sic] in Iran–including Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a leading scientist–are taking orders from. And it would appear that difficulties experienced by the [International Atomic Energy Agency] in assigning personal responsibility or authority for directing nuclear activities in Iran involving military-affiliated personnel and organizations–in particular the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)–may be similar to problems the U.S. government is currently facing in trying to establish a watertight connection between suspects it says were planning to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, and higher-ups at the top of the Iranian government. [Emphasis added.]

The line we heard from the U.S. last week that there was a direct connection between the alleged perpetrators of the foiled assassination plot and Iran's top leadership has since been qualified by some U.S. officials who acknowledge that that relationship might not be so direct after all. In the IAEA's nuclear investigation, similar forensic problems have arisen over the last five or six years.

In other words, just as it's impossible to trace the assassination plot to the IRGC

… there's no slam-dunk record on file showing that someone at the top of the Iranian regime authorized scientists or procurement agents to go for broke and steer the nuclear program in the direction of nuclear weapons.

Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution is the author of the 2002 book The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, which he'll probably never live down. Weighing in on Iran's alleged attempt on the life of the Saudi ambassador to the United States yesterday at the Daily Beast, Pollack wrote:

… while this plot—a mass casualty attack on U.S. soil—would go well beyond what Iran has attempted in the past, it would represent an extrapolation of another pattern, namely the emergence of a more aggressive, risk-tolerant Iranian regime over the past two years.

Be that as it may, part of the case those who are skeptical of the plot's plausibility make is that Iran wouldn't dare because it would be concerned with retribution even more crippling than the "crippling" sanctions we've already imposed on it. Pollack's view is …

That the regime may no longer be concerned about a massive American conventional military retaliation. In the past, that fear has been an important restraint on Iranian action against the United States. Again, if true, this plot suggests that the Iranians may believe either that the United States is so consumed with its own internal problems and so determined to avoid another war in the Middle East that the American people would not countenance any action that might risk escalation with Iran. Alternatively, it may suggest that Iran believes its nuclear program is far enough along to deter conventional American military retaliation.

Hold on a minute -- a program that's at least a couple of years from producing nuclear weapons is capable of deterring an attack from another country, even if it's not via nuclear weapons? Granted that might be true if Iran had reached the point where it wasn't necessarily manufacturing nuclear weapons but was capable of building them (known as virtual deterrence).

But even Israel and the most rabid American hawks don't believe Iran has either built any nuclear weapons, nor is capable of it. It's gives Tehran little credit to infer that it was operating under the delusion that just the intention to develop nuclear weapons would deter an attack. Suggesting it only makes Pollack appear ignorant.

Because it appears on the websites of local Fox News stations, one instinctively takes an article titled Insider: Iran Will Be 'Next Chernobyl' with a grain of salt. But its plausibility is undeniable. See if you agree.

The first Iranian nuclear power station is inherently unsafe and will probably cause a "tragic disaster for humankind," according to a document apparently written by an Iranian whistleblower. There is a "great likelihood" that the Bushehr reactor could generate the next nuclear catastrophe after Chernobyl or Fukushima, says the document. … It claims that Bushehr, which began operating last month after 35 years of intermittent construction, was built by "second-class engineers" who bolted together Russian and German technologies from different eras; that it sits in one of the world's most seismically active areas but could not withstand a major earthquake; and that it has "no serious training program" for staff or a contingency plan for accidents. The document's authenticity cannot be confirmed, but nuclear experts see no reason to doubt it.

More about the Russian-German incompatibility:

"The Russian parts are designed to standards that are less stringent than the Germans' and they are being used out of context in a design where they are exposed to inappropriate stresses," the document says. It goes on to claim that "much of the necessary work for Bushehr is outside the competence of the Russian consulting engineers," who consider the project a "holiday."

What's ironic about this article is that Fox types no doubt view the shoddy-sounding state of Iran's nuclear-energy program as a force multiplier to add to Iran's alleged development of nuclear weapons. Operating in synergy, theoretically they should make the case for attacking Iran. To others though, Iran's possible nuclear-energy troubles eclipse the nuclear weapons threat. Thus is Iran reduced from malevolent to incompetent and not worth attacking. Given enough time, its nuclear program may well blow itself up. 

At Arms Control NOW, the Arms Control Association blog, Greg Theilman writes that since "we have every reason to believe that an Iranian bomb is neither imminent nor inevitable. … alarmist estimates provided earlier this month require a response regarding timelines."

Thielman quotes Mark Fitzpatrick, Director of Nonproliferation and Disarmament at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London to the effect that Iran "'won’t have [a nuclear weapon] tomorrow or next week or next month or a year from now.'  To predict otherwise, he added, 'borders on the irresponsible.'"

Among the "worst case assumptions" Thielman quotes Fitzpatrick as singling out are:

That Iran would be able to produce enough highly enriched uranium before the IAEA inspectors would catch onto it. … there's a built-in assumption that somehow Iran would be able to game the IAEA. It would be a big gamble.

… That Iran would be so foolish as to go for broke to produce just one weapon. … But what country in [its] right mind would just go for one weapon, take all of the risks of being bombed … They'd need a handful … the way North Korea did.

Thielman also cites David Albright (no friend to Iran), et al, at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), which "found no reason to change its earlier breakout estimate of six months at the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant. The ISIS analysis included a reminder that the U.S. Governments breakout projection is even longer (as is Fitzpatrick's)" because of the process the United States assumes Iran would use.

As for whether or not Iran would actually build nuclear weapons, Thielman reminds us:

As recently as February of this year, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper assessed that Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons. … The ultimate outcome is a question of Iranian political will, not technical capacity.

Whether six months or a year or more, the timeline divests those who believe the worst about Iran of little ammunition in their calls for an airstrike. Furthermore, it makes disarmament advocates look like they've jammed their heads in the sand, even if they're committed to the path Thielman prescribes:

With continued enforcement of targeted sanctions, a willingness to forego making military threats, and increased readiness to exploit opportunities for opening up a diplomatic pathway, there is ample time to solve the Iranian nuclear challenge.

Sanctions aside, paths two and three haven't necessarily been tried in earnest. But, if we disarmament advocates wish to salvage any credibility with the bomb-Iran crowed, we need to assume the worst too. Left as well as right needs to acknowledge that Iran seems content in its reluctance to disabuse the world of the notion that it might be close to developing nuclear weapons.

We disarmament advocates cling to the belief that disarmament leadership on the part of the United States might help dissuade Iran and other states that aspire to develop nuclear weapons from actually proliferating. (Though with the United States committing at least $80 billion -- subject to the cost-cutting whims of the Republicans these days -- over the next decade, true disarmament leadership on the part of the United States looks like a non-starter.) In fact, while demonstrating disarmament leadership has the advantage of being the only honest response, especially since it's called for by the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, conservatives may be correct in assuming that such initiatives would have little impact on states such as Iran.

On the other hand, it's conceivable that Israel owning up to its nuclear program and subjecting it to monitoring and verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency would have some impact on the proliferation plans of Iran. Of course, Israel is even less likely to take substantive disarmament measures than the United States. As the Nuclear Threat Initiative's Global Security Newswire reports:  

Any Middle Eastern nuclear weapon-free zone must be preceded by robust nonproliferation measures and an enduring absence of armed conflict from the area, Israel told the International Atomic Energy Agency General Conference on Tuesday. . . . The Israeli official faulted Syria and Iran over lingering international concerns that they might have pursued atomic activities with military implications. 

An "enduring absence of armed conflict from the area" more or less much guarantees that Israel won't be soon acknowledging its nuclear weapons program soon and thus helping to make of the Middle East a nuclear weapon-free zone.