Unthinkable (2 page)

My foremost consideration in writing this book has been to try to be as transparent as I can. I have tried to make the best arguments for all the different policy options that the United States might pursue toward Iran, even those with which I disagree. I have also tried to be honest about the drawbacks associated with the policies that I prefer. If you end up agreeing with me, great; but you should only do so in the full knowledge that the course of action I favor carries significant risks and costs, too, if only because they all do. Similarly, if you end up disagreeing with me and preferring a different policy option toward Iran, that's good, too. My hope is only that this book will have helped you to figure out which strategy you prefer and why, and to be ready to accept the costs and risks (and uncertainties) involved in whichever option you prefer.

In the past, my views on various issues have been misrepresented. I tried to write a balanced, nuanced book about Iraq in 2002 only to find it caricatured by people who read nothing but the subtitle—or cherry-picked lines from it. There is only so much I can do to prevent that happening to this book as well, but I am going to do what I can to make it harder this time around. And I want to start by presenting, up front, the basic argument of this book.

So here is a summary of my view:

I believe that U.S. policy toward Iran moving forward should begin by trying a revamped version of the carrot-and-stick strategy Washington has employed at least since 2009 (and arguably since 2006). In particular, we need to lay out more attractive benefits to Iran if it is willing to make meaningful concessions on its nuclear program and other problematic activities. Simultaneously, and as one of the “sticks” to convince Tehran to compromise, the United States should explore how we might better support
indigenous Iranian opposition groups seeking to reform or even overthrow the Islamic Republic. I see this latter option as morally right, strategically sensible, and a potentially useful adjunct to a carrot-and stick approach of diplomacy and sanctions. I believe that an Israeli strike on Iran would serve no good purpose and might be disastrous for the United States, Israel, and our other allies. If the carrot-and-stick approach fails and regime change proves impractical, I prefer to see the United States opt for containment of Iran rather than war. I do not see the military option as stupid or reckless, and there are strong arguments in its favor. There are also circumstances in which it could be the best course of action. However, on the whole, I believe that the costs and risks of containment are more acceptable than the costs and risks of starting down the path of war with Iran. I do not believe that the containment of Iran, including potentially a nuclear Iran, will be easy or painless, just preferable to the alternative. Finally, containment does not mean appeasement, or even acceptance, of a nuclear Iran. Containment can take many shapes, some confrontational, some far more passive, and one of the keys to making containment work will be determining how assertive or reserved to be at any time.

The rest of the book will flesh out this perspective while providing the background to the crisis and the key aspects of the different policy options available toward Iran. It is not a history of Iran or of the American relationship with Iran, although I will try to provide all the pertinent history related to the different issues relevant to Iran, its nuclear program, and the wider U.S.-Iranian confrontation.
¹

The book has three parts. Part I addresses the “problems” of Iran. It looks at Iranian goals, personalities, decision-making, and policies, as best we understand them. In particular, I try to highlight what we don't know and the competing explanations for what we do know. It also provides an overview of the Iranian nuclear program. The first part then goes on to discuss the different threats that a nuclear Iran could create
for American interests. Taken together, this information should serve as a foundation on which to build a new American policy toward Iran.

Part II looks at the different policy options we might still try to employ to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. It starts by discussing the trade-offs involved in these policies and then provides a summary of the progress of the Obama administration's policy so far. It moves on to look at four potential paths forward: revamping the current Dual Track (or carrot-and-stick) strategy, pursuing a form of “regime change” by aiding Iranian opposition groups, allowing Israel to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, or exercising the military option ourselves.

Part III explores containment in much greater depth. It surveys what different versions of containment could look like, what it would require to make them work, and under what circumstances the United States might opt for more or less aggressive versions of containment. It spends as much time on the question of “how to contain” as on “whether” the United States should do so. The strongest argument for war is that containment is impossible, or at least unlikely to work, and therefore choosing between them requires looking much harder at the question of whether containment can work.

I end by laying out how I weigh the different trade-offs, pros and cons, and how I arrive at my conclusion that, left with no other alternative but war, I believe containment of Iran to be the better choice. I do so in the firm belief that, given the many problems that beset either course of action, what matters most today is less what path we as a nation decide to take and far more having an honest, open process to reach that decision. Whatever we conclude, we need to be clear about the price we will pay, the risks we will run, and what it will take to make it work.

In 1962, the Cold War nuclear strategist Herman Kahn wrote a famous book called
Thinking About the Unthinkable
.
²
At that time, what was “unthinkable” was the idea of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Kahn's warning was that we had to think about that “unthinkable” event, because not to do so would leave us unprepared if it ever occurred and so might make it more likely. Today, as we face the
challenge of Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, I fear that our choices are being narrowed to just two: going to war to prevent Iran from acquiring such a capability, or else learning to live with it. Watching our current public debate over Iran policy, I am struck by how many of our leaders, thinkers, and opinion-makers have deemed both of these ultimate alternatives inconceivable, unimaginable, impossible—unthinkable. Yet, it seems ever more likely that we will have to choose between them. When we do, we are going to wish that we had thought a great deal about them and decided which was the least bad, even though they may both be unthinkable.

I
n many ways, the crisis with Iran begins with the Iranian regime itself. All of the questions about Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability are bound up with the regime. Why does Tehran want a nuclear capability? Why do Americans (and Israelis, and Saudis, and Turks, and others) fear how Iran would behave once it acquired such a capability—and should they? Can we deter Iran's regime from behaving in an aggressive manner if it were to acquire such a capability? Or must we go to war to prevent it from gaining that capability because we don't believe that we can live with it? In every case, a critical element of the answer lies in understanding the motives and inner workings of the Iranian leadership.

The Iranian regime is often a mystery. If Iran were ruled by a different government, one that we understood better, the answers to those questions would be easier. If it were ruled by a less paranoid, less antagonistic government, we would not be asking these questions at all. But Iran is ruled by the same theocracy that emerged as the victor of Iran's revolution in 1979. That's not to say that the regime has not changed since then.
It has, and in some very important ways. But it has retained many of its most important features—its fears, its pathologies, its ideology, its belligerent insecurity, and its impenetrability.

So all of the questions persist, and we have to try to find answers to them to inform our decision,
whatever
that decision may be, and
uncertain
though it will be. That requires trying, as best we can, to understand the Iranian regime as the starting point for answering the many questions that should help us devise a policy toward Iran.

It's actually not hard to be an expert on Iran. You only need to know two phrases: “I don't know” and “it depends.” For better or worse (mostly worse), those are the answers to most of the questions you will ever be asked about Iran.

It's not just that the Iranians work diligently to prevent outsiders from understanding what is going on in their government, it is also that it is difficult, if not impossible, to know what is going on at the highest levels of Iranian decision-making in real time. Outsiders often fail to understand what decision Tehran made—let alone why the Iranians made that choice—until well after the fact, if ever. This is particularly noteworthy given how fascinated many Iranians are by their own politics, and how much they write about their political affairs.

The fog starts with Iran's culture. In the eloquent and revealing words of Hooman Majd, “No book, article, or essay . . . can ever completely unravel the mystery of Iran for a reader, or fully explain either the country or its people to his or her satisfaction.”
¹
Iranian society tends to be secretive by nature. Much has been made of the principally Shi'i practice of dissimulation known as
taqiyyah,
which forgives—some would say encourages—believers to mislead others about one's faith and other important information.
²
Iranians are more than 90 percent Shi'a, and Iranians and outside observers alike comment on how the practice of taqiyyah has spread to other aspects of Iranian life, particularly the secrecy of the
clerical regime. One of the wisest scholars of Iranian politics and strategy, Shahram Chubin, adds that Iran suffers from “a national narcissism that makes it ignorant, insensitive, or dismissive of others' concerns.”
³

The endemic factionalism of the Iranian system promotes further obscurity as groups attempt to hide their views, their alliances, and their actions from others. Anthropologists have long suggested that mountainous terrain, such as that which dominates Iran's populated areas, tends to breed cultural heterogeneity and individualism, which in turn often produces the kind of factionalism predominant in Iran—and other mountain-dwelling communities from Afghanistan to Lebanon to Switzerland to Appalachia.
⁴
The great Iranian scholar R. K. Ramazani once famously called the politics of the Islamic Republic “kaleidoscopic” in the sense that the Iranian political scene was divided up into thousands of tiny factions (often just individuals), and every time the matter at hand changed, all of those groups lined up differently.
⁵
Iran's political mosaic is constantly changing, often in unpredictable ways. Because alliances tend to be ephemeral it is hard for Iranian politicians to sustain big coalitions that can engineer large-scale changes in Iranian policy over time, predisposing the Iranian system to an unhelpful inertia. As many Iranians complain, it is hard to get the Iranian regime to do something it is not already doing, or to get it to stop or change something that it is already doing. Moreover, Iranian political leaders will often hold different beliefs that outsiders see as incompatible (such as a commitment to acquiring nuclear weapons
and
a willingness to repair relations with the West). Depending on the issue, leaders can line up in ways that seem incomprehensible to outsiders.
⁶

Beyond the effects of Persian culture, the cloak over Iranian decision-making is spun from a political system that is Byzantine, fragmented, and counterintuitive. More than thirty years after the Iranian Revolution, the Iranian government is a hodgepodge, sporting numerous entities with overlapping and seemingly redundant functions. Iran has institutions that serve purposes only the Iranians seem to understand, with mandates so vague they could be all powerful or utterly powerless. In many cases, several governmental organizations will be responsible for a task, and in
other cases, no one is. It has an “Assembly of Experts” that chooses the Supreme Leader, and ostensibly meets every six months to monitor his performance, although it does not seem to do either in practice. It has a “Council of Guardians” that vets candidates for government offices and can nullify legislation for being un-Islamic or unconstitutional—which is not a power entrusted to the judiciary. It also has an “Expediency Discernment Council,” created to mediate disputes between Iran's parliament (the Majles) and the Council of Guardians, although it seems to do little of that and mostly just advises the Supreme Leader on subjects unknown.