Unthinkable (47 page)

T
he problems inherent in containment, and particularly containment of a nuclear Iran, fall into six broad categories, representing critical factors that will change once Iran crosses the nuclear threshold—factors that the United States would have to deal with to make containment work. These are:

• 
Increased Iranian support for terrorists, insurgents, militias, and other groups attempting to subvert U.S. allies in the region.
The real threat from a nuclear Iran is not that it would launch nuclear weapons or give them to terrorists, but that it would see its nuclear shield as allowing it to pursue its traditional, anti–status quo foreign policy in an even more aggressive fashion.

• 
Crisis management.
Because Iran is unlikely to become restrained in its goals or behavior after it crosses the nuclear threshold, there will be crises—with Israel, with Saudi Arabia and other regional states, and quite possibly with the United States. Crises between nuclear powers
are far more dangerous and complex. The greatest risk of Iran's acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability is the potential for a crisis to get out of hand.

• 
Perceptions of American reliability, especially as it pertains to the threats of nuclear blackmail and co-optation.
Given how much the United States has invested in preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, if Tehran does so, it will affect many people's thinking about America's commitment to the region and Iran's new power. Some states in the region may fear that Iran will act against them and the United States will not prevent it. Some may even try to preempt this scenario by accommodating Iranian demands in ways that they otherwise would not.

• 
Proliferation.
Other countries will become even more determined to resist Iranian power and pressure, and some may choose to acquire nuclear arsenals of their own to do so.

• 
The cost of containment.
If the United States is to address the other four issues listed above, it will require time, energy, and other resources to do so.

• 
The long term.
The possession of nuclear weapons isn't necessarily forever, but it can last a long time. If Iran crosses the nuclear threshold, containment needs to work not just for the next three or five years, but until there is real regime change in Tehran. Succession may bring to power worse leaders than Khamene'i and the regime might end in chaos, running the risk that Iran's nuclear capabilities could fall into the wrong hands.

All of these represent real issues, albeit of varying magnitude, that a containment regime would have to address. As with air strikes and every other policy option, the question will remain whether the costs and risks of containment are more bearable than those of the other options.

As difficult as containing a nuclear Iran will be, there are also reasons for optimism. Containing a nuclear Iran will be several orders of magnitude less challenging than containing the former Soviet Union, something the United States accomplished for forty-five years. Iran has only a fraction of the size, populace, and resources of the USSR. It is unlikely that its nuclear forces would ever compare to the tens of thousands of sophisticated nuclear weapons mounted on Russian land- and submarine-based ballistic and cruise missiles, bombers, artillery shells, torpedoes, and rockets. Iran's scientific base is nothing to scoff at, but it cannot rival the innovative capacity of the former Soviet Union's massive technological complex.

One of the most important ways that a nuclear Iran would differ from the Soviet threat is in the realm of conventional military power. Throughout the Cold War, Soviet ground forces and Frontal Aviation represented the most powerful conventional force on the Eurasian landmass. This conventional might gave Moscow enormous capacity to project power beyond the Iron Curtain. For most of the post–World War II era, NATO worried that its conventional forces would be unable to hold back a Soviet assault for more than a week or two before the Red Army overran most of Western Europe or NATO was forced to resort to nuclear weapons to stop it.

This threat gave rise to one of the worst dilemmas of the Cold War, the core problem of American extended deterrence in Europe. Since NATO's conventional air-ground strength was likely to prove insufficient to defend Western Europe against a Soviet invasion, the United States had to be willing to employ nuclear weapons to halt it, but once nuclear weapons were introduced into an all-out war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, it would have been very difficult to control escalation. During the Cold War, this dilemma was often framed as whether the U.S. government would be willing to “trade Boston for Bonn.” Was the U.S. government willing to risk the obliteration of American cities to prevent the conquest of West European cities? This question posed a huge problem
because it was irrational for any American president to do so. As a result, the United States and NATO resorted to all kinds of convoluted and even dangerous steps to try to convince the Soviets either that we would do so even though it was irrational, or that we would not be able to avoid doing so. President Nixon acted in ways that he hoped would make the Soviets believe he was an unpredictable “madman” who might do something just that irrational. Other presidents deployed tactical nuclear weapons to various NATO countries under weak security conditions so that the Russians would have to calculate that in the event of a war, the countries themselves would be able to get access to the weapons and fire them in their own defense—a rational decision for
them
to make.

Today, some who favor air strikes against Iran's nuclear program have argued the United States would face the same problem with a nuclear Iran—and that it would be worse this time around. They argue that if it was hard to convince the Soviets that the United States would be willing to risk the destruction of American cities to save the cities of Europe, it would be almost impossible to convince the Iranians that the United States would risk American cities to defend those of the Arab oil emirates for whom Americans feel little love and often outright animosity.
¹

Although this would seem to be a compelling problem at first glance, in actuality it is not an issue at all. The problem during the Cold War was the inability of NATO conventional forces to prevent the Red Army from conquering Western Europe. No one believed that the Russians intended to just nuke Bonn. We feared that they wanted to conquer it and had the ability to do so. The extended deterrence dilemma had nothing to do with Soviet nuclear strikes against European cities. It was about whether the United States would countenance escalation to nuclear strikes to prevent conventional conquest.

At present and as far out into the future as we can discern, this problem does not apply to Iran. Iran's conventional forces are not hapless, but they cannot be compared to those of the Cold War USSR, let alone the present-day U.S. Armed Forces. Iran has an extremely limited ability to project power beyond its borders. If pitted against its regional rivals,
Iran could probably mount some punishing ground incursions into Iraq, it might be able to seize and hold chunks of Iraqi or Afghan territory, it could probably cut traffic through the Strait of Hormuz for some period of time, and it would have some ability to mount small amphibious incursions across the Persian Gulf—possibly even seizing Bahrain if it had the advantage of strategic surprise. But that represents the upper limit of Iran's power projection capabilities, and even that is an artificial assessment since it leaves out American military forces. When American military forces are added to the equation—and it need only be those forces that the United States maintains in the region on a routine basis—Iran's ability to threaten its neighbors, particularly the Persian Gulf states, evaporates.

American air and naval power
already in the Gulf
so dwarfs Iran's capabilities that it is not credible to argue that Iran could threaten any of the cities of the GCC countries with conventional conquest. There is zero reason to believe that the United States would have to face the dilemma of whether to trade Dallas for Doha or Dubayy. Iran has no capacity to threaten to conquer Doha or Dubayy—or Manama or Dhahran—as long as the U.S. Navy and Air Force remain in the Gulf at or near present force levels. The situation is the reverse of that which created the dilemma of extended deterrence during the Cold War. The dilemma would be Tehran's to ask whether it would be willing to risk losing Esfahan to prevent the United States or Israel from clearing Hizballah out of its strongholds in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, should either ever decide to do so.

If conventional attack is not a problem with a nuclear Iran, there are other issues. The most obvious among them is the threat that so many fear: the threat that a nuclear Iran will believe that no other power—including the United States—would dare retaliate against it, and so it would increase its support to terrorists, insurgents, militias, would-be revolutionaries, and
other subversive elements throughout the Middle East and South and Central Asia. This is the real threat both now and in the future, if Tehran acquires a nuclear arsenal. Indeed, in the latter case, it could be a much greater threat.
²
In a sobering essay on the problems of containment, Eric Edelman, Andrew Krepinevich, and Evan Braden Montgomery warned, “The Iranian actions that are easiest to deter, namely, a deliberate conventional or nuclear attack, are the least likely forms of Iranian aggression, whereas Iran's most likely form of aggression, in particular support for terrorism and subversion, are the most difficult to deter.”
³

It would not be the first time that nuclear powers have supported subversive efforts. Throughout the Cold War, the United States tried a variety of methods to convince the people of Eastern Europe to rise up against their Soviet masters. Washington also supported a range of insurgencies against the Soviets and their allies, from the Nicaraguan Contras to the Afghan mujahideen. Likewise, the Soviets supported communist movements across the Western and Third Worlds, funneled money to peace activists and antinuclear groups, and aided insurgents and terrorists from the Viet Cong to the Palestine Liberation Organization. Yet no one ever threatened nuclear war over any of these efforts because it was patently absurd to imagine risking nuclear devastation over covert campaigns that did not threaten the grip of either government and mostly harmed their allies and proxies.

Then there is India and Pakistan. Unlike either the Soviets or the Americans, the Pakistanis support terrorists and insurgents who have caused significant damage to the Indian people and the Indian government and are trying to wrest disputed territory away from Indian control. The result has been dangerous crises in 1999, 2001–2002, and 2008, where the threat of escalation to nuclear war was very much on the table and in the air.
⁴
The difference, of course, was that Pakistan's subversive terrorist activities were seen as posing a threat to India itself, whereas during the Cold War, neither the USSR nor the United States was able to do so—until arguably, the Soviet collapse, although in that case, American involvement was tenuous and indirect.

The Cold War does not always furnish perfect lessons for understanding an Iran with nuclear weapons. Actions that did not threaten to escalate when inflicted by Soviets and Americans on one another may do just that when it is Iran and Israel or Iran and Saudi Arabia. Taken together, these examples suggest that if Saudi Arabia were to acquire nuclear weapons to match an Iranian arsenal, the Saudis might act with greater restraint if Iran attempted to destabilize Bahrain by stirring up its Shi'a population than it would if Iran tried to stir up the Shi'a of the Kingdom's own Eastern Province. Riyadh might see the latter as a threat to the stability or territorial integrity of Saudi Arabia, no less dangerous than an Iranian invasion of Dhahran, and the Saudis might react as if it were.

Even if Iranian efforts to subvert and attack American allies in the region do not produce nuclear crises, these efforts alone would still represent a threat to American interests and the interests of our allies, although the extent of the threat would vary. The Middle East is already dangerous and unstable, and Iran already adds too much to these problems even if it is rarely the main culprit. If Tehran were emboldened to undermine Middle Eastern governments, aid violent extremist groups, and otherwise stoke the endemic mayhem of the region, it would only make a bad situation worse. Some regional governments might be pushed to the breaking point or beyond, provoking new revolutions, civil wars, failed states, and insurgencies. Looking around at the situation of Syria, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, and others, we should not want their circumstances to get any worse, nor should we want to see Jordan, Morocco, let alone Saudi Arabia or the UAE, experience similar levels of conflict and instability. Consequently, while an Iranian nuclear capability would not necessarily enhance Iran's ability to subvert regional governments and aid violent extremists directly, a nuclear Iran may increase its support for these kinds of activities. And such increased support could produce nuclear crises with the United States or other nuclear rivals.