Unthinkable (50 page)

There are several other improvements to our military capabilities that we ought to implement to enhance our ability to resolve nuclear crises with Iran peacefully and in our favor. First, it will be critical to continue to develop and deploy ballistic missile defenses in the Middle East to try to ensure that any Iranian missile attack—whether degraded by an American first strike or not—would have a reasonable prospect of being stopped by these defenses. Second, while the United States possesses a conventional arsenal of unmatched capabilities, those capabilities need to continue to improve to ensure that we have a wide range of options against Iran, and so that the Iranians must fear that we could mount disarming, or devastatingly punishing operations without even resorting to our nuclear arsenal. In an insightful piece on dealing with a nuclear Iran, former NSC director Kori Schake proposed that rather than threatening Iran with nuclear obliteration, the United States should threaten to target their leadership as we did to Iraq in 1991 and as we have done to al-Qa'ida and its various affiliates since 9/11.
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Such a strategy could be terrifying to Iran's leaders, and it represents the kind of options that the United States should be developing to maximize our leverage over even a nuclear Iran. As part of this, the
United States needs to continue to build massive intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that we could deploy against Iran to give us an accurate intelligence picture in short order.

The more sophisticated our conventional and nuclear forces, the more usable they are, the longer we will be able to target Iran's nuclear forces with a reasonable expectation that we could do tremendous damage to them and they would probably do little to us. And what must be borne in mind is that what matters is the
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calculus, not our own. What made the Soviets more pliable during the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s was that they believed we had escalation dominance and that we might use it. The fact that we had no intention of using it and did not even consider doing so was irrelevant. As always, what matters in deterrence is the calculations of the deterred.

The second injunction that the history indicates is the importance of the United States inserting itself into any nuclear crisis involving Iran. Again, this logic seems counterintuitive, especially from the perspective of the Cold War, a key lesson of which seemed to be that a country should try to avoid nuclear crises whenever possible. But one reason for such involvement is that it has historically proven useful to have an influential third party intercede to defuse a crisis, especially a nuclear crisis. For instance, a key element in defusing the nuclear crisis between India and Pakistan arising from the Kargil War of 1999 was the intervention of external parties, particularly the United States.
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The more important point here is that a nuclear crisis between a nuclear Saudi Arabia or Israel or Turkey and a nuclear Iran is likely to be far more dangerous than a nuclear crisis between the United States and a nuclear Iran, at least until Iran develops the capacity to hit the U.S. homeland with nuclear weapons and probably even after that point. With the Saudis, Israelis, or Turks, there might well be use-it-or-lose-it pressures. With the United States, there is no such dynamic; there is only escalation dominance—especially if the United States does continue to modernize its nuclear arsenal, deploys ballistic missile defenses, and keeps improving its conventional attack capabilities.

The different dynamics of a U.S.-Iranian nuclear balance—different both from the later U.S.-Soviet balance and from a hypothetical Iran-Israel/Saudi/Turkey nuclear balance—reverse the logic that emerged as gospel from the late Cold War. It might be helpful to think about it this way: we may not be willing to risk the destruction of Tel Aviv or the Saudi oil fields to an Iranian nuclear strike, but the Iranians would have to worry that we would. The evidence suggests that they would and that their decisions would be affected by that fear. Because Iran will not be able to effectively target our cities but we can threaten theirs, Tehran has to calculate that it has far more to lose than we do in a U.S.-Iranian nuclear exchange. Consequently, the best thing that the United States could do both to keep the peace and protect its allies would be to immediately insert itself into any nuclear crisis with the Iranians, “taking over” for any of our regional allies, because doing so would actually be the best way to ensure that the crisis does not escalate and ends with Iran securing the fewest gains.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS.
As Paul Bracken explains, “The first nuclear crisis could take on transcendent importance for the same reason the 1948 Berlin crisis did in the first nuclear age. Norms of what is and is not permissible without causing major escalation will be determined. The first crisis could set a pattern for a long time to come.”
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Indeed, one of the most important and dangerous aspects of nuclear deterrence is the learning curve. States new to nuclear dynamics make mistakes that states with more experience do not, which is why the early Cold War was more dangerous and pockmarked with nuclear crises than the later Cold War. The more that the United States and USSR learned about nuclear dynamics and each other, and the more that we worked out rules for how to conduct ourselves, the fewer problems we had.
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It is possible that Israel, or Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or Turkey would handle the first crisis or crises with a nuclear Iran well and not only avoid both war and surrender, but do so in ways that establish a modus vivendi that would minimize further crises and diminish the risk of escalation.
But given the wisdom that the United States garnered from our experiences with the Soviet Union, it could only be better for all involved if Washington took a leading role, both in defusing the crisis at hand and using it to help the two sides establish a code of conduct that would ameliorate their tensions moving forward.

RED LINES.
During the intellectual madness of the Cold War, the simple concept of drawing “lines in the sand” became translated into the notion of “red lines.” A red line is simply one country telling a rival not to take a particular action because doing so would mean war. Establishing red lines with a nuclear Iran is a critical element of crisis management. Red lines can help prevent a crisis by making clear to Iran what actions it might take that would provoke one, in hope that the Iranians would not take that action. And, of course, it would be important for the Iranians to clarify their own red lines, as it would for Iran's various regional rivals to do the same. It is not that bright red lines will prevent all problems, but they can help eliminate misperceptions and miscalculations that can produce unintended crises.
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Immediately before the North Korean attack on the South in 1950, Secretary of State Acheson famously defined America's defense perimeter in the Pacific as excluding Korea, which may have led the Soviets to believe that an attack on South Korea would not cross America's red line.
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However, when the North attacked, Washington decided that South Korea was a vital interest and so we joined the Korean War on their behalf. A better defined red line might have precluded that conflict altogether.

Thus the purpose of laying down red lines to Iran is to make clear to Tehran what actions on its part would trigger an American military response, conventional or nuclear. It is not just that our Cold War experiences demonstrated that clear red lines are indispensable; it is also that any discussion of red lines forces a discussion of other issues related to American goals, priorities, and capabilities that would be equally useful, even essential. When confronting a nuclear-armed adversary, the United
States should only threaten the use of force when we mean it. Thus defining red lines can provoke a useful debate about America's true interests in an issue.

In the past, Washington assumed that Iran recognized that any Iranian attack on the U.S. homeland—including by terrorism—would trigger an American response, including the potential use of force, and possibly on a massive scale depending on the nature of the Iranian attack. The Arbabsiar case calls into question the sanctity of that red line. Tehran may be under the impression that this is no longer a red line, or that what constitutes “crossing” it has changed. Regardless of what policy the United States adopts toward Iran in the future, right now the Obama administration needs to demarcate this red line clearly.

Perhaps the most obvious red line the United States should lay down is that any Iranian use of conventional or nuclear force beyond its own borders will be met by whatever means the United States requires to defeat it. The United States cannot allow Iran to employ force or the threat of force against its neighbors, and Tehran needs to understand that Washington will prevent it from doing so using all means at our disposal, potentially including nuclear weapons.

A second issue that would require the articulation of a red line is the possibility of Iranian transfer of nuclear material or nuclear weapons to a third party, particularly one of the many terrorist groups Tehran supports. Such a transfer would be unlikely because the red line is implicit, but the lesson of history is to never assume.

Another important threat that the United States and its allies may face from a nuclear Iran is that Tehran may believe that its nuclear shield will protect it from
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retaliation by the United States (both conventional and nuclear) as long as it does not cross the red lines related to its use of force or transfer of nuclear material. This may create the impression in Iranian minds that the unconventional realm—subversion, non-nuclear terrorism, insurgencies, and the like—are all fair game. Tehran might calculate that the United States would never respond with nuclear weapons for a non-nuclear terrorist attack or insurgency. The Iranians might further
assume that the United States would not even retaliate with conventional forces because of the risk of escalation to a nuclear exchange, and that therefore they could be more aggressive in employing asymmetric forms of warfare. To deter or at least diminish Iran's pursuit of unconventional wars against the United States and its allies, Washington might want to convey to Tehran that asymmetric warfare on its part will be met by disproportionate asymmetric responses on our part—by supporting insurgent and separatist groups inside Iran, undermining Iran's currency, or mounting relentless cyberattacks against Tehran.

Will these red lines work? It is hard to know for certain, but the evidence suggests reasons for optimism.
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Since 1979, but especially since Khomeini's death in 1989, the Iranians have avoided American, Israeli, Turkish, and even most Saudi red lines, as best Tehran understood them. The occasions when Iran appears to have crossed them stand out because they were the exceptions to the rule. The most salient examples of Iran crossing American red lines—the Arbabsiar plot and the seizure of British sailors and marines in the Shatt al-Arab—are better explained not as instances in which Iran crossed American red lines, but as one instance when Iran may have believed that the red line lay elsewhere and another where a lower-level official freelanced. Again, these incidents are troubling in their own right, but they seem more likely to constitute exceptions proving the rule than disproving it.

There is still one more problem with red lines: they have to be “mutually” agreeable. The United States could announce that one of its red lines is that Iran can no longer support any terrorist groups. The Iranians might simply say, “No.” The United States would then have to decide whether to try to enforce the red line by going to war with Iran when it continued to support various terrorist groups. Having refrained from going to war with Iran over its support for terrorism in the past, including during periods when Iran was far more involved in attacks on Americans (during our interventions in Lebanon in the 1980s and Iraq in the 2000s, for instance), the U.S. government is not likely to consider, or the American people to support, a war with Iran today absent an egregious
Iranian provocation. This aspect of red lines has prompted Tom Pickering, perhaps the most accomplished American diplomat of his generation, to observe that many red lines often prove to be “pink lines” in practice.

What is important to take from this is that U.S. red lines need to be enforceable. Iran needs to believe that we can enforce them. And from time to time the Iranians may test them, including by lower-level commanders freelancing. If we fail to enforce those red lines, they are going to blur or disappear altogether. Whenever those red lines are tested, we are going to have to decide whether to push back, recognizing that to do so could mean triggering a crisis that could escalate to war, but that not to do so would weaken the red line, either ceding the matter to the Iranians or creating exactly the kind of ambiguity that can produce crises from misperception—the avoidance of which is the point of establishing firm, clear red lines. With a country as problematic as Iran, red lines can help, but they are not a perfect solution to the problems. Nothing ever is, and the persistence of these problems, to whatever extent, constitutes part of the unavoidable risks and costs of containing a nuclear Iran.

THIRD-PARTY RED LINES.
Because of Israel's own capability to do enormous damage to Iran, Jerusalem will need to put forth red lines of its own. Although they lack the capability to do real damage to Iran, both because they might acquire that capability in the future and because of their potential ability to call on the United States for nuclear and conventional military backing, the Gulf states may want to do the same.

The most obvious red line Israel is likely to lay down for Iran is that any direct use of force by Iran against Israel would trigger a military response by Israel. Because the Israeli leadership believes that deterrence is best reinforced by responding with disproportionate force, they likely would convey to Iran that any direct attack on Israel or its citizens will be met by a much stronger Israeli response.