Unthinkable (57 page)

Many of the dangerous scenarios that we all fear if Iran possesses a nuclear arsenal become a lot less hair-raising if Iran has only a potential
capability to field an arsenal. Imagine if Israel and Hizballah start going at it. Iran cannot step in and raise the specter of escalation to a nuclear exchange to force Israel to back down, because Iran would not have nuclear weapons. At most, Iran could threaten to break out of the NPT and deploy an arsenal at some point in the near future after the crisis had passed. This might be enough to get Israel to back down, but not because Israel would fear uncontrollable escalation. Nor is it reasonable to believe that the Israelis would fear that Iran would assemble a weapon months later and use it against them. There would no longer be a “heat of the moment” problem and cooler heads would have plenty of time to prevail. Ultimately, the only reason that Israel might choose to back down would be if it did not want Iran to weaponize. That kind of pressure might still not be great from Israel's perspective or our own, but it is vastly better than having actual nuclear crises.

Even if Iran had come to the decision that it wanted to go ahead and weaponize, and was now willing to endure whatever costs had brought it up short in the past, it would be difficult for Tehran to somehow use it as part of a crisis. The IAEA inspects Iran's facilities every six to eight weeks, so Iran's breakout window would have to be under six weeks for it to gain any possibility of surprising a rival with a deployed nuclear arsenal. In theory, Iran might wait till after an IAEA inspection, then begin to break out and weaponize, and simultaneously begin an offensive action. That sounds scary, and if this were a movie, it would happen just like that. But in the real world, it is difficult to make such exquisite timing work out. Iran would be taking a big risk that its nuclear activities would not be discovered by other countries as it secretly enriched and assembled its weapon(s). It would be running a second risk that the weapon would be ready and functional in time to stave off the failure of whatever offensive operation it was mounting.

Stepping outside the realm of theory to look instead at the actual history is equally optimistic. Prior to the 1998 Pakistani and Indian nuclear tests, there were no nuclear crises between them. India had the capability to deploy and employ nuclear weapons after 1974 and it had no IAEA
inspectors present, since it was not a signatory to the NPT. Thus its status was several steps beyond an NPT “breakout capability.” Likewise, Pakistan probably acquired nuclear weapons at some point in the late 1980s, and it too was not a signatory to the NPT, although it had never tested before 1998.
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So by the late 1980s or early 1990s, both sides had nuclear weapons, but because Pakistan had not tested and neither side acknowledged its capability, there were no nuclear crises between them. After they both tested and acknowledged their deployed arsenals, crises followed in rapid succession: the Kargil War of 1999, the 2001–2002 Kashmir crisis, the 2008 Mumbai bombing crisis, and smaller incidents in 2011 and 2013. Without deployed, acknowledged nuclear arsenals on both sides, the dangerous dynamics of nuclear crises are not engaged, and that makes for fewer crises and less dangerous crises when they occasionally occur.

THE NEED FOR A DEAL.
There should be no doubt that it would be much better for all concerned—including the Iranians, for that matter—if Iran were to halt its progress short of deploying an actual nuclear arsenal. In the words of Shahram Chubin, “In the event that Iran remains with a virtual capability, its influence and potential for exploiting the capability, will remain as it is, limited, creating a source of anxiety for the GCC and strategic concern for Israel but not fundamentally changing the strategic picture.”
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It would be better still if Iran not only refrained from weaponizing, but agreed to an enhanced monitoring and inspections regime that could give every other country in the world much greater confidence that Iran was not secretly moving ahead with weaponization. The likelihood that the world would find out if Iran tried to break out would increase, as would the likelihood that Iran would be caught secretly trying to narrow its breakout window further.

Interestingly, there seems to be a meeting of the minds on this between the United States and Iran. President Obama has carefully indicated that his red line for Iran is weaponization: in his speeches and other public statements, the president says that he will prevent Iran from developing
a weapon
—not a narrow breakout capability, which is where Prime Minister Netanyahu keeps trying to set the collective red line. At the UN in 2012, President Obama said, “[T]he United States will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
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In the 2013 State of the Union address he said, “we will do what is necessary to prevent [Iran] from getting a nuclear weapon.”
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He and his senior staff have been very clear about that.

Meanwhile, Supreme Leader Khamene'i keeps intoning that Iran will never acquire nuclear weapons themselves—endlessly repeating that he has issued a fatwa declaring that nuclear weapons are against Islam and Iran will not develop them. He could be lying, but the Iranians don't like getting caught in lies and bristle when they are accused of it. Moreover, Khamene'i seems to feel that his public statements are as much, if not more, for the consumption of the Iranian people as they are for outsiders, and so to go ahead and weaponize would be to lie to his own people. I am not saying that this is impossible—he also insists that Iran's elections are fair and free—only that Khamene'i seems loath to put himself in a position where he can be caught lying to his people. That, in turn, suggests that he may genuinely mean he intends to achieve a breakout capability and then stop at that point.

Obama and Khamene'i's seeming convergence on this point creates the prospect that the two sides might be able to reach an agreement that would give Iran the right to enrich, allow it a small stockpile of LEU and limited numbers of centrifuges, the right to manufacture fuel for its civilian reactors, and a lifting of the sanctions, in return for a renewed Iranian commitment not to weaponize, an agreement not to enrich beyond these terms, and acceptance of a highly intrusive and comprehensive monitoring and inspections program—one that went somewhat beyond even the Additional Protocol of the NPT. As always, there is no proof that either the United States or the Iranians would actually accept such a deal, and both sides have numerous obstacles that could prevent one even if it were the case that both sides were willing to accept such a compromise. Nevertheless, there is enough evidence to suggest that such a deal is possible
to make it worth trying. Especially because it would be so much better than the alternatives. Whatever it would require from the Iranians, on our part, it is going to mean that our political leaders will have to show the courage to tell the American people that this deal may be the best we can do, and that it is in our interest to take it rather than demanding a perfection that we can never attain unless we are willing to pay the costs of another major war.

WHAT IF IRAN WON'T TAKE THE DEAL?
Of course, Iran may not take the deal even if we offer it, and we may never offer it. If there is no deal, then the difference between containing an Iran that possesses only a breakout capacity and one with a deployed arsenal should mean placing a premium on actions we can take to convince Iran not to take the final step and weaponize.

One thing that the United States could do in the absence of a deal with Iran to try to convince the Iranian leadership not to weaponize would be to threaten air strikes if they do. That is certainly what President Obama seems to be implying in his various statements. It may also be necessary to keep that threat alive, since it does seem to be the case that the Iranians fear an American military attack and might believe we could hit them before they could have a usable nuclear weapon with which to deter us. For that reason, it was a mistake for so many other senior administration officials to have been so dismissive of the idea early in Obama's first term.

However, the United States may have neither the international nor domestic political support for a war with Iran under those circumstances. Threatening Iran with air strikes if they appear to be weaponizing (let alone if they don't accept such a deal) would almost certainly constitute an unacceptable ultimatum to the Chinese and Russians. Beijing and Moscow would probably do everything they could to undermine such a move—and then try to block us as best they could if we went ahead with it anyway. After the experience of Iraq, I am skeptical that we would have support for a war to prevent Iran from weaponizing based solely on intelligence, no matter how many countries agreed on the evidence.
Moreover, the Iranians probably would not announce they were weaponizing, but would instead move to assemble one or more devices in secret, perhaps withdrawing from the NPT first, and then confront us with a full-blown arsenal later. Nor do I think that Iran's withdrawal from the NPT will be enough of a rallying point to secure the kind of support we would need, especially if they withdraw under the pretext that the IAEA is providing intelligence to the United States, Israel, and the West—which it effectively is—and if Tehran swears that it won't weaponize. We may not even have domestic political support for a war under those circumstances, given the country's general war-weariness, along with the fear that Iran would retaliate with terrorist attacks here in the U.S. homeland and would rebuild its nuclear program even after an air campaign.

There are two other tactics the United States should pursue instead to convince Iran not to move from a breakout capability to a full-fledged arsenal. The first of these would be to threaten to expand the economic sanctions on Iran horizontally, by bringing China, Russia, and India more on board. None of these countries likes the idea of the United States going to war with Iran, but all of them have repeatedly stated that they would find it unacceptable for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. All of them have backed up those statements by voting for far-reaching sanctions against Iran. At present, they are resisting many of the more stringent unilateral and multilateral sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States and Europe, because they dislike sanctions in principle and want to see if those already imposed will be adequate. However, if they believed that in the event that Iran decided to weaponize the only alternatives were America going to war or their joining the sanctions, there is reason to believe that they would sign up for the sanctions.

Thus, the United States should press Moscow, Beijing, Delhi, and other like-minded governments now to declare that they would join the Western multilateral sanctions against Iran if Iran begins to weaponize. There may well be doubt and wrangling over what constitutes sufficient evidence if the situation ever were to arise, but chances are it would constitute a powerful deterrent to keep Iran from ever moving down that path.
In 2010, the Iranians were shocked when China and Russia voted in favor of the harsh sanctions contained in UNSC Resolution 1929, and Tehran seems loath to repeat that unpleasant experience.

The second tactic the United States should employ to dissuade Iran from weaponizing is the threat of regime change. Tehran needs to fear that if it moves from a theoretical breakout capability to a deployed arsenal, the United States and (hopefully) our allies will make an all-out effort to bring down the Islamic Republic however we can. There are many ways that we could try to do so. We could arm anyone who hates the Iranian regime and wants to attack them. We could wage relentless cyberattacks against the regime. We could sabotage their infrastructure, jam their communications, and bombard their people with information. We could oppose Iran in every international forum simply for being Iran. None of this activity may succeed in bringing down the regime, at least not in the short term. However, it would be a painful and terrifying experience for the regime, all the more so because Tehran would doubtless magnify the extent of our efforts—and our successes. And it would be threatening the one thing that we know that this regime cares about most, more than its nuclear program and certainly more than its economy: its control over the Iranian nation.

I suspect that if the Iranians believed that a move to weaponization would trigger Chinese, Russian, and Indian adherence to the Western economic sanctions and an all-out take-no-prisoners effort at regime change on the part of the United States and its allies, they would likely choose to stick with a breakout capability. I suspect that they already fear that this would be the response if they moved to weaponize, and that this fear is an important reason they are broadcasting so loudly that they don't intend to do so.

One of the trickiest pieces of American strategy toward Iran over the long term will be sanctions. The current sanctions on Iran were intended
to cause tremendous short-term pressure to try to convince the regime to compromise on its nuclear program. If that does not work, we will find ourselves in a difficult position. The United States and the Europeans have few remaining sanctions options left to turn up the heat on Iran. Of equal importance, having gone so far up the sanctions ladder, we have reached a point we probably cannot sustain over the long term, yet it would be handing Iran a major psychological victory to climb down unilaterally. Indeed, if we had the chance to do it all over again, I think it would have been far better to have ramped up the sanctions on Iran in a slower and more deliberate fashion, and to have left more of them in reserve.

The erosion or collapse of sanctions would be disastrous for any American policy toward Iran, and containment would be no exception. Sanctions have been a prominent element in virtually every American containment policy since the Second World War, and they could be of further value with Iran, if only to keep Tehran from building up its military strength and limit the economic assets it has available to support its subversive activities; to make it pay a price for its support to terrorists and insurgencies; to keep it on the defensive; and to demonstrate to other countries that proliferation is not worth the price they would have to pay. Thus losing sanctions would be a double blow for containment: a psychological victory for Iran, and the loss of useful tools that would make it much easier to contain Iran, even a nuclear Iran, well into the future.