Unthinkable (58 page)

Moreover, containment does not require the comprehensive, draconian sanctions currently in place, especially since they are likely to become a liability because they are unsustainable. Describing the effective use of sanctions in the containment of Yugoslavia, Meghan O'Sullivan concluded that “[a] sanctions regime whose aim is the containment of a government or country need not have all the bells and whistles of a behavior change approach.”
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Looking just at the needs of the containment of Iran, the appropriate sanctions could and probably would be much leaner. In essence, the sanctions needs of a containment strategy boil down to:

• The ban on military sales to Iran, to keep its conventional and nuclear forces weak and small;

• The ban on high-technology sales to Iran, both to hinder its indigenous military development and cause stagnation in its economic base;

• Restrictions on the travel of Iranian personnel abroad, preferably accompanied by similar constraints on Iranian airlines, to hinder the ability of Iranian intelligence personnel to wage asymmetric warfare;

• Limiting foreign investment in Iran, especially in the Iranian hydrocarbon sector to limit the resources available to the regime.

Either as part of a shift to containment or as a result of circumstances beyond our control, we may find it necessary to redefine the sanctions, preserving these critical elements while giving up on others of lesser value or those that could be more difficult to maintain over the long term. We tried to do the same in Iraq with an idea that was eventually known as “smart sanctions,” preserving the bans on weapons and dual-use technology while giving up on the purely civilian sanctions. Unfortunately, we waited so long—until the sanctions were already hemorrhaging—that we had no leverage anymore. By then our offers to lift civilian sanctions were laughable because most countries were already ignoring them. And so the bid for smart sanctions failed.

With Iran, we should learn that lesson and move toward such revisions early on, while we still have concessions to make that are meaningful. Ideally, we would lift sanctions only conditionally, with the caveat that they would be reimposed on Iran if it undertook more egregious actions like withdrawing from the NPT, weaponizing, or increasing its support for terrorists, insurgents, and other violent extremists. Inevitably, Tehran would claim as a major victory any reform of sanctions that included even the temporary or conditional suspension of some of the sanctions. That will be painful, but it may be necessary to reforge the sanctions so that they are sustainable for years, if not decades. If we don't, we could hand Iran a much bigger victory.

The last point that flows from this discussion is that it would be a
mistake to try to impose any more major sanctions on Iran. There is a movement among some American groups to slap a comprehensive trade ban on Iran (forbidding even the sale of humanitarian goods such as food and medicine) and then applying secondary sanctions against any other country unwilling to abide by our terms. Doing so would make the Iran sanctions not just the equal of the ill-considered Iraq sanctions; it would make them even harsher. If the current sanctions prove inadequate to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear program, it seems unlikely that choking off food and medicine would change their minds. And doing so would make it a certainty that we would be unable to hold these sanctions together for very long. The incentives for smuggling will be too great, the hardships imposed on the Iranian people (and manipulated by the regime) will be too dramatic, and the effort the United States will have to maintain will be too taxing. Chances are that turning the screw that tight will strip its threads and cause the sanctions to lose their grip. The sanctions regime could collapse around us, and we would not have them either for short-term pressure or for long-term containment.

Pressing Iran on its egregious human rights record should be part of any regime change agenda that the United States pursues against Iran, but that should not be the sum total of our concern with human rights as part of a new strategy for Iran. It should also be part of any containment strategy as well. We should learn from the history of the Cold War that our championing of human rights mattered. It may not have brought down the Soviet empire, but it told the captive peoples of Eastern Europe that they were not forgotten. That gave them hope, and that hope gave them the will to resist. It all seemed for naught for decades, until Lech Walesa and Solidarity tore down the whole Iron Curtain and the Eastern Europeans were able to tell us how much it had mattered to them.
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We should not hold human rights hostage to other considerations. We
must recognize that championing human rights pays off over the long term. It allows us to connect with the people themselves and what they care about most, so that when the odious regime is gone, the people will remember that we worked on their behalf to make their lives better. For that reason, it is important to resist the temptation to look the other way at human rights violations when the regime dangles something enticing before us. The Obama administration made a terrible mistake when it whispered meek words of sympathy for the Green Revolution rather than giving it full-throated support.

Whenever possible, we should hew to a consistent line on human rights, arguing for them regardless of whatever else is happening. The championing of human rights is a long-term good—in our relationship with the rest of the world as much as with the Iranian people. It will pay off in myriad ways. The United States is not a perfect nation, and we have committed human rights violations of our own. That should not stop us from calling out the Iranians (or others) for their (far worse) human rights abuses. One does not have to be without sin to castigate someone else for being a rapist or a murderer.

Last, we need to recognize how harmful calling Tehran to account for its misdeeds is to the Islamic Republic. It robs the regime of the legitimacy that they crave and suspect that they have lost. It takes from them any moral superiority. The Islamic Republic is obsessed with concepts of justice, arguing against actions by the United States, the EU, and the UN on the grounds that they are somehow unjust to Iran. Pointing up the hypocrisy of other countries' actions is often their favorite means of mounting an implicit defense of their own behavior. Undercutting these claims is a great blow to their own prestige. Moreover, it is a powerful method of shaming other countries into holding Iran accountable for its repugnant behavior. We do the Iranian people and our own diplomacy a great disservice when we fail to make human rights an issue. Over time, it could prove to be among the most powerful weapons we might wield against the Islamic Republic, and it has the added virtues of being both popular and right.

Working with our Israeli allies will be one of America's greatest challenges should we choose to contain Iran, but it is not a lost cause. The Israelis uniformly would prefer never to see Iran acquire a nuclear arsenal. Who can blame them? If it comes to pass, inevitably, some Israelis will be more fearful than others, and it could be problematic if the Israeli prime minister is one of them. Moreover, as Dima Adamsky has discussed in an interesting essay on the subject:

First and foremost, the Israeli government would have to wrestle with the image of Iran that it has constructed. For years, Israeli leaders have appealed to popular fears by cultivating the specter of a second Holocaust in which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is equated with Hitler and the United States is equated with Neville Chamberlain's United Kingdom. The Iranian leadership has consistently been presented as fanatical and irrational. If Iran crosses the nuclear threshold, the Israeli government will likely seek to assure its population that Israel possesses effective countermeasures and that a stable MAD regime is feasible. However, to make this explanation convincing, the Israeli establishment will have to spell out that Iran is a rational strategic player that can be deterred. Such a message would be confusing and disorienting for Israelis because it contradicts everything that the Israeli government has been preaching to itself, its citizens, and the world for decades.
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However, there is no reason to believe that Israel can't live with a nuclear Iran or that it won't. There are small, undercover groups within the Israeli government who have been tasked with thinking and planning for just such an eventuality. They are working through how Israel could best deter Iran and what Israel would need to give itself the greatest likelihood of success.
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Israel has quietly been putting in place everything that it would need to maximize the likelihood that it could deter a nuclear Iran. It has one of the most aggressive and comprehensive
ballistic missile defense programs in the world, exceeding even America's on a per capita basis. Between the Arrow II and III, David's Sling, the American-made Patriot, and its own Iron Dome, Jerusalem has the most extensive missile/rocket defense complex in the world. It has acquired Dolphin subs from Germany, which can launch long-range Popeye Turbo cruise missiles able to carry a nuclear warhead, and therefore give Israel a secure second-strike capability. On top of all that, the IAF (which will eventually receive as many as seventy-five of the newest American F-35 stealth strike aircraft) has a limited conventional capability to try to attack and suppress Iranian missile launches.
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Yet Israel's comfort level with an American policy of containment of Iran is likely to be determined principally by two things: their confidence in their own deterrent, and the aggressiveness and involvement of the United States.

AN ISRAELI SECOND-STRIKE CAPABILITY.
For more than a decade Israel has been developing long-range cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons that can be launched from submarines—and acquiring the submarines to launch them. This is the nucleus of an Israeli second-strike capability. Israel may ask the United States for additional help in the form of newer or better cruise missiles (or the technology to build them), more subs, more survivable long-range strike aircraft (like the F-22), or even more robust ballistic missile defenses to hinder Iran's ability to destroy Israel's own nuclear assets with a preemptive strike of its own. Just because the Israelis have made great progress in all of these areas does not mean that they will feel that it is enough.
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AN AGGRESSIVE AMERICAN POLICY TOWARD IRAN.
Many Israeli military, intelligence, and political leaders fear that Iran's acquisition of a nuclear capability will signal the start of a wide-ranging, multi-front unconventional war against Israel by Iran, one waged by Iran's various allies and proxies. Although these same Israeli leaders are determined to fight
that battle and never give up, they will also be looking for considerable assistance from anywhere they can get it, but particularly from the United States. They will want money, weaponry, and technology to help with that fight, but more than that, they will look for the United States to aid them in waging these battles wherever possible. They will likely push American leaders to be confrontational with Iran to keep it weak, constrained, and “on its heels.” They will encourage the United States to take action against Iran's various proxies and allies, possibly even including Hizballah in Lebanon. The more that the United States is pushing back on Iran, the less of the burden Israel will feel it needs to shoulder. Israeli leaders may also try to involve the United States in its own “counteroffensive” operations, like supporting Iranian Kurds, Baluch, and Arabs against the regime.

As a corollary to this point, it would probably be the case that the more aggressive the United States is in fighting back against Iran's various allies and proxies, the more likely that even the most hawkish Israelis will feel either that they don't need to do so themselves, or else that doing so would be counterproductive, as it could hinder the ability of the United States to garner support for this fight from the Arab states. Even the ultra-hawkish Yitzhak Shamir was convinced not to take direct action against Iraq in response to Saddam's Scud missile attacks on Israel in 1991 because the Bush administration made the case that there was nothing Israel could do that the United States was not already doing, and Israeli participation could create real problems for the United States with its Arab allies.

Taken as a whole, these various issues underline the overarching notion that the containment of Iran cannot be rigid. It should not be a one-size-fits-all policy, let alone a one-time-fits-all policy. There are a wide variety of issues that containment has to address and a wide variety of tools
available to do so. The challenge will be in sensing when to shift from one variant of containment to another and when to employ the different tools at our disposal.

Iran is not the Soviet Union. It lacks Russia's strength, its resources, its size, its empire, and so containment of Iran can afford to be more aggressive than the containment of the USSR should we choose to make it so. Because we are so much stronger than the Islamic Republic, a willingness to invest in the offensive components could pay off in accelerating the regime's demise and making it more pliable in the meantime. Nevertheless, we should never lose sight of the problems of containing a nuclear Iran and never fall into believing that we can do so easily. There is a minimum of time, energy, and resources that we will have to devote to making containment work with Iran. We cannot specify it beforehand, but we should err on the side of caution until we can know for sure just where the threshold lies.

Inevitably, taking a more aggressive or a more passive approach to containment at any given time will mean making trade-offs. The more aggressive we are, the more time, energy, and resources it will require us to devote to Iran. That is likely to be the case, in part, because the more assertive we are, the more that Iran is likely to lash out in response. Consequently, there may be times when we choose to throttle back on the more offensive elements of containment because other problems require American attention. However, we also need to recognize that at other times, containment may only be viable if we are willing to make a considerable investment in it. Sometimes, saving containment might even require a very assertive approach, either to push back on dangerous challenges from Iran or to reassure skittish allies. Containment cannot become a purely passive approach. If it does, it will wither. The real question we will constantly have to ask ourselves regarding containment of Iran is how much we are willing to invest in it.