If Iran is building the bomb: Deter, don't attack Charles V. Pena

Opinion, August 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

If Iran is building the bomb: Deter, don't attack

Charles V. Pena

The Daily Star, 8/26/03

In recent weeks, there have been many reports that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and is close to building a nuclear bomb. The Iranians deny any military nuclear ambitions and insist that their nuclear program is merely designed to meet increasing electricity demands. Skeptics, of course, question why Iran with the third largest known oil reserves in the world and the second largest proven natural gas reserves needs nuclear electrical power plants that would cost billions of dollars to build. The skeptics have reason to doubt Iran’s true intentions. But the real question, from an American perspective at least, is whether Iran represents a threat to US national security. It’s easy to understand why Iran would be interested in acquiring nuclear weapons. In his January 2002 State of the Union address, US President George W. Bush named Iran, Iraq and North Korea as “an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.” In September 2002, the Bush administration published a new National Security Strategy that highlighted pre-emptive action “to act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.” At the time, it was clear that the rhetoric was aimed mainly at Iraq, but the Iranians could read the tea leaves. If there was uncertainty that Iran would be on Washington’s “regime change” hit parade, not long after the US dispatched former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s regime, the rhetoric turned to neighboring Iran. The subsequent US military action in Iraq also revealed the vulnerability of countries that lack nuclear weapons in the face of overwhelming American conventional military superiority. The lesson not lost on the Iranians is that they should accelerate acquiring nuclear weapons because that may be the only way to prevent a fate similar to Saddam Hussein’s. Indeed, one reason the US is currently taking a more measured approach to North Korea is because of Pyongyang’s credible claim to possess nuclear weapons. Thus, there is every reason to believe that Tehran’s interest in nukes has more to do with deterring Washington from engaging in regime change than with attacking the United States. Even if the Iranians acquired nuclear weapons, they do not have any long-range military capability to deliver them against the continental United States (and they are believed to be 10 years or more away from developing an intercontinental ballistic missile capability). Further, there is no substantive evidence that a nuclear-armed Iran would be undeterred from attacking the US. That does not mean that Washington would be able to deter Tehran from taking action that could run counter to American wishes. But deterrence is about preventing countries from taking catastrophic action against the US. Even the mullahs in Tehran understand that a nuclear attack against the US is an invitation to certain destruction, courtesy of the American strategic nuclear arsenal of more than 8,000 warheads. Because long-range missiles (which Iran does not currently have) carry a return address, one would have to believe that Iran’s leaders are suicidal terrorists to think they could lob a nuke at the United States with impunity. A legitimate concern is that Iran might secretly give a nuclear weapon to terrorists. This was the concern expressed about Iraq when Bush said: “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” And a better case can be made for Iran’s support of terrorism than Iraq’s. Whereas Iraq supported low-level anti-Israeli Palestinian groups such as the Arab Liberation Front, the Palestine Liberation Front and Abu Nidal’s organization Iran backs Hizbullah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, all of which have a history of terrorism against Israel. But as atrocious as their attacks against Israeli civilians are, the terrorist groups supported by Iran do not currently attack the United States (previous attacks by Hizbullah occurred in Lebanon in the 1980s in retaliation for the US military presence there). And it is a leap of faith to assume that if Iran acquired nuclear weapons, it would give them away to terrorists. Indeed, the evidence is to the contrary Iran is thought to possess chemical and biological weaponry, but it has not given such weapons to groups fighting Israel. In fact, Israel’s estimated 100 or more nuclear weapons likely serve as an effective deterrent against nuclear attack and against Iran giving nukes to anti-Israeli terrorists. It is not unreasonable to assume that the US nuclear arsenal would have a similar effect on Iran. Indeed, perhaps the ultimate deterrent against Iran providing nuclear weapons to terrorists might be for Washington to explicitly declare that such action would be a certain regime-ending event (and that Iran would be at or near the top of a very short list of suspects). More importantly, although Iran may be a fundamentalist Islamic regime, this does not necessarily make it an ally of Al-Qaeda the true national security threat to the United States. Osama Bin Laden’s stated goal is to establish a new Islamic caliphate based on his twisted interpretation of the Koran, and it is unclear how the current regime in Tehran would fit into his vision. But it’s easy to see how harsh American rhetoric against Iran, including implied threats of military action, could give reason for Iran and Al-Qaeda to form an alliance of convenience. To be sure, nuclear weapons in the hands of the Iranian regime would not be a welcome development, and the US cannot afford to ignore Iran’s quest for such weapons. But Washington needs to do better than an “either or” strategy, where Iran either gives up its nuclear ambition or faces pre-emptive US military action. Another war against a Muslim nation after Afghanistan and Iraq will be interpreted as a holy war against Islam by much of the Muslim world. That is what bin Laden wants but has been unable to accomplish on his own. During the Cold War, the wizards of Armageddon thought about the unthinkable: nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The current situation with Iran also requires thinking about the unthinkable in this case, the possibility of a nuclear-armed fundamentalist Islamic state. While seeking to prevent this possible outcome, the US must also be prepared for its eventuality. As in North Korea, the remaining member of the axis of evil, Washington should be more focused on ensuring that Iran will not proliferate nuclear weapons technology should it acquire nukes.

Charles V. Pena is the director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, www.cato.org. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).