The Jewish State - December 5, 2008 - Planning for the worst-case scenario

Planning for the worst-case scenario

The possibility - and costs - of containing a nuclear Iran

Seth Mandel
THE JEWISH STATE
December 5, 2008

The near-unchecked advancement of Iran's nuclear program has necessitated speculation on the following question: Can a nuclear Iran be contained or deterred?

Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), has asked - and attempted to answer - that question.

"[T]op U.S. military officials like General John Abizaid, former commander of Central Command, and Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argue that the United States can contain or deter a nuclear Iran," Rubin writes in a Nov. 6 analysis. "Whether deterrence and containment against a nuclear Iran deserve the faith Abizaid and Mullen hold in them, the options are unclear."

Threats of a hot war, or just hot air?

En route to the question of deterrence, Rubin asks whether Iran would use nuclear weapons. He notes that the elimination of Israel is a pillar of Iranian ideology, making Israel a likely target of an Iranian attack.

While some apologists have sought to challenge the popular translation of a quote by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in which he states his intention of wiping Israel off the map, Rubin points to recent research by Joshua Teitelbaum, a senior research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center a the University of Tel-Aviv. Teitelbaum, in a paper titled "What Iranian leaders really say about doing away with Israel: A refutation of the campaign to excuse Ahmadinejad's incitement to genocide," chronicled the Islamic Republic's public relations campaign centered on destroying Israel.

"What emerges from a comprehensive analysis of what Ahmadinejad actually said - and how it has been interpreted in Iran - is that the Iranian president was not just calling for 'regime change' in Jerusalem, but rather the actual physical destruction of the state of Israel," Teitelbaum writes.

Rubin adds that at an official state sermon at Tehran University in December 2001, former Iranian president and current chairman of the Expediency Council Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani proclaimed, "The use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything.... It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality."

Iranian leaders have routinely expressed their desire for Iran to possess nuclear weapons as well, turning their threats into active policy pursuit, not simple fantasy, Rubin notes.

Can a nuclear Iran be deterred?

Deterrence requires each actor (the U.S. and Iran) to be willing to take certain action. For the U.S., it means we must be ready to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians if Iran - or one of its proxies, such as Hezbollah - uses an Iranian nuclear weapon, according to Rubin. Because of this, Iran must put the lives of its citizens above ideological goals, such as destroying Israel.

"On both questions, there is a disturbing lack of clarity," Rubin writes.

Deterrence can only work if the leadership of the country that must be deterred isn't suicidal. Rubin asks how sure we are of Iran's lack of suicidal will.

Rubin reminds readers that although the Soviet Union wasn't considered suicidal, and mutually assured destruction was thought to have kept both the Soviets and the U.S. in line, deterrence nearly failed on several occasions, "bringing the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war: the Berlin crisis, the Cuban missile crisis, and the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 each nearly escalated beyond control. In retrospect, deterrence brought neither the security nor the stability to which some historians and many current policymakers ascribe it."

Additionally, Mehdi Khalaji, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who spent 14 years in the Islamic seminaries in Qom, wrote that "Ahmadinejad appears to be influenced by a trend in contemporary apocalyptic thought in which the killing of Jews will be one of the most significant accomplishments of the Mahdi's government."

If that ideology encourages Iranian leaders to act without trying to avoid a retaliatory nuclear strike, Rubin adds, "traditional deterrence becomes impossible."

Can a nuclear Iran be contained?

Rubin writes that the most likely scenario would not be an Iranian first strike, but rather an arrogant nuclear Iran acting with reckless abandon, feeling immune from retaliation because of its nuclear status.

Iran's recent history of invading Iraq and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as its continued funding of Hezbollah, Hamas, and other proxy terror groups aiming to destroy Israel, almost guarantee that a more powerful Iran is a more dangerous Iran.

Rubin analyzes what it would take to contain a nuclear Iran, and finds that it would require a level of cooperation that cannot be taken for granted. For example, Egypt has balked at such cooperation, and Germany continues to maintain a high level of trade with Iran (and has promised to ramp up, not tone down, such trade).

The U.S. must answer two questions, Rubin writes:

What would it take for the U.S. to unilaterally contain Iran?

What would it take to enable Mideast regional states to contain Iran?

"Put more crudely," Rubin explains, "this requires calculating under what conditions and with what equipment regional states could successfully wage war against Iran until U.S. forces could provide relief. If the Pentagon has pre-positioned enough equipment and munitions in the region, this might take three or four days; if not, it could take longer."

Give it to us straight, doc

Here, according to Rubin, is what we'll need to contain a nuclear Iran.

Bases in Gulf Cooperation Council countries (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman, and Qatar), Afghanistan, Iraq, central Asia, and the Caucasus. This is easier said than done, Rubin writes, because Turkey has demanded veto power over every U.S. mission flown from the Incirlik base; Iraq is no guarantee; and Oman planned to turn down America's request for basing attack flights in Oman in 2001, at the beginning of the Afghanistan campaign.

Troops, and lots of them. Rubin writes that the U.S. currently has 228,000 troops in the Near East and South Asia, but all except 5,700 are stationed in Iraq, Kuwait, or Afghanistan. According to Rubin, Kuwaiti officials "have made clear that they do not envision hosting a permanent U.S. presence."

Naval bases and shipyards. About half of the troops outside Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, according to Rubin, are afloat. The U.S. 5th Fleet utilizes Bahraini and UAE ports, but both countries are vulnerable to Iranian missile attacks and airstrikes. In 2006, President George W. Bush launched a "Gulf Security Dialogue" to improve the GCC countries' ability to work together on military matters, as well as upgrade their individual facilities. There is still much to be done on that front, however.

Money and weapons. The U.S. has a deal on the table to sell Bahrain six Bell 412 air search-and-recovery helicopters for $160 million. The administration has proposed upgrading three Kuwaiti L-110-30 aircraft at a cost of $250 million; there are also plans for maintenance and logistics support for Kuwait's F/A-18 aircraft, a sale of 80 PAC-3 missiles, Patriot missile system upgrades, and 2,106 TOW-A and 1,404 TOW-B missiles. All this comes to a total cost of more than $1.3 billion. "Proposed arms sales to Saudi Arabia are even greater and include light armored vehicles; high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles; advanced radar; sniper targeting pods; and, most controversially, nine hundred Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) tail kits to create high precision smart bombs," Rubin writes. And the UAE is contemplating a very large purchase/upgrade order for itself.

Rubin also notes that in terms of troops, the numbers are not in our allies' favor. Iran has 663,000 military service personnel, while the entire GCC - including Saudi Arabia - has 345,800. Iran has fewer fighter aircraft, but almost as many battle tanks and many more combat vessels. If Turkey, a NATO ally with 514,000 troops, 400 fighter aircraft, and 4,400 tanks, continues to pull away from helping the U.S. military in the region, the containment picture looks bleak, according to Rubin.

Rubin concludes by warning that if the U.S. doesn't signal its allies in the region that it is prepared to do whatever it takes to contain a nuclear Iran, those allies will simply fold to Iranian demands. One possible outcome of that would bring war, Rubin notes.

"Should Israeli officials believe that the West will stand aside as Iran achieves nuclear capability and that a nuclear Islamic Republic poses an existential threat to the Jewish state," Rubin writes, "they may conclude that they have no choice but to launch a preemptive military strike - an event that could quickly lead to a regional conflagration from which the United States would have difficulty remaining aloof."