Two points. First, and apologies from not being able to currently pull Bobbitt out of the box he rests in, he seems to be talking about superpower deterrence, with large arsenals and long range capabilities. Indeed, his point about calling the U.S. bluff and the resulting instability is explicitly premised on a superpower-type arsenal of the sort that arguably only the U.S. and the USSR/Russia ever possessed. Further, the addition of an Iranian nuclear arsenal doesn't partiuclarly increase the problem of blurring of sources in the n-polar world (at least when it comes to potential sources of nuclear fuel) we currently exist in. A rhetorical statement that unidentified nuclar material would be regarded as presumptively Iranian might be of some use, but at the same time opens up avenues for strategic behavior by other groups.



Second, if you accept the premise that the U.S. should act to stop Iran's nuclear program, what do you do? Military force? I think Iran learned the lessons of Osirak... dispersal, concealment, and strong defenses are guaranteed, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Iranian military action against U.S. forces in Iraq (and probably Iraqi forces as well) as a sort of tit-for-tat result. Economic sanctions are an idea, but they'd almost certainly be honored more in the breach than the observance. Friendly persuasion could be tried, but that just demonstrates the effectiveness of the program and provides an incentive for covert continuing work on the program (see Korea, Democratic People's Republic of). Regime change is a nice idea, but it doesn't take me long to think of better ideas than overtly encouraging regime change against a government that has a fairly active nuclear weapons program, particularly when you're simultaneously trying to bargain with them.



The one option I haven't seen bandied about is some sort of security guarantee for the Iranian regime. I don't know if they'd be enticed by that, but it's worth a shot.



Ceteris paribus, given a choice between an Iranian regime with nuclear weapons, and one without, I'd chose the one without every time. But all other things aren't equal. Given the paucity of good policy alternatives, I don't see any result other than figuring out the best way to live with an Iranian bomb. Unless, of course, you want to try bringing the Baruch Plan back from the dead...

Tom,

To your first point, allowing an Iranian nuclear program may seem not to be as dangerous as a superpower-sized program. But at some point, it will engender a nuclear-based crisis. At what point WILL the Iranians possess too large an arsenal, or ranges too long? Does their proliferation become more threatening if they possess ICBMs capable of reaching the US? Why let such an unstable regime possess the means to vex us, and the international community, so fully?

As to military action: I certainly don't want to be confused with the man who, having only a hammer, sees all problems as nails. But Iran is indeed a nail. If there were ever a case for the Bush doctrine of pre-emption to apply, this is it. If Iran goes nuclear, US credibility will be shot to hell. You say we must live with an Iranian bomb. I say that means Egyptian and Saudi bombs as well. How does deterrence work then? Who does the US deter? Iran from Egypt? The Saudis from Iran? Israel from all three? We enter the circumstances Bobbitt describes, where an American populace says, "fuggedaboutit" and lets what will be, be. This DOES increase the likelihood of a nuclear crisis pretty drastically. How about non-proliferation? Arguing that Iran will be responsible in who uses its nukes, whether through restricted sales or robust security, is to play a game of Russian roulette. With enough nuclear states, at some point, one of them will fail in preventing further proliferation, either purposefully, or not.

I've raised all manner of military options before on this blog, and its true that none of them look pretty, but I think that the short-term pain, say 10 years of pain, caused by US action, would be much less than the indefinite pain of living in an "n-polar" world.

As far as to the security guarantee, I read somewhere last week, in the NY Times I think, of someone's proposal for a Gulf States NATO-like organization that would include Iran. I think it's a great idea. One more bargaining tool. Offer them a guarantee. If they take it, in exchange for abandoning their program, fantastic, so long as their participation can be measured. If they don't take it, which they won't, then that will only further cement the minds of the international community that all non-military steps have been tried.

The most furious diplomacy right now is what is not in the news: the attempts by everyone and their grandmother to convince Israel not to pre-emptively strike Iran. The true driver of US action is the knowledge that if we don't stop this program, the Israelis are ready to damn the torpedoes and go full steam ahead . . .

"That doesn't seem fair.""

Life is unfair, then you die.

This is not a fair, unfair issue. That is a criterion for passing out cookies to small children.

The Iranian nuclear issue is one of prudence. Is it prudent for us to allow Iran to have nuclear weapons when they have threatened to use them against other states in their region for ideological reasons? When they persist in funding terrorism in the region? When they try to destabilize their neighbors?

I don't think so. and I think we should do something about it.

Chester,



First off, pardon this reply; I wanted to have it up before the SOTU, but ran out of time to make it all nice and organized, so I'll post what I have.



The key point about a potential Iranian nuclear crisis is that it lies in the future. Whether that's 3, 5, or 10 or more years into the future, we can't see at this point. And the tricky thing about the future is that it hasn't happened yet, and that we don't know what it will consist of. Maybe allowing Iran to get nuclear weapons now will result in a future crisis, but I'm not sure that the best time to deal with that crisis is now.



As for at what point the Iranians will possess a sufficiently large arsenal that it becomes a threat, the classic superpower distinction would be when it has enough weapons that survive a first strike to make a sufficiently strong retaliatory counterattack; arguably, only the U.S. and the USSR have ever possessed such arsenals. But I'm not sure that this is a helpful distinction.



I think one of the more important questions is precisely what the Iranian regime wants. Are they looking to perpetuate their rule, and maybe expand their influence in a way that doesn't upset the system, or should we expect a hell-bent for leather grab for power and striking out against threats. If the latter, then the question is (1) when's the bombing going to take place and (2) how are we going to make sure that they don't use any weapons they might already have. I don't know if you read Tom Barnett's blog, but he seems firmly convinced that Iran is clearly in the former condition, and Ahmadinejad's statements are primarily rhetoric. I'm not as sanguine as he is, but I think an OSCE-type outreach effort to bring Iran into a Middle East the U.S. can live with should be a high priority. Implicitly, at least, I'm rejecting your assertion that Iran is an unstable regime; I'm not sure they're at a stable long-term equilibrium, but they're working on getting to an achievable balance.



The obvious answer to the threat of further proliferation is some sort of formal extension of the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Want to nuke Jiddah? Say goodbye to Tabriz, and maybe Bandar Abbas as well. Proliferation isn't a good, but in a world of conservative (read anti-change) leadership, I'm not sure it's quite the problem Bobbitt thinks it is.



Personally, I'm also troubled by your description of "10 years of pain" in response to a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. I think the number one priority for the U.S. is to achieve some sort of successful the so-called "Big Bang" that was launched by the invasion and occupation of Iraq. If you've read what StratFor has written, Iran has tried some to meddle in Iraq, but their efforts have been largely unsuccessful. I think an attack on Iran would cause Iran to re-double those efforts, and several harm the U.S. standing among the Iraqi people. Ten more years of pain and instability in the key region in this Hydrocarbon World is not something I'm willing to undergo to shortcircuit a probable future confrontation, even a nuclear one.



Finally, the Israeli strike... the problem here is that all the good air routes from Israel to Iran go over Iraq. Which I'm pretty sure is patrolled on a regular basis by U.S. military aircraft and radar. Any Israeli airstrike would have to get by the U.S. forces, and would assumed by Iran (and everyone else that's watching) to have been done with U.S. support. Would the Israelis risk conflict with the U.S. to hit Iran's nuclear forces? I doubt it. If I were them, I'd be watching the diplomacy and hoping, while working on the plans, continuing the backchannel diplomacy with the U.S., and making sure the bombs and jet fuel are available if needed.



Anyway, that's what I think in a nutshell. Yes, I live in a big nutshell. I guess we'll see what W. has to say in the SOTU tonight.

Chester,

Food for thought...

The question of how to handle Iranian Nukes was discussed in the following Belmont Club thread over a year ago:

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/12/iraqi-elections-five-days-and-age-ago.html

While reading the comments section at the above link, I remembered something I heard about or read about a few years earlier.

If you elect to visit the link, key in Control+F and select the word "spears" for your search. That'll take you directly to some comments that were made regarding a concept called "Brilliant Spears."

It was originally proposed as a possible solution to North Korea's nuclear weapons program, but I believe has application to the current situation with Iran.

Following is an excerpt from that Belmont thread.

>>>>>>

Originally posted on Dec 19, 2004:

Based on his performance so far, I think we'll eventually see Chief Two Stones take some action on Iranian nukes... what I'm wondering is in what form such a thing will appear?

Maybe 3 or 4 years ago I read an article detailing a way to deal with NK nukes, without actually using explosive munitions that could easily be traced back to Uncle Sam. It involved kinetic energy weapons known as "brilliant spears." The basic idea was to make a number of solid metal rods of sufficient diameter and length so as to achieve extreme terminal velocity upon falling from, say, 50,000 or more feet. Combined with GPS guidance packages, these weapons could be dropped from a single high-flying craft, essentially undetectable from the ground.

Arriving at target at Mach something-or-another, the rods would punch holes right through the containment building, pressure vessel(s), etc, without being heard on approach. Sonic booms would immediately follow impact, nearly coincident with systems' pressure loss and a spike in radiation levels at various internal monitoring stations, leaving the impression that some sort of accident was underway.

The NK's might have screamed, but without any explosive residue to examine and containment building radiation levels too high to allow for any forensics for years... By the time anything fingering the US finally came out, perhaps NK would be under new management, and the whole issue'd no longer matter.

We'd probably get blamed anyway, but without any hard evidence to support the claim, we could conceivably wave off world criticism with the back of our hand... while leaving Iran and others just "KNOWING!" we did it, but utterly unable to figure out how.

The sleepless nights in Tehran would be worth it.

Or, if you prefer, just swap NK and Iran in the above paragraphs... and you might get that long-awaited Iranian student uprising we've been hoping to see.

I wish I'd have kept that article - last time I looked, I found nothing on Google...

>>>>>>

There are further comments down the thread, but I'll leave it to interested parties to go there for the rest rather than make my post into an epistle by copying all the original posts here.

Continuing...

Picture the following:

1. Assuming a few successful tests in the Nevada desert, every B-2 except one would be flown out of its Missouri base to a staging area where each would get a full load of Brilliant Spears.

2. Mission start should be asap, preferably at night.

3. A few hours later that next morning, a previously-advertised air show would begin on-base. Media coverage would be locally extensive and hopefully national.

4. The operational B-2 held back from the mission (a mission now only a few hours old) would delight the crowd with a number of fly-overs. Once that's done, it would land and be positioned in the same area where the public can view (from a distance) the remaining B-2's... except that this row of B-2's would be nothing more than plywood decoys.

5. Meanwhile, as pictures and video of the air show (complete with footage showing all the 'fake' B-2's accounted for) make CNN, it would be picked up in many locations around the globe. The message? No B-2's bombing Iran today... except...

6. Half a world away, under cover of darkness, the B-2's would dump hundreds of Brilliant Spears into Iran's nuclear facilities.

7. We would wake the next morning to the news that some kind of event in Iran has befallen many (if not most, or all) of its nuclear facilities.

8. Eyewitness accounts would provide nothing useful since they would not have heard any subsonic bombs whistling down upon them, nor would they have seen or heard any aircraft. Radar would, of course, show nothing.

9. Fingers would of course point at us - that just had to be a B-2 strike, eh, Muhammad? But, but, but... the B-2's were on base for the airshow all day - heck, one even flew around overhead for a few minutes just to delight the crowd.

The big question the following morning in the Iranian government would be "What happened last night, and how did the Americans do it?"

Many months later, as the young people of Iran finally wrest control of their country from the mad mullahs, we could (I suspect) be on the receiving end of much good will on their part, seeing as they just KNOW we destroyed the government's nuclear program... while not destroying the country's infrastructure and killing large numbers of innocents... i.e. their friends, families, pets, homes, etc.

If Iraq isn't a MidEast tipping point for islamic radicals, then pulling off this sort of thing in Iran WITHOUT involving Israel most certainly would be.

Sorry everything has run together - I really need to take the time to learn HTML.

Triton

Of course there are arguments pro and con relative to whether or not to sit by and watch Iran go nuclear.

Had I not witnessed the events of 9/11, I might have some trouble seriously considering the possibility of some kind of major slaughter in a US or other Western territory. Losing a neighbor in Tower 1 drove the point home for me.

It is from my perspective the height of irresponsibility to sit by and watch militant islam become a nuclear power. Given, for example, the sheer volume of shipping containers that arrive in the US every month combined with the demonstrated willingness of islamists to murder as many civilians as possible, it is not difficult to imagine one arriving with nuclear cargo.

Even a crude atomic device, detonated on the Hudson River, would result in thousands and thousands of deaths of innocent people.

The true horror, however, would come after. No president would be able to stay in office, or perhaps even avoid a lynch mob for that matter, unless he responded by vaporizing a major city in an unfriendly arab country. The argument that we'd have no one to hit because of a lack of fingerprints would be forgotten in the rising tide of American anger - he would be compelled to action, and frankly, under those circumstances, any unfriendly arab capital would do to, if for no other reason than to preserve a semblence of law and order in the US. There would be no other option.

Acting now to keep Iran from going nuclear is the only moral choice, not only to save innocents here in-country, but to save the arabs from the islamists as well. As vile as they are, their children are as innocent as ours.

Dealing with Iran may eventually require more direct action, costing the lives of our finest and the lives of many otherwise innocent Iranians. But the cost now would be but pennies on the dollar so to speak, when compared to what may be set in motion if we allow this menace to fully develop.

Triton

Iran is a sovereign nation. If they want to build nukes, it is their right. America is a sovereign nation, if we want to bomb Iran back to the stone age for building nuks, it is our right.
I think framing the whole issue in terms of nukes and who has them and who doesn't is a BIG mistake. As big as the WMD mistake in Iraq.
The issue here should be about Iran signing the Anti-proliferation pact and then violating it. Make that the issue and you have a all around winner.
First there can be no attempt to establish equality between Iran and Israel, since Israel didn't sign the pact. Second, by casting the issue as a violation of treaty, America wins the moral high ground automaticlly. It forces the rest of the world to either enforce the treaty or scrap it. It also allows America to withdraw from which ever treaty we belong to that prohibits our using nuclear weapons on Iran.
The point that the experts seem to be overlooking is that Iran has stated they WANT a war against America. If they are honest in that, then nothing we do will prevent that war. So we need to strike first.
ALL the pundits seems to think Iran is a giant and some sort of supreme military power. These same experts predicted diaster in Afghanistan and a long bloody conflict in Iraq, tens of thousands dead americans, or so it was claimed. The simple fact is most military experts are retired colonels who didn't make the cut for flag rank. They now eke out a living showing why they didn't make the cut. My current favorite example is Peters, who now claims the suicide bomber is the ultimate weapon.
In any way that matters, Iran is a military weakling. Their military is only good for shooting student protestors. When the US Marine Corps rolls across the border, there won't be any student protestors in their ranks, or at least any that are currently operating as such.
They only thing that really worries me about the pending ( it's inevitable) conflict with Iran is what sort or pre-emptive strike they will go for. I don't expect them to wait for the air strikes to destroy their infastructure and C&C like Saddam did. I think the most likly move on their part is the arming of a few million Muslims in Europe to raise havoc and start an islamic revolution. Sort of like the rioters of a few months ago only well armed. They will be burning police stations, barracks, armories and city hall instead of cars. It will be interesting to see the politicians reaction. Call in troops and use heavy weapons in their own cities? I don't think the European armies are well trained nor numerous enough to recapture their cities with out rubbling them. I expect more of a Czechnia thing then a Fallujah type battle.
This sort of indirect approach is suited to eastern style warfare and has the benifit of being deniable for the Iranians. It also could set up the politicians so they could surrender while claiming to be restoring order. Or the muslims could win. The communists won Russia with less numbers. If the Iranians already have a nuke (some at the CIA think they do) they could save it for a better target(New York?. Nobody thinks they have started series production of nuclear weapons yet. It's not that far off, though.

A few isolated points to ponder:

(1) Remember Santayana's little tidbit? Those who forget history ....? Well, could it be that the EU folks are doing exactly that with regard to their failed negotiations with Iran? Do they seriously think appeasement of any kind would work? One thing that should be considered is that if things heat up to a military confrontation, the significant allies we could count on will probably not include anyone in Europe except the UK.

(2) One of the few things I remember about the Bush - Kerry debates is that they agreed about nothing, except for one small question that was asked near the end of one of the debates. The questioner asked each of them what their greatest fear was in the War on Terror. Both of them replied, with little hesitation, that it was nuclear weapons in the hands of the terrorists. So, if George Bush and John Kerry actually agree on this, wouldn't it be prudent to prevent it from happening? Like it or not, if Iran gets the bomb, the terrorists have it as well.

(3) I wonder just how endangered American cities would be if the Islamic extremists get the bomb. Obviously, Israel would be endangered. But, the geographic proximity of Europe to the Middle East would make European cities very tempting targets to a new nuclear power with only medium-range ballistic missiles. Plus, there is the fact that the Europeans and Islam have been fighting for about a thousand years.

(4) Would the Israelis have to fly over Iraq to bomb Iran? Couldn't they reach Iran by flying over Turkey? Also, doesn't Israel have a few subs with cruise missile capability?

Thanks for the comment, Dad of Chester! And all other commenters!

"Also, doesn't Israel have a few subs with cruise missile capability?"

Shhh!! No one's supposed to know....