Is the Iran Nuclear Threat Real or Invented?
Iran and the magnitude of its threat has become a larger question mark in the debate about Iraq and President Bush’s commitment to troop escalations to stabilize Iraq. I am not a foreign policy expert by any stretch of the imagination, but the inferences that I drew from the State of the Union address and subsequent interviews and statements by the Administration so alarmed me that I decided to research the question of whether there is a true threat or it is simply an invention by the Bush administration to justify a wildly unpopular escalation.
I. Official Documents
For the official position, I began with the “official” House intelligence report released August 23, 2006, Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States. This is an unclassified document prepared to analyze the Iranian Threat for public consumption.
Some key points:
Iran has conducted a clandestine uranium enrichment program for nearly two decades in violation of its International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards agreement, and despite its claims to the contrary, Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. The U.S. Intelligence Community believes that Tehran probably has not yet produced or acquired the fissile material (weapons-grade nuclear fuel) needed to produce a nuclear weapon; Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte has stated that Iran will not be “in a position to have a nuclear weapon” until “sometime between the beginning of the next decade and the middle of the next decade”.6 (Page 4)
On the very next page, the report states:
…the United States lacks critical information needed for analysts to make many of their judgments with confidence about Iran and
there are many significant information gaps. A special concern is major gaps in our knowledge of Iranian nuclear, biological, and chemical programs. US policymakers and intelligence officials believe, without exception, that the United States must collect more and better intelligence on a wide range of Iranian issues –its political dynamics, economic health, support for terrorism, the nature of its involvement in Iraq, the status of its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons efforts, and many more topics of interest.
It goes on to make the assertions later in the report that Iran “probably has an offensive biological weapons program” and “offensive chemical weapons program”, but admits having no evidence to prove those assertions.
This report appears to be an effort on the part of the intelligence community to shape the foreign policy debate with regard to Iran with unproven assertions, unstated facts, and known facts placed inside the most negative framework possible.
The Brookings Institute (well-known for their hawkish positions and warmongering attitudes), gave Congress this testimony, summarized by Brookings this way:
Pollack argued that key Iranian leaders remain hostile to the United States and to the West; they have refused to embrace the norms of the international community; they are determined to overturn the status quo.
…the United States must be prepared for [Iran] to pursue all of these goals with the same mix of rhetoric, diplomacy, bullying, subversion, and terrorism that they employed throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Pollack said that within the framework of a new containment of Iran, the United States should consider the possibility of waging a targeted air campaign aimed at Iran’s nuclear facilities as a last resort.
The Brookings testimony gives valuable insight into the Administration’s position on Iran; namely, that they pose a threat (proven or unproven) and should be “contained”.
II. Other Points of View
From the Carnegie Endowment For International Peace (Proliferation News and Resources), this analysis by Director Joseph Cirincione:
There is no need for military strikes against Iran. The country is five to ten years away from the ability to enrich uranium for fuel or bombs. Even that estimate, shared by the Defense Intelligence Agency and experts at IISS, ISIS, and University of Maryland assumes Iran goes full-speed ahead and does not encounter any of the technical problems that typically plague such programs. This is not a nuclear bomb crisis, it is a nuclear regime crisis. US Ambassador John Bolton has correctly pointed out that this is a key test for the Security Council. If Iran is not stopped the entire nonproliferation regime will be weakened, and with it the UN system.
But it will have to be diplomats, not F-15s that stop the mullahs. An air strike against a soft target, such as the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan (which this author visited in 2005) would inflame Muslim anger, rally the Iranian public around an otherwise unpopular government and jeopardize further the US position in Iraq. Finally, the strike would not, as is often said, delay the Iranian program. It would almost certainly speed it up. That is what happened when the Israelis struck at the Iraq program in 1981.
The viewpoints of Cirincione and the official Intelligence reports converge on this point: Iran’s commitment to develop nuclear weapons technology is a threat. They diverge on the timeline Iran is on for this development and most importantly, the international response. (Related Links: Deadly Arsenals, Iran Cascade , which analyzes the steps Iran would need to take to succeed at uranium enrichment and nuclear proliferation)
The Washington Quarterly aggregates authors’ articles and opinions from think tanks and universities in the US and around the world. Their editorial board includes representatives from the Carnegie Foundation, The Brookings Institute, Harvard University, Fudan University (Shanghai), PIR Center, Moscow, and many others. Because of the diverse editorial board and group of contributors, I place more weight on their analysis as one which develops from many voices, each with their own perspective and concerns. The Winter 2006-2007 Issue has some excellent analyses of the “Iran Question”.
From Elliot Hen-Tov’s article “Understanding Iran’s New Authoritarianism” presents a balanced analysis of the gradual shift of political bases from the entrenched Muslim extremist clerics to a broader-based, but still fundamentalist regime. HIs analyis of Iran’s nuclear threat:
“Despite Tehran’s denial that it is building nuclear weapons and controverseal but reasonable economic arguments that it is developing a civilian nuclear energy base to free up more oil for exports and foreign earnings, there are at least three structural reasons to suggest Iran’s nuclear program is not limited to civilian use. First, for purely civilian nuclear energy, it makes no economic sense to build a vast nuclear program…Second, Iran has a long record of lying about rather unimportant but nevertheless seret activities. Third, Iran’s paralell ballistic missile program…is irrational unless they will be armed with weapons of mass destruction.” (Page 6)
Hen-Tov goes on to say this:
“One should view Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons through the prism of elite factionalism and regime development. The successful acquisition of nuclear weapons would acclerate a militarization of Iran’s regime. It will provide the Iranian regime with limited immunity against external threats and thus help preserve the regime, especially because domestic opposition is currently immaterial. In fact, if domestic forces do arise to challenge the regimem, nuclearization, portrayed as an issue of national pride, would become one of the few powerful tools that could provide regime legitimacy and enable popular mobilization.” (Page 7)
His analysis of a military strike against Iran:
“…a military strike against Iran would rally the Iranian poplation as well as the international community firmly in support of the regime. Instead, the United Nations could issue a set of sanctions against Iran. In that case, the effect would depend on the nature of the sanctions. Economically, Iran is fairly immune to sanctions in the short term. Only a limitation on oil sales would have any immediate impact on decisionmaking in Tehran…Iran needs to integrate into the world economy eventually, but it can endure its isolationist stance for the foreseeable future.”
“…Iran is gradually undermining its unique clerical theocracy with a shift toward conventional authoritarian models. Lacking any political or economic urgency for reform, this internal regime change is likey to address its most serious structural weakness: factionalism.”
From the article “A Win-Win U.S. Strategy for Dealing with Iran” by Michael McFaul, Abbas Milani and Larry Diamond:
In its nuclear negotiations with the rest of the world, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been pursuing a strategy of “heads you lose, tails we win.” In its carefully crafted and creatively ambiguous response to UN Security Council Resolution 1696, the Iranian regime claims that it is willing to negotiate on all issues, including suspension of enrichment activities, but will not accept any recondition for such negotiations.
Washington should propose to end the economic embargo, unfreeze all Iranian assets, restore full diplomatic relations, support the initiation of talks on Iran’s entry into the WTO, encourage foreign investment, and otherwise move toward a normal relationship with the Iranian government. In return, Tehran would have to agree to three conditions: a verifiable and indefinite suspension of activity that could feed into a nuclear weapons development program, including all enrichment of uranium, with a comprehensive and intrusive international inspections regime administered by the International Atomic Energy Agency; an end to support for terrorist groups and activities, including training, intelligence support, and weapons shipments for Hizballah, Hamas, and radical Shi‘ite militias in Iraq; and affirmation of basic human rights principles under international covenants and a recognition of the legitimacy of international and domestic efforts to monitor those conditions.
Conclusion
No matter what side of the argument one is on, it’s clear that Iran’s development of nuclear weapons presents a global threat that must be addressed. All agree on that. The question isn’t whether there’s a threat; it’s how best to deal with the threat and the time frame for the threat to fully materialize. The conservative viewpoint argues that the threat exists today, and a military response is required. Others argue that Iran is at least a decade away from realizing their goal. Those are compelling arguments and are contained within the links provided here.
What Next?
Is the answer an immediate military escalation with Iran as the target? Or is a diplomatic approach best? What do you think?
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