Richard North of the EU Referendum blog has this post about the Iranian nuclear threat. North is manifestly knowledgeable about the technical details of various weapons, as many of his posts demonstrate. North is concerned but not alarmed about the situation, basically finding that the Iranians will have a real problem coming up with a deliverable weapon — i.e. getting from a device to a weapon is still not kid stuff. “Putting various strands together, for Iran to pose a credible threat to Israel, it must not only have a functioning bomb, but also a reliable means of delivery. And here, not all the pieces are falling into place.” The post and comments are good. RTWT.
Month: February 2006
It all boils down to this
If Iran had nuclear weapons and couldn’t be invaded, can y’all think of any reason why terrorists wouldn’t get support from the regime for staging conventional attacks on the Great Satan?
The world already saw our lack of nuclear retaliation for 9/11, and our reluctance to go looking for Osama bin Laden in nuclear-armed Pakistan. A nuclear-armed Iranian regime wouldn’t have to be all that crazy to think they could get away with sponsoring more conventional attacks once they’ve got their nuclear umbrella.
Quote of the Day
In the Canadian case, the Anglosphere temperament that values stability, paternalism, and ordered freedom is stronger than the competing strand that values individualism, enterprise, and a more [libertarian] concept of freedom. In the UK, the two temperaments are roughly matched. In the USA, the former temperament is a distinct minority and the latter is more prevalent. This causes many people to believe that one temperament is or should be seen as expressive of a “national culture”. But the members of the minority temperament are also part of national life, and each have created a valid expression of that temperament’s values in national politics.
Decision Time on Iran
In a comment to this post, Lex wrote:
If I were an Iranian, I would absolutely insist that my country have nuclear weapons, whether I loved or hated the Mullahs, whether I loved or hated the USA. . . So, the fact that pretty much everybody in Iran who does not want to see their country attacked or conquered wants it to have nuclear weapons doesn’t bother me. I call that common sense.
This statement does not make sense to me. If I were Iranian I wouldn’t want the hated regime to have nukes, because who knows what they would do with them, what trouble they would bring onto the Iranian people, and to have nukes would be to invite invasion by the USA and/or attack by Israel. Iran is a populous, wealthy country and can readily defend itself and its oil without nukes, especially now that Saddam Hussein is gone. (Who is left to try and take the oil?) The people running Iran are shrewd and know that the USA has no taste for involvement in their country–indeed they are counting on it. The whole point of Iran’s having nukes is to entrench the dictatorship and allow the mullahs to make mischief abroad. They know we’re going to try to deter them and they’re betting it won’t work. I have a lot of respect for their judgment; they’ve been right so far and have played their hand superbly.
The USA should try to impose costs on the Iranian regime, and if possible topple it and kill the leaders, by any practicable means. Kling’s proposal to target oil facilities is a good one, since the regime needs the revenue more than we need the oil, and attacks on oil infrastructure would kill far fewer Iranians than would attacks on cities.
It would be nice if Iranians overthrew the dictatorship but it’s delusion to pin our hopes on it. Too many oppressed peoples, from Iraqi Shiites to Panamanians to Kurds to Hungarians, have seen their hopes for rescue by the USA evaporate. The Iranian democrats aren’t going to chance it unless it’s clear that we will back them up, and it isn’t. The only way to make it clear is to commit ourselves to overthrowing the regime, or at least to destroying enough nuclear and oil facilities to weaken it and set back the Iranian nuclear program.
If the USA acquiesces to Iranian nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other countries are going to want them too. Who can blame them? I think that’s an outcome best avoided, and the way to avoid it is to attack Iran while we still can at relatively low cost.
As for deterrence, I don’t think we have a lot of leverage unless we are willing to fight at any time. Otherwise it looks like we are bluffing, as I think we are. Ahmadinejad & Co. are probably not suicidal, but then they are also not likely to hang around at any of the places that we or Israel are likely to bomb. They also have a record of brutality toward citizens of their own country. I see no reason to trust the lives of millions of people to the mullahs’ judgment, decency or sense of self-preservation.
Remember that while the USSR refrained from nuclear war it also supported proxy wars against us in a variety of venues, some of them at great cost to us. And the Soviets were interested in conquest rather than genocide. The mullahs appear to be interested in both. I see no reason to assume that they will not cause us a huge amount of trouble even if they don’t explode any nukes.
And what happens if a nuke in a chartered airliner explodes in Tel Aviv or Riyadh or a European city? Are we going to nuke Teheran? Even if we aren’t sure of the explosion’s origin? I think the mullahs would have a good chance of getting away with it, and they are risk takers.
The notion that we can rely for our safety on the sobriety of dictators is essentially the same kind of flawed thinking that led to our complacency in the years before 9/11.
The possibility that Bush currently lacks the political wherewithal to attack Iran does not lessen our failure of will.
Related posts: Here, here, here, here and here.
Updating JFK for Iran — or Cold War? Been There, Done That
I mentioned that the soft kill has to have a hard deterrence component, what I called Unilateral Assured Destruction. I think that should look something like the following.
In the course of his speech to the nation during the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy said this:
It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.
I have long thought this was a model of statesmanly clarity.
President Bush should say something similar to the Iranians, to get maximum clarity into the nuclear stand-off we are going to be living with.
It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any attack with a nuclear weapon originating in Iran, or deemed by the United States in its sole discretion to have originated in Iran, delivered by any means, against any nation, as an attack by Iran on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon Iran.
Bush would then go on:
Let me be absolutely clear. Any nuclear weapon detonated by any terrorist anywhere in the world against anyone will be presumed to have originated in Iran and will cause, without further notice, an immediate and large-scale nuclear attack by the United States on Iran. The attack will be directed against all military, political and economic targets, as well as centers of population. The goal of this attack will be the destruction of Iran as a functioning state and society permanently and completely. Again, to be absolutely clear, the United States now has contingency plans in place to execute any such attack on very short notice. The retaliatory attack as planned will immediately kill the majority of the people now living in Iran. Let the Iranian government and the entire world know what will happen if Iran ever tries to make good on its threats. Moreover, the Iranian government would be wise to exert itself to prevent any nuclear weapons from falling into terrorist hands. This is not a negotiating position, it is a statement of policy and a warning. I do not think there is any way for me to make our intentions more clear. Let the Iranian government conduct itself accordingly.
We won’t get this kind of clarity. But the world would be a safer place if we did.
UPDATE: To be absolutely clear, this would be declaratory policy. What we should actually do if, God forbid, we suffered a nuclear terrorist attack, would have to be decided at the time. The point of this is to make the Mullah’s stop and think and, in particular, realize that any open use of a weapon might well lead to their annihilation. Possession of nuclear weapons imposes grown-up rules on those who want to play for big stakes at the big table.