Nuclear Iran: Squaring the Circle

How to stop Iran’s race toward nuclear weapons? In a “secret memo” sent to the White House and exposed mid-April by the New York Times, Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressed his confusion: The United States has no good solution — or no solution at all. Coming from this Republican appointed to the Pentagon by George Bush, Jr., and kept on by Barack Obama, his confession has considerable weight.

At 66, Bob Gates, former CIA director and ex-Sovietologist, is the most trusted man in the White House when it comes to strategic issues. This Kansas native is the quintessence of realistic foreign policy. He distrusts the “hawks” as much as the “pacifists,” and abhors the “as is.”

But on Iran, Bob Gates’ sense of powerlessness is clear. It is less a sign of weakness than recognition of the complexity of the situation. In this case, there is only one certainty: The Islamic Republic wants to build the capacity to produce “the” bomb. The rest is just a mixture of questions without obvious answers. Let’s take a closer look at some of the parameters of the Iranian equation.

It is certain that Iran “meets all the criteria of nuclear proliferation,” said political analyst François Heisbourg. Iran has acquired the capacity to enrich uranium, which can have only one purpose: military. In a recent report, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) suspects Tehran of working on a missile designed to carry a nuclear warhead. Even Russia and China, the two “major powers” of the United Nations Security Council who are closest to the Islamic Republic, have their doubts. They take the peaceful professions of faith from Tehran with a grain of salt, even after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, reiterated them at the U.N.

More directly, the United States accuses Iran of preparing a nuclear weapon, but claims to be unaware of whether or not Iran has decided to begin production of the weapon. According to Time magazine, Washington believes the Iranians are still hesitant and that they would require, in any event, two to three years to have an operational missile.

Iran is determined to be a “threshold country;” that is to say, a country that has all the elements of an atomic weapon, but has not manufactured one. Problem: There are few examples of “threshold countries” that have remained on the “threshold” … Look at Pakistan and India. Which leads to the question Bob Gates has posed: How do we stop the Iranian nuclear program?

Are sanctions effective? The prevailing opinion is that they are useless. Iran has lived under a regime of sanctions since 1979. They had time to establish a network of fronts in order to bypass all the embargoes. In June, the United Nations will decide on a new series of sanctions against Tehran, who has been accused of not respecting its obligations to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But China, a major importer of Iranian oil, and Russia, the main military supplier of the Islamic Republic, have said they would only support modest sanctions… Hence America’s idea, supported by Germany, France and the United Kingdom, of dubbing the U.N. sanctions “voluntary” unilateral sanctions meant to “make things a lot worse.”

Because some believe that harsh sanctions — Iran imports 40 percent of its gasoline — can seriously weaken the regime. And shake its confidence. The Iranian opposition is opposed to sanctions, which would penalize a population in a state of latent rebellion against authority.

Is there an option of “limited military strikes”? The most common answer: no. Such strikes would only delay the Iranian program very briefly. They would trigger what we want to avoid: a nuclear arms race in the region, given that only those countries with the bomb — see North Korea — would not be attacked. Finally, they are too likely to not remain “limited.”

Tehran’s response may lead the Middle East into war. Iran would “give” to its allies, Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas, who are both against Israel and whose reply would not be limited to Lebanon, and Syria would affect that in turn, etc. The Iranian opposition, in the face of external aggression, will rally the regime.

However, neither Israel nor the United States say they have abandoned this option. It is not clear that the Islamic Republic is able to retaliate seriously, or to instigate serious retaliations, to limited strikes against its facilities. It could also decide to cash in on an attack by resuming its program while benefiting from an aura of the “martyr.”

Can we live with a nuclear Iran? Prevailing thought is that it would be unacceptable. It would be an immediate factor in the region’s nuclear arms race; Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia being the first in line. The American Thomas Schelling, one of the great thinkers on nuclear weapons, notes that the U.S. does not lack the means to dissuade Cairo, Ankara and Riyadh. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested a “grand bargain” with Tehran: “The Iranians are determined to have a nuclear program… Notice I did not say a nuclear weapon,” and, taking into account its security interests, moderates its regional radicalism. Given its status as a local power, it ceases to thwart any Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and to threaten stability in the Gulf region and in Lebanon.

An (unsteady) prognosis? Iran, which is not far from the “threshold,” will eventually enter into a “Powell-type negotiation” with the United States.