Of Might and Right
Should Iran Be Attacked?
Joseph S. Nye
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President George W. Bush has said that Iran’s development of nuclear weapons is unacceptable, and recent press accounts suggest that his administration is exploring preventive military options. In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has defied the diplomatic efforts of the European Union and others, using the nuclear issue to stir rally domestic support. Is it too late to prevent a showdown?
Iran claims that its nuclear program is aimed solely at peaceful uses, and that it has the right to develop uranium enrichment and other technologies as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But it spent 18 years deceiving inspectors from the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency, leading some countries to argue that Iran destroyed its credibility and forfeited its rights to enrichment on its own soil.
Russia has offered to provide nuclear enrichment and reprocessing services for the civilian reactor it is building in Iran. If Iran were interested solely in peaceful uses, the Russian offer or some other plan (such as placing stocks of low enriched uranium in Iran) could meet their needs. Iran’s insistence on enrichment inside the country is widely attributed to its desire to produce highly enriched uranium for a bomb.
Would an Iranian bomb really be so bad? Some argue that it could become the basis of stable nuclear deterrence in the region, analogous to the nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But statements by Iranian leaders denying the Holocaust and urging the destruction of Israel have not only cost Iran support in Europe, but are unlikely to make Israel willing to gamble its existence on the prospect of stable deterrence.
Nor is it likely that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and others will sit passively while the Persian Shia gain the bomb. They will likely follow suit, and the more weapons proliferate in the volatile Middle East, the more likely it is that accidents and miscalculations could lead to their use. Moreover, there are genuine fears that rogue elements in a divided Iranian government might leak weapons technology to terrorist groups.
These are the dangers that lead some to contemplate air strikes to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities before they can make weapons. At first glance, a “surgical” strike may look tempting. But military options are less attractive when carefully analyzed. Iran’s nuclear facilities are dispersed; some are underground. If one adds suppression of air defenses, such a strike might involve roughly 600 targets – far from surgical.
Moreover, while an air strike might set back Iran’s program by a few years, it would solidify nationalist support for the government and the nuclear program, particularly because one attack would not be enough. The process of protracted strikes could thwart positive political changes among the younger generation, thus reducing the chances of a more democratic and benign Iran emerging in the future.
At the same time, Iran has effective means of retaliation. It might not be able to close the Strait of Hormuz, but threats to refineries, storage facilities, and tankers would send oil prices even higher. Moreover, Iran’s support of terrorist organizations, such as Hezbollah, could bring violence to other countries. With the outcome of Bush’s ill-advised war in Iraq uncertain and his legacy depending heavily upon finding a political solution, Iran’s support for Iraqi Shiite radicals could give it considerable leverage.
When Bush administration officials say that “all options are on the table,” they are warning the Iranians that the use of force is possible. But one is tempted to believe them when they add that they are now focused on diplomacy. As Theodore Roosevelt once said, negotiations may go better when you talk softly but carry a big stick. At the same time, however, Iran knows how costly it would be for the Americans (and perhaps the Israelis) to use force, which reduces the effect of the threat.
At present, a diplomatic solution does not look promising. Iran has threatened to leave the NPT if sanctions are imposed, and Russia and China worry that even modest targeted sanctions could escalate and ultimately legitimize an American use of force that they wish to avoid. China wants to preserve its access to Iranian oil, and Russia seeks to preserve a valuable commercial market. But both realize that a failure to resolve the issue in the context of the UN (in which they are major stakeholders as permanent members of the Security Council) could severely damage the future of that institution.
Today, the diplomatic package consists mostly of penalties, albeit the small ones of targeted sanctions. Their main effect will be psychological if widespread support for them creates a sense in Iran that it has isolated itself. Unlike North Korea, Iran is more likely to care about its international standing.
The diplomatic package could be made more attractive if the US would add more positive incentives. Through a credible intermediary, the US could offer to consider security guarantees and relief from existing sanctions if Iran agrees to forego domestic enrichment and accept the Russian offer, perhaps garbed as an IAEA-backed international consortium in which Iran could participate. This would mean abandoning the temptations of coercive regime change that hamstrung American diplomacy in Bush’s first term.
By increasing economic and cultural ties, diplomacy might unleash the soft power that could contribute to more gradual regime transformation over the longer term. Meanwhile, such an approach might avoid the costly use of force and buy time for a more benign outcome than what lies at the end of the current path of events.
Joseph S. Nye, a former Assistant US Secretary of Defense under President Clinton, is Professor at Harvard and the author of Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2006.
www.project-syndicate.org
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