War with Iran? - 3

Steven Simon

Steven Simon is the Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. The former director for global issues and senior director for transnational threats at the National Security Council, he is the co-author (with Daniel Benjamin) of The Age of Sacred Terrorand The Next Attack. He recently published After the Surge: The Case for U.S. Military Disengagement from Iraq.

The administration is undoubtedly planning some sort of action, but hasn't decided whether to carry it out. The danger lies in inadvertent escalation, where a saber-rattling United States and a rattled Iran stumble into a war that neither really wants. An American raid on an Iranian office in Iraq could lead to deaths on both sides and a serious confrontation, or a U.S. cruiser in the Gulf could shoot down an Iranian airliner (as happened in the late 1980s).

If I were in Tehran I'd be looking at U.S. words and actions for strategic warning of an attack. I'd probably take into account Bush's worldview and leadership style, too. As is typical in these situations, the facts don't provide a clear picture of U.S. intentions. Both Condoleezza Rice and President Bush have emphasized that there are no plans to attack Iran and that the nuclear issue has to be settled via diplomacy. Yet last October, Bush told NATO's secretary-general that “the idea of Iran having a nuclear weapon is unacceptable.” These were strong words, suggesting that at the end of the day the United States would do whatever was necessary to prevent this outcome. Bush has also portrayed himself as a man willing to make hard decisions to eliminate risks to American security, even if the threat won't mature until some point in the future. Remember what Condoleezza Rice said about Iraq in 2002? “There will always be some uncertainty” in determining how close Iraq may be to obtaining a nuclear weapon, but “we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

Against this background, the administration has suddenly ratcheted up accusations of Iranian meddling in Iraq, showcasing weapons that have circulated in Iraq for years. And the White House leaked a “shoot to kill” order against Iranians suspected of aiding insurgents in Iraq. Senator Joe Lieberman, an administration surrogate, even called Iran a “sponsor” of the Mahdi army. And the Pentagon has dispatched two carrier battle groups to the Gulf and a third to the western Pacific, just a few days' steaming from the Indian Ocean. If I were in Tehran, my indicator lights would already have burnt out. That said, some senior Iranians see the United States as a paper tiger, mired in a hopeless fight in Iraq, and they don't really believe the United States will attack. This raises the possibility that Iran will feel free to poke Washington in the eye with a stick, thereby heightening the risk of war.

To work, diplomacy requires the implicit threat of force. But to avoid an accidental war, the threat has to be tacit—just apparent enough for the other guy to know it's there and that you're prepared to use it when all else has failed. If it's too blatant, you risk inviting a preemptive attack and, in this case, even reinforcing the other guys' incentive to pursue a weapons program. The implied hammer also induces more European activism, which is a good thing. Although strikes against Isfahan, Arak, and Natanz could inflict severe damage on Iran's nuclear program, the fact is, from the moment the first bomb hits the ground, the United States will be at war with the Islamic Republic. Iran has shown its capacity to absorb terrible punishment and still stay in the fight. Given America's own vulnerabilities and likely lack of allies, this would be a war we could start well enough but not one that we would necessarily win.

Anthony Cordesman

Anthony Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He formerly served as national security assistant to Senator John McCain, as director of intelligence assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and as civilian assistant to the deputy secretary of defense.

There is no evidence that the United States is building up for a major military confrontation with Iran. The military assets aren't in place. The deployment of aircraft carriers might be useful for some low-level operations, but they are not the weapon of choice for a significant attack, and there's no sign of a serious troop buildup either. Also, the United States has just scored a major diplomatic advantage at the United Nations Security Council [which in December imposed sanctions against Iran's nuclear program]. Some sort of flashpoint might develop in the Gulf, but it's hard to see what it would be or why it would lead to a major conflict. In the late 1980s, the United States and Iran clashed in the Gulf, but that did not lead to any type of escalation.

Some type of preventive or preemptive air and missile strikes on Iran's nuclear and missile facilities are possible in the future, but from a pragmatic viewpoint they make no sense at this point given the diplomatic situation and the need for a lot more United States credibility and international support if it decides to act. Furthermore, such strikes don't make sense until Iran has much larger and more valuable nuclear assets. All the strikes would accomplish would be the collapse of two underground facilities. Why do it now, rather than wait until Iran creates truly high-value targets and has convinced the international community there is no peaceful alternative?

Far too many people are crying wolf. It's an awkward coalition of people with very different positions. For example, you have people on the antiproliferation side saying we have to do this now and urgent calls for action from people alleging to speak on behalf of Israel. There are bloggers rushing to exaggerate every word from United States and Iranian officials. There are political activists who oppose the Iraq War or the Bush Administration who see Iran as a coming war almost regardless of the lack of evidence. Some of these people have been saying for years that the United States was about to attack Iran. Some of this is bordering on the theater of the absurd.

We do need to do everything possible to cool things down and reduce the risk that all of this rhetoric could lead either side to overreact. Whether or not you believe that dialogue will pay off, we should be pursuing it. Secretary Rice has said that the United States wants dialogue and that Iran is at fault for the lack of it, but there is a question about whether we could be more aggressive. In Iraq and Afghanistan, there are areas of common interest to both sides. It would also be useful to ratchet back the rhetoric on both ends. The national security adviser, the secretary of defense, and other administration officials have become more cautious in their statements, but there's still a low-level drumbeat of neoconservative excess.

Patrick Clawson

Patrick Clawson is deputy director for research of the conservative Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He is the author of Eternal Iran: Contiuity and Chaoswith Michael Rubin, and Getting Ready for a Nuclear Ready Iran, edited with Henry Sokolski.

There is every indication that the Bush Administration has decided that now is not the time for military action because it believes diplomacy offers a better way to get Iran to back off from its nuclear ambitions. There are signs that could be interpreted as preparations for military action, but it's important to note that the United States spends billions and billions every year preparing for global thermonuclear war with Russia. That's not because it's believed that we will carry it out anytime soon, but because, if it were to happen, it would be such a profoundly catastrophic event that we need to think about how to avoid it and what to do if it does happen. The U.S. intelligence community has taken every opportunity to say that there is time to deal with the problem before Iran reaches the bomb stage. Meanwhile, Secretary Rice has staked her legacy on multilateral diplomacy, and there are few matters in which she is more involved than this one. The uniformed military at the senior level rarely misses an opportunity to say that the military is already overstretched. All of this suggests that this is a problem that will be worked out using diplomacy, for now.

Military action is clearly undesirable, but it may be necessary if Iran takes certain aggressive stances. For instance, if Iran were to leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and announce that it intends to test a nuclear weapon, this issue would be revisited. Given the unpredictability of Iran's leadership, it would be unwise to suggest that military action is unthinkable. The only circumstance under which the United States would employ preemptive force would be in the face of a dire Iranian threat. If Iran were to take aggressive steps, the reaction to military action by the Iranian people and much of the world might well be, “What did Iran expect?”

It's also hard to gauge the likely reaction of the Iranian government. In 1988, the United States sank half of Iran's Navy, downed an Iranian Airbus, and gave Iraq intelligence that led to the destruction of two Iranian divisions, and left Iran defenseless against an Iraqi invasion. The reaction of the hard-line Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, was to accept a ceasefire with Iraq. The United States paid a very small price in its relationship with the Iranian people, who were then exhausted by war. If the Iranian public were to become frightened by its government's nuclear efforts and frightened as well by the effect of world opinion upon Iran, the reaction to military force could be very different than the reaction if military force were used tomorrow. The best course of action right now is tough enforcement of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1737 so that we can slow down Iran's nuclear program and give diplomacy a chance to work, and so that Iran can recognize its fundamental weaknesses and our abiding strengths.

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