Note: The following is a guest post by DemocracyRules.
How Do We Stop Them and What If We Don’t?
This posting follows my previous one of “HOW TO STOP IRAN”
In Part 1, I asked, Do They Have the Motivation, the Means, and the Opportunity, to use nuclear weapons on other countries? I concluded that the best evidence shows they have the motivation and are developing the means. Ahmadinejad is constantly talking about it. At its simplest, the means would consist of (1) sufficient Highly Enriched Uranium, (HEU, 84% or better Uranium-235) (Iran has stockpiled 250 tons of the uranium gas needed to make HEU), (2) a gun-type mechanism to explode the HEU, and (3) some type of delivery device to detonate the bomb in a populated area. All these components would have to be quite reliable.
The obvious opportunity target would be Tel Aviv, Israel. It is a large city, a commercial center, accessible by several routes, including the sea. The bomb would kill at least hundreds of thousands of Israelis, and profoundly disrupt or disable the country. Jerusalem would be spared.
The most reliable time-line that I have been able to locate is from the Israeli Defence Forces, who estimate that Iran will have a weapon ready by 2010, three years from now. They do not specify the status of the delivery mechanism, and this is hard to estimate. A Tel-Aviv bomb could probably be transported into the sea-front by boat. Thus we have time, but not a lot of time to stop Iran.
As I pointed out in my previous post, Iran’s plan has a serious problem with the consequences of retaliation from Israel. If I was Iran, I would arrange for Al Qaida to take responsibility for the bomb, to confuse Israel and the International community. In any case, I have discounted the complexities of the retaliation from my reasoning here, because Iran is obviously not displaying good consequential thinking on most of their international initiatives. I conclude that obliterating even part of Israel is such an attractive prospect that Iran will proceed as soon as they can, irrespective of any retaliation.
Stopping Iran will require either non-violent means, or violent means.
Non-Violent Options
This includes diplomacy, negotiations, incentives, sanctions, containment, embargoes, blockades, espionage/sabotage, and fomenting internal revolution. These should not be construed as peaceful methods. They are not primarily violent, but any of them could trigger violent responses from Iran. Blockades and sabotage are the most risky.
Many others have discussed these options at length. My attention focuses on the options that remain viable within the three year time window that’s left. Most of the non-violent options are now unworkable because of the limited time remaining. Diplomacy, negotiations, incentives, sanctions, and containment are long-term projects, and have all been tried with ingenious and unrelenting vigor. With ten more years they might work, but we probably don’t have that long.
This leaves embargoes, blockades, espionage/sabotage, and fomenting internal revolution. Embargoes cannot directly stop the progress to nuclear weapons, and could slow, but not stop the Iranian economy. Blockades mean the physical interdiction of ships and other export/import traffic. This would likely lead to violent confrontations, primarily in the Persian Gulf, and they are not likely to bring Iran to its knees within the next three years. Espionage and sabotage are not specific enough, and fomenting internal revolution would take too long, and produce uncertain outcomes.
One of the most surprising events is the continued strong commercial ties Iran retains with many businesses based in the liberal democracies. Daimler-Benz, Shell, and many more companies continue their robust business relationships with Iran. An immediate and complete cessation of these activities would help, but the liberal democracies involved in this are unwilling to stop this trade. By now it is probably too late anyway. We can blame the companies and countries later, but that’s not a very satisfying option.
Violent Options
Most people hate thinking about this, but given the problems with nonviolent options, we can expect more discussion of it in the next 36 months. Since Israel is the most threatened by Iran, we can expect that violent events will be either initiated by, or strongly influenced by Israel. The War on Terror allies can be relied upon to dither, digress, and disagree, but Israel will act sometime after January, 2008. Israel confronts a clear and present existential threat in the near future. The triggering event will probably be the assessment that Iran has exceeded the uranium enrichment target of 4% U-235 that is needed for reactor-grade HEU. When Iran broaches that level, it will be reasonably clear that they are going for 84% pure U-235, bomb-grade HEU.
This means that Condi, George Bush, the UN, the EU, Russia, and China, have about one year left to produce results by non-violent means.
There are many potentially effective methods to stop Iran by violent means. These include, among many others, bombing Iran’s only gasoline refinery, seizing Iran’s southern oil fields, or bombing Iranian leaders’ homes and hiding places in a lightning attack. None of these are likely to be done, because they would not be decisive. Liberal democracies strongly rely on dichotomous decision-making regarding war. They invariably try non-violent methods first, and cling to them vainly beyond all reasonable hope of success. They delay war until it’s absolutely necessary. At that point, half-measures of warfare are not feasible, because they do not solve the problem quickly enough.
This leaves us with one simple idea, which will be very complicated to carry out successfully. Israel will bomb the Iranian HEU production sites (mainly Nantez and Isfahan). Paradoxically, nuclear reactors are probably not on the list of essential targets. As I discussed last time, Iran is using centrifuges to make HEU, and reactors are not needed. Iran seems to have slowed their work on reactors.
In the last several years, Israel has been acquiring and developing the capability to conduct aerial bombings of Iranian HEU facilities. They are still working on the details. Most of Iran’s HEU facilities are concealed and/or buried, and the attack will probably require boots on the ground, at least by special forces. We can expect the use of bunker-buster bombs, which may be able to destroy some targets, if successive bombs are dropped repeatedly on exactly the same spots. We can also expect the use of hyperbaric (pressure-wave) bombs in and around Iranian military facilities.
Israel will probably also go for 'regime decapitation' (killing the leaders), given their good success with this strategy against Palestinian terrorists. This will probably involve GPS bombs and commando raids on leaders’ houses and hiding places.
If Israel is not satisfied that they have solved the problem at that point they may use EMF (Electro-Magnetic Force) weapons in and around Iranian military and nuclear facilities. These are a type of nuclear weapon, but are primarily designed to destroy electrical and electronic systems of every type, to disable an enemy. They are designed to minimize lethality for civilians, but hundreds or thousands of civilian casualties could still occur.
If Israel has to, they will use full nuclear weapons. As they have said many times, they would rather be alive, and hated by other nations, than loved, but dead.
Looking for Opportunity
In conflict planning, one thing often overlooked is the use of unexpected opportunity. In international relations, as in life, it is statistically certain that unexpected things will occur. Iran’s oligarchy could fall in a democratic revolution, the Mullahs could all die of flu, the US or its allies could develop new weapons to neutralize Iran. Since 9/11, the allies have capitalized on many serendipitous events. The neutralization of Libya, the democratization of Lebanon, catching the shoe bomber, the Canadian 17, the shampoo bombers, the Fort Dix Six, and killing the head of the Taliban military, this is just a short list of things we have turned to our advantage.
It is reasonable to expect that opportunities will present themselves regarding the Iran situation. By definition we cannot rely upon the unexpected, but we can look carefully for opportunities. The luckiest outcome will be if the Iranians turn out to be incompetent bomb-builders, and are unable to construct a usable nuclear weapon.
What If We Don’t Stop Iran?
What if Iran gets nuclear weapons before we are able to stop them? I have no idea what the allies will do, or should do. I have yet to see anyone propose a peaceful resolution to such an event. No one seems to know. Some claim that a nuclear Iran will not pose a risk, but that seems a fabulous fiction. It is precisely the absence of ideas which argues most strongly why such an outcome needs to be prevented. Every person in every liberal democracy should ask themselves the question: If we don’t stop Iran, what will we do?
More commentary on the box.net 'virtual hard-drive':
Comments