The Cincinnati Post August 16, 2005
Raid won't disarm Iran
By Daniel T. Barkley
Growing concern about advances in Iran's nuclear capabilities has fanned speculation of a military attack against key nuclear Iranian facilities. President Bush recently told an Israeli television station that he has not ruled out the use of force against Iran.
Mr. Bush's choice of media venues to announce the possible use of force against Iran cannot be ignored: In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor when it believed Saddam Hussein was close to producing a nuclear bomb.
Unilateralists have pointed to the Israeli strike as an example of successful pre-emptive disarmament. While the destruction of Osiraq may have slowed Saddam Hussein's nuclear program it by no means stopped it. In fact, in destroying Osiraq Israel accelerated weapons proliferation and helped destabilize the Middle East.
The destruction of Osiraq encouraged Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries to accelerate the development of less conspicuous weapons of mass destruction (WMD) such as chemical weapons and to develop long-range ballistic missiles. The Osiraq experience also appears to have taught Iran that security is about spreading risks. Unlike Iraq, Iran's nuclear facilities are not concentrated in one place. According to GlobalSecurity.Org: "In all, there are perhaps two dozen suspected nuclear facilities in Iran ... air strikes on Iran would vastly exceed the scope of the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osiraq nuclear center in Iraq, and would more resemble the opening days of the 2003 air campaign against Iraq."
The destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities will not end or even curtail its quest for nuclear weapons. Such an assault could justifiably lead to Tehran withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and working with North Korea on building a bomb. This would not be the first time Iran has turned to North Korea for help: during the Iraq-Iran war Pyongyang was Iran's principal supplier of missile technology and analysts believe Iran's 900-mile Shahab-3 missile is based on North Korea's No Dong missile.
Attacking Iran would hurt our "rebuilding" efforts in Iraq and further strain U.S. relations with key allies. And the United States will not be able to decouple itself from an Israeli air raid. Destroying Iran's nuclear facilities requires Israel have access to U.S.-controlled Iraqi air space. Allowing Israeli planes to fly over Iraq in order to attack Iran would trigger outrage in the Islamic World.
Unilateral aggression against Iran would expose an egregious double standard that's been confounding disarmament in the Middle East for more than two decades. Disarming Iran by force says in effect, that Iran (and all other Middle Eastern states) must not be allowed a nuclear capability but Israel's undeclared and internationally uninspected arsenal is permissible. And declaring Iranian leaders to be irrational and incapable of understanding a nuclear threat doesn't justify the double standard: It was Saddam Hussein's threat to use chemical weapons against Iranian cities in 1988 that got Iranian leaders to negotiate ending of the war. Saddam made similar threats against Israel during the 1991 Persian Gulf War but did not send chemically loaded missiles to Tel Aviv for fear of nuclear retaliation. Deterrence does work against "rogue states."
Attacking Iran doesn't make good economic sense either. Iran is OPEC's second-largest oil producer and holds 10 percent of the world's proven oil reserves. It also has the world's second-largest natural gas reserves (after Russia). Oil and gas prices have recently soared in response to rising global demand and heightened security concerns in the Middle East. Iran is unlikely to maintain its current level of oil production in the face of a massive military assault. The loss of just a fraction of Iranian oil production either though collateral damage, sabotage or economic embargo could trigger a severe economic global recession.
If Iran is indeed developing nuclear weapons, we can thank our disarmament policy in Iraq: "open your country to weapon inspectors and get invaded." The invasion of Iraq seriously undermined the credibility of disarmament.
The message from Iraq and North Korea to Iran and other countries is the way to escape Iraq's fate is to "get a nuclear bomb quickly, before the United States finds out about it."
One of the main problems with preemptive disarmament is that it is not carried out by experts but by governments with political agendas beyond simple arms control. And the Bush Administration cannot be trusted: The "Downing Street memos" disprove Mr. Bush's often-made claim that the use of force was "last option for any president."
Not only did the White House seek to discredit Joe Wilson's finding that Iraq had not sought uranium from Niger but Bush Administration officials exposed the identity of Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a covert CIA agent in retaliation.
Without neutral and comprehensive weapons inspections, governments are left to "sex-up" their own dossiers, and rely on forged documents to justify aggression.
Given Iraq's level of technology in 1981, it could not have built a nuclear weapon without considerable technical assistance from abroad.
Even Israel, a country known for its technical prowess, did not develop its nuclear capability in isolation: the Osiraq plant was constructed by the French, who had built an identical plant for Israel.
The dependency on foreign technology means that disarmament that targets critical equipment and components can be successful. Indeed, the U.N. weapons inspections regimes of the 1990s, not "Operation Iraqi Freedom," are responsible for disarming Iraq.
Raiding Iran's nuclear facilities will have the unintended consequence of accelerating proliferation and further destabilizing the Middle East. And it looks as if the United States may go it alone, again: Only hours after President Bush refused to rule out the use of force against Iran, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder promptly rejected such a threat of military force. An attack on Iran would undermine diplomatic disarmament efforts and represent a continuation of the failed policy of unilateralism.
Daniel Barkley of Cincinnati teaches microeconomics at Northern Kentucky University.
© Copyright 2005, The Cincinnati Post
