RealClearPolitics.com November 8, 2007
Would Tehran Do the Unthinkable?
By Gregory Scoblete
Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the bloody Palestinian intifada, and scores of jihadist murders around the world, the image of the suicide bomber has been seared into Western consciousness. We have rightly come to fear this instrument of Islamic terrorism that is both difficult to detect and nearly impossible to deter.
So it's not surprising that advocates for a war with Iran raise a novel apparition to rally support: the nation-as-suicide bomber.
The case for a war against the Iranian regime draws on many arguments: Iran's use of terrorist proxies, the regime's evident desire for regional hegemony, the risks that a nuclear Iran might spark a regional arms race, and the country's proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, where nearly a quarter of the world's oil supply transits daily.
Serious reasons all, but even when weighed collectively, it's difficult to see how Iran's nuclear program constitutes such a singular threat to the U.S. that it requires military force to redress - especially at a time when America has two open-ended (and far from stabilized) military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, the Soviet Union was vastly more powerful than Iran and considerably more hostile to U.S. interests at the time it developed its atomic weaponry. Ditto China. Nor did the U.S. use military force to roll back the Pakistani nuclear program, despite that country's support for Islamic terrorists.
Perhaps sensing the flaccidity of the conventional argument, advocates for war with Iran like Norman Podhoretz (a patriarch of the neoconservative movement and an advisor to the Giuliani campaign) invoke the nightmare scenario: that Iran would become the first nation in over half a century to actually use a nuclear weapon in anger.
"The fact of the matter is that, with a religious fanatic like Ahmadinejad and the "mullahcracy" ruling Iran generally, there's no assurance that self-preservation or the protection, preservation of the nation, will deter them," Podhoretz said during a PBS Newshour interview.
It is an alarming claim. No nation in the history of the nuclear era has ever launched an unprovoked nuclear attack. Nor has any nation passed a functioning nuclear device to a terrorist subsidiary. Indeed, as the history of the Cold War, and even the Indian/Pakistan conflict have demonstrated, nuclear weapons tend to have a stabilizing effect on the countries involved. The doctrines of deterrence and mutually assured destruction have successfully transcended cultural, political, ideological and religious boundaries, sobering the minds of even the most belligerent adversaries.
Such history is of little relevance to strike advocates. Iran, they assert, would break this mold. Armed with a nuclear weapon and infused with an implacable fundamentalism, Iranian leaders would turn their nation into a nuclear suicide bomb, willing to court annihilation to deliver a death blow to Israel or even America, "The Great Satan."
Indeed, conservative columnists such as Cliff May and Charles Krauthammer routinely invoke the terror of a "second Holocaust" when discussing Iran's nuclear ambitions. The subtext of such rhetoric is clear: Iran's leaders are genocidal and suicidal, irrational and unstoppable. They are suicide bombers at the helm of a nation state.
But are they?
No one in their right mind would argue that the Iranian regime is a peaceful and beneficial force in Middle Eastern affairs, but are they therefore willing to start World War III, as President Bush suggested in a recent news conference? Are they prepared, as a nation, to become a nuclear suicide bomb just to deal a grievous blow to the United States?
No one can know for sure, but we do have a precedent here. After all, Islamic fundamentalists have ruled Iran for more than a generation, more than enough time to take the measure of their behavior. Here's what we know: since seizing power, the Mullahs ruling Iran have been aggressive. Their first act upon taking power was the seizing of American hostages. They have violently lashed out against America's influence in the region, using their Hezbollah surrogate to attack a Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 and a housing complex occupied by U.S. airmen in Saudi Arabia in 1996.
The fact that Iran has wielded force through proxies and not through its conventional military, however, is a strong indication that the regime understands its strengths and weaknesses. What's more, these signature acts of Iranian violence against the United States were aimed at military targets with the political goal of reducing America's influence in the Middle East. The regime's support for anti-American insurgent elements inside Iraq has a similar purpose. Despicable as this violence is, it differs from al Qaeda's genocidal ambition to kill as many Americans as possible in mass casualty attacks against civilian infrastructure inside the U.S.
What's more, since the Iran/Iraq war, Iran has developed a chemical and biological weapons capability, according to GlobalSecurity.org. Such weapons, while not as singularly destructive as an A-bomb, are much better suited to surreptitious deployment. An Iranian-instigated chemical or biological attack against Israel or the United States has been within the capability of the Iranian regime for at least a decade, and yet they have not launched one. Nor have the Iranians committed 9/11-style terrorist spectaculars against the U.S. homeland despite the relative ease and low cost of such attacks.
All this suggests that Iran understands, and respects, the limits of its aggression. Despite the end times rhetoric issuing forth from its demagogic president, the country has assiduously avoided acts that would invite a massive military retaliation. This is not indicative of a nation longing for a nuclear conflagration.
To argue that Iran does not have the hallmarks of a suicidal state is not to argue for complacency in the face of its nuclear ambitions. Clearly a nuclear-armed Iran would complicate America's involvement in the Middle East, raising the costs of our alliances and minimizing our leverage with the region's autocratic oil pumpers. That's not ideal, but nor is it a harbinger of the apocalypse.
America has a long, and largely successful, history of containing and deterring nations much stronger and much more viscerally hostile to America than Iran. With two ongoing wars in the region, the untamed menace of a reconstituting al Qaeda in an unraveling (nuclear) Pakistan, a rising China, budget deficits as far as the eye can see, and a strained Army, the U.S. should resort to non-military tools to curtail Iran's nuclear pursuit.
© Copyright 2007, RealClearPolitics
