The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report leaked on Nov 8, 2011 confirmed the obvious: Iran is striving to obtain military nuclear capability, and at this point it is a few months away from materializing it. The spiraling debate about the steps that the US, NATO or Israel should now take mask an important point – namely, that Iran itself has a strong incentive to stop just short of having a nuclear arsenal, and convince the world that it can arm a bomb on a few months notice but that at the same time it is deliberately avoiding this last measure.
To understand why, it is worthwhile considering the motive behind the Iranian military nuclear plan. One potential motive is that Iran simply wants to destroy Israel physically. The Iranian president Ahmadinejad has made it clear, time and again, that he would have liked to see Israel wiped off the face of the earth. It is therefore conceivable that once Iran builds a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying Israel, Ahmadinejad and the Iranian leadership will immediately order to launch it at Israel.
This scenario is conceivable but not necessarily very likely, though. Ahmadinejad cares about his country – he has, for instance, expressed concerns that in a confrontation of Iran with the west over its nuclear plan Iran might receive a blow which will not allow it to rise again for 500 years; he also believes that upon a nuclear strike against Israel mainland, Israel will still be able to respond with a nuclear strike against Iran’s main cities from its submarines – a strike that might withdraw Iran much more than 500 years back.
For this reason, a more likely motive for the Iranian military nuclear plan is to gain prestige and influence as a regional power. Being by now just a step away from possessing a nuclear arsenal, Iran has already gained this payoff from its nuclear plan. It is feared by its neighbors and it is considered a bigger threat than before by Israel, Europe and the US. But somewhat paradoxically, by making the last move to own an armed nuclear arsenal it might jeopardize its own achievement.
The reason for this is the policy that Israel (and likewise the US and Europe) is most likely to adopt upon a nuclear armament by Iran. Israel will have to declare that it will consider Iran, its only known nuclear rival, as responsible for any nuclear attack whatsoever it might suffer – even though *conditional* on a nuclear attack against Israel, its most likely source will not be Iran but rather some evasive terrorist organization, which got its bomb in the international black markets, and against which it is extremely difficult to retaliate. Iran does not control all the organizations which might want to launch a nuclear attack against Israel. Nevertheless, by making itself the unique nuclear Muslim power in rivalry with Israel, technically able to delegate nuclear capability to organizations like Hamas or Hezbollah (even if Iran will never willfully do so), Iran makes itself vulnerable – from its own perspective – as the sole target for Israeli unavoidable retaliation.
There are additional low-probability but pivotal scenarios in which nuclear armament by Iran might literally back-fire. Israeli radars detecting an approaching missile launched from the Shat-el-Arab region might not be able to discern whether it was fired from Iraq or from Iran. Since Israel is such a small country, it might have no choice but to adopt a zero-tolerance policy, treating any such missile as a nuclear one and launching an automatic extreme response. However, Iran cannot actually control any missile launching that Israel might suspect as coming from Iran.
Currently, Iran seems to be humiliated by the IAEA report and by the response of the international community. Humiliating Germany and impoverishing it in the Versailles agreement at the end of World War I led to the rise of Hitler and to the worst atrocities ever in the history of mankind, during World War II. Iran is a large nation with an ancient and rich culture, and humiliating it can only be counter-productive.
A potentially better strategy would be to encourage Iran to follow its own interest by transparently staying only on the brink of military nuclear capability, and at the same time to admit Iran as a de facto member of the “nuclear club”. If, then, Iran nevertheless prefers to curtail transparency and renounce international recognition of its power, it will not only suffer the consequences of undermining its own interests, but might ignite an escalatory pace in which it is likely to suffer much more.
The Leisure of the Theory Class 
5 comments
November 9, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Eran
Hi Aviad, excellent point, and I sure wish we would see more rational discussions on this topic.
Here is what I see as the advantage to Iran in actually crossing the line and not just staying near it: The possibility to inflict an immediate retaliation is a safeguard against an attack on Iran by her enemies.
I guess your argument is that part of admitting Iran to the club they get some promise of no attack on its nuclear facilities. But such promises are worthless (didn’t the West cut a deal with Gaddafi ?) and at any rate Iran’s enemies can find plenty of other, non-nuclear, reasons for attacking. If you are a terror sponsoring country with regional aspirations that make your neighbors nervous, and if one of your chief enemies is Israel, a country where floundering politicians can always count on voters to rally behind any military operation, and if you see American soldiers from your window, then maybe you want the world to know that you can use the bomb in a matter of minutes rather than months.
November 10, 2011 at 2:32 am
Aviad Heifetz
Hi Eran, I agree that your reasoning is probably what goes on in the Iranians’ mind. It seems that they put themselves in the shoes of the Americans and the Israelis when they imagine what the US or Israel might do to them, and then they try to prepare a counter-measure.
The flaw in this logic is that it downplays the effect of the democratic culture in the US and Israel, where even aggressive politicians need better excuses to actually initiate military action than do their counterparts in less democratic countries. But a military nuclear plan on the part of Iran provides just such an excuse (if not an actual reason) for military action, just as the (eventually false) data on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is the reason that, as you say, today the Iranians still see American soldiers from their window.
So the Iranian nuclear plan is meant to avoid the dangers to Iran that the plan itself creates.
November 10, 2011 at 2:50 am
Babak
Thank you for your note. As an economic grad student, I learned a lot.
That said, your paradigm, which is affecting your argument, is clearly demonstrated in your reply Eran:
“the democratic culture in the US and Israel, where even aggressive politicians need better excuses to actually initiate military action than do their counterparts in less democratic countries. But a military nuclear plan on the part of Iran provides just such an excuse (if not an actual reason) for military action”
Your argument is actually this: Iran makes crazy decisions but Israel does not, because we have democracy! So, we are allowed to have nuclear bombs but Iran is not.
I want to ask a clear question: in recent 30 years, can you remind me of a single war initiated by Iran? I don’t think so. On the other hand, do you want me to remind you of numerous wars initiated by Israel?
So, I do insist on Eran’s argument that an international agreement to accept Iran as a “nuclear club” does not make any sense to Iranians unless they really have it. Two or three months is not a short period, in case Israel and US wanna attack Iran.
November 10, 2011 at 3:14 am
Babak
I also think that there is another scenario. It’s clear that when a country like Iran is 3 months away from nuclear bombs (which is not obvious for me from IEAE report since it mostly talks about pre 2003 period but let’s assume it for the moment), then Iran can continue its process of making a real bomb “underground” and have a real bomb, or at least become 3 days behind having a bomb rather than 3 months.
Then, if there is a terrorist attack to Israel, as your argument express, Israel would not consider Iran as the attacker. Nevertheless, Israel knows that Iran “might” have an underground bomb. So they can always blame Iran and say “you didn’t commit to the agreement and built a bomb” even if they don’t. This is something which we can expect from US and Israel. When they, without any evidence, blame Iran’s government for the terror of the Saudi Arabian Ambassador, or they attack Iraq so that they hope they can find a nuclear bomb, it’s perfectly possible that they wanna blame Iran in such a scenario.
One step closer: even such a terrorist attack happens in Tel Aviv tomorrow morning, it’s very likely that US and Israel consider Iran as the attacker, and wanna react.
In any case, Iran needs to have the nuclear bombs ready, so that they will balance the power and will have a credible threat.
November 10, 2011 at 4:57 pm
mohmah
I disagree with you about Iran not having an incentive to cross the line. The first reason is what Eran pointed out. Iranian leaders think that if they have nuclear weapons, they’ll become untouchable. This is based on learning from recent history: they see what happened to Lybia and Iraq, versus what’s happening to North Korea.
The second reason has to do with the internal politics of Iran. The government currently lacks legitimacy and approval from the population. They have to constantly watch for anything that could spark a protest. By becoming a nuclear power, they will be able to evoke the population’s “national pride” to strengthen their position.
So, I don’t see it so unlikely that they cross the line, if they can. That said, I find it very unlikely that they would actually launch anything against Israel or any other country. The bigger worry is that they might sell/give away nukes to other groups.