Unthinkable (59 page)

In all of these considerations, the key will be to focus ruthlessly on what is most important, the key problems of containment, without getting distracted by lesser concerns or impossible aspirations. What stands
out among the goals of containment are preventing Iran from weaponizing, reassuring Israel and keeping the rest of the Middle East from acquiring nuclear arsenals of their own. If we can address these issues, containment will be significantly easier than if we can't. This argues for offering Iran a less confrontational approach to containment if they don't weaponize and warning them that we would adopt a no-holds-barred version if they did. For the most part, reassuring Israel and convincing the Gulf states not to proliferate will both require a more assertive, more offensively minded approach to Iran at least early on, to convince our allies that they do not need to stray into the dangerous terrain of trying to balance a nuclear Iran on their own.

The USSR lasted for roughly seventy years. The Islamic Republic has already had more than thirty. It seems hard to imagine that it will hang on for as long as the Soviet Union. Yet it might. North Korea is much smaller and more self-destructive than the Soviets ever were and yet their regime is approaching seventy years, too. The United States can also do far more to try to hasten the political transformation of Iran than it could with the USSR or than it has wanted to try with North Korea. Yet we might end up containing a nuclear Iran for several decades. There is no reason that this cannot be done. But it will not be easy and it may not be cheap. And of greatest importance, we are going to have to constantly recalibrate our pursuit of containment to fit both our interests and developments in Iran, taking advantage of opportunities when they present themselves, trying to shape Iran's behavior where we can, and reacting to Iranian moves as needed. In that sense, I agree with the proponents of containment that there is no reason to believe that it cannot work—and good reason to believe that it can—with Iran. However, I also agree with the critics of containment that its success is not assured, nor will it come easily.

I
f the previous thirteen chapters have demonstrated anything, it is that there are no good options left when it comes to dealing with Iran and its pursuit of a nuclear capability. That is not to say there aren't options that are relatively better and worse, just none that are good in an absolute sense. There are none that are low cost, low risk with a high probability of success. Our choices are awful, but choose we must.

It should also be self-evident why there remains a broad consensus that the United States should try to make a revised carrot-and-stick policy work. It is unquestionably the best of our bad choices. The Obama administration is right to pursue it, and to pursue it for as long as it offers any prospect of hope. There are three related aspects of the administration's approach that are particularly important to consider moving forward.

The administration is correct to focus on weaponization as the key red line for Iran's nuclear program—the step that we have to try to prevent if we can—and not the achievement of a narrow breakout capability.
Iran already has a breakout capability. Moreover, any deal secured by the carrot-and-stick approach will leave Iran with some kind of a breakout capability, and it is hard to affix a specific time span to what a certain set of capabilities would translate into in terms of a breakout window. The difference between even a narrow breakout window of just a month or two and Iran's possession of a deployed nuclear arsenal is huge. In short, the administration is correct to not let perfect become the enemy of good enough, because if we demand perfection, we will probably get nothing at all.

Building off the previous point, the administration is right that there is no reason to impose false time constraints on the negotiations. The real deal-breaker would be Iranian weaponization. Short of that, there is no reason not to keep negotiating, and to keep pushing Iran to make compromises by dint of sanctions and other forms of pressure. This does not mean that we should hold off on imposing these forms of pressure on Iran indefinitely. There is no reason we cannot tell the Iranians that they have until a specific date to accept the terms of an offer or they will be subject to additional penalties. Just that the real decision point for the United States is when we see Iran moving to weaponize, and we should not create false, artificial deadlines based on the fear that Iran is about to pass some other milestone related to a breakout window rather than to weaponization.

The Israelis have tried to create such artificial deadlines as a way of holding the world's feet to the fire. Jerusalem's rationale is entirely understandable, it has worked so far, and it was probably necessary for them to do so. But we should note that at least a half dozen such Israeli red lines have passed by without an Israeli attack, and therefore we should not short-circuit the process and give up what would be the best feasible outcome because of a false deadline created principally to galvanize international action. Israel's ability to cause meaningful damage to the Iranian nuclear program has now diminished to the point where it should not be a driving consideration in our approach to Iran. Again, the administration has been right to maintain that if anyone were going to bomb Iran, it
should be the United States, and we have a lot more time than the Israelis do. Because of our much greater capabilities, we have until Iran begins to weaponize. We do not need to act before then, if we choose to act in this fashion at all.

For my part, I will also say that I fully agree with the administration's focus on securing a deal with Iran that would cap its nuclear progress short of weaponization and enable extensive, intrusive inspections to ensure that Tehran complies—and ensure that we would know it if they don't. I do not believe that it is necessary to roll back Iran's nuclear progress to eliminate any breakout capability, nor do I believe that such a standard is possible any longer. The Iranians have made it clear that they will not agree to a deal that does not allow them some enrichment capability; therefore we should focus on getting a deal that gives us the greatest confidence that Iran would not weaponize rather than trying to make it physically impossible for them to do so. As our experience with Iraq should teach us, the former is all we need and holding out for the latter will likely prove self-defeating.

However, by the same token, I think it a mistake for the administration to disdain even to examine and test a program of regime change for Iran, in particular by trying to find ways to help the Iranian opposition. I say this in full expectation that regime change probably will not work in Iran. However, if the carrot-and-stick approach fails to secure an acceptable halt to the Iranian program and Tehran proceeds toward weaponization, we should want to try almost anything else that might work—that might let us avoid the ultimate choice between war or containment. Even if regime change is a low probability, and I grant that it is, trying a low-probability approach is worth it if there is any chance that it might head off the need to accept either war or containment.

What's more, I believe that the administration has misread the impact of a regime change strategy on the Iranian regime. The historical evidence we have available, limited as it is, suggests that applying additional pressure in the form of regime change is likely to make Tehran more willing to compromise rather than less. Even then, it may not be enough
to convince Tehran to agree to a deal. If that is the case, then as Danielle Pletka pointed out all those years ago, all that will matter is whether we supported the legitimate aspirations of the Iranian people, a great many of whom have demanded a different government. Given the numbers and the dedication of those who revolted against the regime in 2009, we cannot say that there is no longer a large, legitimate domestic opposition to the regime. Our values and experience both argue that we should support them as best we can. And if doing so also helps us achieve a solution to the nuclear impasse before we must make the awful choice between war and containment, so much the better.

Yet a renewed effort to secure a deal and whatever we might do to help the Iranian opposition may all fail in the end. And that end may not be far away at this point. If that is the case, we will face the last choice, the choice between war and containment. Having worked through each of these approaches separately, it is now time to compare them and reach some kind of a conclusion.

I am going to lay out my logic and I am going to do so writing in the first person. My reason for presenting this analysis in this fashion is to emphasize that this analysis derives from my assumptions, my assessments, and my preferences. They are why I prefer containment over war in the majority of circumstances. It is also meant to underscore what should be obvious: that a different person with different assumptions and preferences might assess the balance very differently. My hope is less to persuade you that I am right and more to persuade you that every American, certainly every American concerned about this critical foreign policy issue, needs to weigh the costs and risks as they are, not as we would like them to be. And that we have to weigh all of them, not just the ones we like, although every American will weight each of the factors differently based on his or her idiosyncratic views and preferences. In
the end, if you decide instead that war is the least bad option, so be it. As long as we all recognize all of the risks and costs and prepare for them accordingly.

So let's get started. I am going to begin by looking at the pros, cons, and other factors of pursuing U.S. (
not
Israeli) air strikes against the Iranian nuclear program before I do the same for containment, and then will explain how I see them interacting. Please note that in the lists of advantages and disadvantages I have drawn up, what matters is not the quantity of the pros and cons but their quality. One really big advantage could outweigh many smaller and/or less likely disadvantages.

THE ADVANTAGES OF AIR STRIKES.
I see seven potential advantages to air strikes. I have highlighted those I believe most salient in
bold italic
.

• Air strikes play to our greatest advantage—our enormous conventional military superiority over Iran.

• 
U.S. air strikes would probably set the Iranian nuclear program back somewhere between two and ten years
. Lower figures are probably more likely given Iran's demonstrated ability to build new nuclear facilities from scratch and the fact that even extensive air strikes could not eliminate Iran's understanding of the enrichment process. There is some risk that air strikes would set back the Iranian program by less than two years—either because our strikes are not as effective as expected, the Iranians have hidden sites we do not know about at the time of the attack, or they receive considerable foreign assistance in rebuilding after an attack.

• There is a possibility that Iran would never rebuild after successful air strikes or that they would not be able to rebuild because other events would prevent them from doing so. While this seems less likely than
the prospect that Tehran would rebuild, it is certainly possible. The regime might fear getting struck again and might decide that the game is just not worth the candle. After the Israeli air strike against the Syrian nuclear facility at al-Kibar in 2007, the onset of the Arab Spring in 2011 meant that the Asad regime never acquired the nuclear weapon it desired. (Of course, in that case the evidence is overwhelming that it was the Arab Spring, not the al-Kibar strike, that precluded the Asad regime's acquisition of a nuclear weapon. Syria was not even close to having a nuclear weapon in 2007 and even had Israel not struck the facility, it would not have been able to produce a nuclear weapon before the Arab Spring plunged the country into civil war in 2011.)

• There is some possibility that air strikes would exacerbate popular unhappiness with the regime, conceivably even enough to lead to the downfall of the regime—or merely to convince them not to rebuild for fear that another American strike might be cause for another popular revolt. The former seems highly unlikely, the latter just unlikely.

• 
Air strikes would be comparatively low cost
. Depending on how many days or weeks we had to run them, they probably would cost only tens of billions of dollars—comparatively cheap, especially if the air campaign actually solves the problem. However, they would doubtless cause the oil market to spike. The duration of the spike could vary considerably depending on how Iran responds and how able the United States and its allies are to deal with Iranian retaliation.

• Iran might be so afraid of further America strikes that it would not retaliate at all or its efforts to retaliate would be too weak to overcome our defenses. The former strikes me as highly unlikely, whereas the latter is much harder to gauge but certainly quite possible.