The Unshrinkable Elephant

The elephant in the room which will neither go away nor shrink is Iran. As the clock keeps ticking and the centrifuges keep spinning, Iran is coming closer to its objective: nuclear weapons capability. The current administration is out of both ideas and time. The next administration seems to headed by one (or two, if you presume Biden has any role in formulating foreign policy) who lacks a grip on the nature of the beast.

Right now it is prudent to plan on the failure of diplomatic palaver and economic sanctions. Iran may be an economic basket case whose basket is getting ever more frail with the decline in demand for its only significant foreign exchange making product--oil. But, the mullahs-in-charge show no sign of repenting having invested both political and financial capital in the nuclear program.

Lying to protect the faith and the faithful from the evil designs of the infidel is permitted in Islam and laudatory in the persecuted minority sect of Shia. Thus, the actions of the Iranian government are far more indicative of true goals than are the words of Iranian officials and high ranking clerics. Pressing on with the pursuit of nuclear materials independence is not necessary if the Tehran regime merely wants peaceful nuclear production of electricity.

The P5+1 group has made it clear that the legitimate needs of Iranian civil energy production will be met with full safeguards. The mullahocracy has rejected this. Not once. Repeatedly.

From this the only safe conclusion is that Iran wants the Big Bomb. They have good motivations for wanting this capacity. Both date back to the early days of the Iranian Revolution. One is to have a deterrent capacity against other countries in the region using weapons of mass destruction such as Iraq did during the long, body count heavy war with Iran. The second is to realise Iran's dreams of being the regional hegemonic power.

(Arguably that ambition dates not to the Revolution but to the days of the Shah, whose moves in that direction were encouraged by the Nixon and Ford Administrations in keeping with the Kissinger scheme of having regional proxies for the US in the post-Vietnam War environment.)

A third reason for seeking the bomb is to be found, paradoxically, in the words of assorted Iranian leaders, both civil and clerical. Bluntly, it is the extinction of Israel.

With a nuclear weapons capacity, the Iranian regime would be not only the elephant in the room but the eight hundred pound gorilla. Given both the eschatological orientation of the Mahdi-ridden leaders of the regime as well as its implacable hostility over the course of almost thirty years to the West generally and the US in particular, Iran with nukes is a very unpleasant possibility to contemplate.

So is war. War, whether called pre-emptive or preventative would be a hugely difficult task with global consequences of a nearly catastrophic sort, particularly in the context of the current global recession. A war, even one of the semi-mythical "surgical" airstrike sort, would not be short, glorious and successful. It would be long and, most likely, inconclusive.

That is why military operations have been quietly removed from the table by the current administration. They are not likely to be put back on the table by the forthcoming administration. At least not quickly.

Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apparently believes that Iran can be contained and deterred even if it gets a rudimentary nuclear capability. Many people who, like the Admiral, came of age during the years of the Cold War, have a similar faith in the twin towers of deterrence and containment. They did work reasonably well during the near half century of confrontation between the US and the USSR.

(Reasonably well may be somewhat of an overstatement given how close the two scorpions almost lashed their fusion powered tails at each other as during the Cuban Missile Crisis. There were other times as well, but the Missile Crisis is the best known and best documented from both sides.)

Neither the US nor the USSR were "suicidal" powers. Yet each and both miscalculated during the era of mutually assured destruction. When considering deterrence, the first question which must be answered unequivocally is whether or not the other side is a rational actor disinclined to suicidal gambles. That question cannot be answered with certainty in the case of Iran.

The vast majority of Iranian people may love life, even a life as hardscrabble as it is currently for most in that country. The majority of Iranians may even like and admire the US as has been alleged. None of that matters.

Decision making is centered with the mullahs, the members of the Expediency Council and, above all others, the Successor to Khomenei. These men are True Believers. Their belief is in the Twelver version of Shia. They look to the near-term return of the Mahdi. Their belief is eschatological, that is, it focuses on the sacred time to come, not the profane time which is.

The Mahdi will return during a time of apocalypse. What better way to assure both the necessary apocalypse and the coming of the Mahdi than provoking a nuclear exchange?

The second question which must be asked and forthrightly answered if deterrence is to be effective is this: Is the United States population and government willing to see hundreds of thousands of Iranians die as well as region wide if not global environmental destruction occur through executing a retaliatory strike after an Iranian attack on, say, Israel?

Recall that the French went after their own nuclear deterrent for the simple and plausible reason that the government found it unlikely that the US would put its homeland cities at risk if the Soviets took out Paris. The French were not alone in their doubts. They were shared by other Europeans--and Americans. Including Americans occupying decision making billets in several administrations.

It is also worth recalling that when Senator Clinton threatened "obliteration" to Iran in the event it attacked Israel with nuclear weapons, Senators Obama and Biden both characterised her stance as too close to that of George W. Bush. The Iranians are aware of that comment and probably believe that neither Obama nor Biden have changed much just because the election is past.

Deterrence may well not be nearly as strong a reed as the current administration and Admiral Mullen seem to believe.

That leaves containment. It sounds good. But, there are some very real problems. Insolvable problems.

Containment to be credible requires bases, beaucoup bases, bases almost beyond counting. There must be bases for aircraft. Bases holding prepositioned equipment. Bases for training. Bases for repairing. You get the point.

The bases must be convenient to the country being contained. For example, bases in Iraq.

Basing containment oriented forces or resources in Iraq is a non-starter. The Iraqis won't allow it. Whether the Government of Iraq has taken the Yankee-go-home position out of a tender concern for their sovereignty or out of a healthy and not unreasonable fear of Iran is of no moment. What counts is that the Iraqis won't let us stay there.

An alternative is Turkey. But, the Turks have their own foreign policy in play. It includes improved relations with Iran as part of positioning Turkey as a regional power in the Central Asian region as well as a bridge between the Islamic oil states of Central Asia (including Iran) and Europe.

Well, then there are the various "stans" of Central Asia. There are many difficulties with that option. They range from hostility to the US for various reasons to being a prime example of what Ike was getting at when he told the go-on-land-the-troops-and-roll-them-back SecState John Foster Dulles during the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Ike said, "Show me the seacoast, Foster. Show me the seacoast."

Containment, even today with heavy lift aircraft, requires maritime support for long term effectiveness. That, in and of itself, rules out the "stans."

How about Afghanistan? Don't make the Geek throw-up.

Then there are the sheikdoms, emirates and so on of the Gulf Cooperation Council. True, but they are too weak both militarily and in the political will department to be effective base locations let alone allies in containment. The figures speak for themselves. Beyond that, there is more than a little fear of the Big, Bad Mullahs throughout the Gulf. In short, from a containment point of view, the Gulf States are oil rich, geographically vulnerable, lacking political will and too open to subversive attack.

There is another problem with containment. Containment draws a line in the sand. The state being contained seeks ways to leap the line. The Soviets were quite good at this. They leaped the line many times in very effective ways. From Latin America to Asia to Africa, the Kremlin used the tools of proxy war and subversion both open and covert with great skill and persistence.

The Iranians have already shown a talent in this area of activity. The Revolutionary Guard Corps has demonstrated a capacity for creative troublemaking in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere. The Iranians will be ready, willing and more than simply able to leap any line the US might try to draw in the sand.

Get a grip on it. Containment is every bit as much of a frail reed on which to base long-term policy as deterrence. If Admiral Mullen and others in senior positions really believe that the old reliables of the Cold War are good to go now with Iraq, they are hallucinating.

Where does that leave the US, the options for the new administration of change? There aren't too many options. And none of them are good.

And, that chillin' is the Tale of The Elephant That Wouldn't Shrink.