Iran’s Ongoing Nuclear Ambitions

Satellite image of Iran’s Fordow nuclear enrichment facility.

The International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday warned that the Iranian government continues to make progress in its effort to boost uranium production and refinement in the country. It noted that Iran has, in the past three months, completed installing new centrifuges in a secret nuclear facility and has refused to provide the IAEA with opportunity to monitor its activities. The IAEA also believes that Iran is trying to destroy evidence of previous nuclear enrichment activities ahead of scheduled IAEA inspections.

International efforts to monitor and prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons materials have to-date focused on several resolutions of the UN Security Council, and on international negations between the United States, China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany (the so-called P5+1 group) and Iran.

Against the international backdrop, the Israeli government continues to threaten unilateral action against Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon, raising the stakes for all parties involved.

The primary challenge, though, is that there appear to be few good options in dealing with Iran. Economic sanctions are already in place and are having a devastating effect on the Iranian economy. There was a glimmer that the sanctions may force the Iranian government back to the negotiating table, but it is not clear whether or not that would happen before Iran developed a nuclear capacity, fundamentally altering the nature of international negotiations.

Covert efforts, including the deployment of computer viruses targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, have appeared to slowed Iran’s progress but have not stopped it altogether.

And a military strike against Iran could create broader challenges in the region, undermining support for US efforts in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and creating uncertainty in global oil markets, threatening the global economic recovery.

What do you think? What is the best option to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions? Should the United States continue to support international efforts at a negotiated settlement? Should it support Israeli proposals for a military strike despite the economic threat posed by such an option? Take the poll below or leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.

The Intersection of Domestic Politics and Foreign Affairs

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney addresses reporters in Israel.

Israel was in the news this week, as both Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta met with key Israeli leaders to discuss, among other things, the Iranian nuclear program.

During his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, Mitt Romney was unreserved in his position, asserting that ensuring the security of Israel and preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability “must be our highest national security priority.” Romney’s senior national security aid, Dan Senor, clarified Romeny’s statement, concluding that, “If Israel has to take action on its own, in order to stop Iran from developing that capability, the governor would respect that decision.”

With his statements, Romney was trying to draw a sharp contrast between his position and the position of the Obama administration. Just two days after Romney’s meeting with Netanyahu, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was expressing a more reserved tone. In his meeting yesterday with Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, he urged Israel to show restraint in its dealings with Iran.

The New York Times reported that there are growing concerns in the Obama administration that Israel may be preparing for a unilateral military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities as early as this fall. Secretary Panetta’s visit was just the most recent in a series of flurry of trips to Israel by high ranking administration officials in recent weeks . Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon each recently visited Israel as well.

These visits occurred amid increasing rhetorical attacks by the Israeli government. On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu stated that discussion of sanctions against Iran were useless. Netanyahu concluded that, “Right now, the Iranian government believes that the international community does not have the will to stop its nuclear program. This must change and it must change quickly because time to resolve this issue peacefully is running out.”

The Israeli calculation is highly influenced by the timing of the US presidential elections. Most observers believe that if an Israeli strike were to occur, it would likely be in September or early October. As the New York Times observed, “Mr. Netanyahu feels that he will have less leverage if President Obama is re-elected, and that if Mr. Romney were to win, the new president would be unlikely to want to take on a big military action early in his term.”
Perhaps the largest problem facing the international community the lack of viable options. Ongoing negotiations with Iran have failed to produce the desired outcome. Sanctions have not been historically effective in promoting policy changes, as the longstanding US embargos against Cuba and North Korea attest. And an Israeli strike against Iran would likely produce a strong response from the Iranian government, perhaps including Iranian missile strikes against Tel Aviv. In such a scenario, the United States could well be pulled into another war in the Middle East.

What do you think? How should the United States deal with Israel and Iran? Can sanctions be effective? And how do the domestic politics of the United States affect the ongoing developments in the Middle East?

Poll: Is Iran Seeking a Nuclear Weapon?

Iran’s nuclear program is back in the news after negotiations between Iran and a group of six world powers resulted in an agreement to continue nuclear talks next month.  Iran claims its nuclear program is solely for peaceful energy generation purposes.  Many Western countries, including the United States, doubt this claim and believe the Iranian government is pursuing nuclear weapons capability.  Take the poll below and tell us what you think.

Is Nuclear Disarmament a Good Idea?

The atomic explosion over Nagasaki, August 9, 1945.

The Obama administration is reportedly considering nuclear disarmament options that would include reducing the U.S. arsenal to as few as 300 strategic nuclear weapons, an 80% reduction from current levels.  A policy of deep cuts would be consistent with President Obama’s vision of a nuclear-free world.  It would also be consistent with the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which calls not only for non-nuclear states to refrain from obtaining nuclear weapons (a well known provision) but for existing nuclear states to eventually eliminate these weapons (a lesser known provision).  Article VI of the NPT states:

“Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

Some analysts believe that a 300-weapon nuclear force would be sufficient for deterring adversaries and would help to convince countries such as Iran and North Korea to forgo nuclear weapons development.  But critics, including Republican members of Congress, have denounced such ideas as “reckless lunacy” that would undermine American security and do nothing to dissuade rogue states from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The Associated Press story that broke the news of these plans notes the revolutionary nature of the changes:

“New U.S. cuts could open the prospect for a historic reshaping of the American nuclear arsenal, which for decades has stood on three legs: submarine-launched ballistic missiles, ground-based ballistic missiles and weapons launched from big bombers like the B-52 and the stealthy B-2. The traditional rationale for this “triad” of weaponry is that it is essential to surviving any nuclear exchange.”

Indeed, during the Cold War the impetus for building thousands of nuclear weapons and dispersing them across multiple types of delivery vehicles and geographical locales was that if all of a country’s nuclear weapons could be destroyed in a first strike, retaliation could not be assured and there would be nothing to deter the enemy from striking first.  (The doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD, was built from these premises).

What do you think?  Are dramatic cuts in America’s nuclear arsenal a good idea or a dangerous one?  Take the poll and let us know your views.

Is Iran’s Nuclear Program a Threat to Anyone?

Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is considered irrational by some in the West. But do we have any reason to fear a nuclear-armed Iran?

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a striking report today that accuses Iran of working to develop nuclear weapons. A New York Times piece calls the report “the harshest judgment the agency has ever issued in its decade-long struggle to pierce the secrecy surrounding the Iranian program. The findings have already rekindled a debate among the Western allies and Israel about whether increased diplomatic pressure, sanctions, sabotage or military action could stop Iran’s program.”

This new evidence that Iran is perhaps very close to developing a nuclear weapon raises the question: so what?

Neorealists such as Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer, who treat states as if they were rational, unitary actors, believe that a nuclear Iran would not be reckless and would neither launch its nuclear weapons at another state nor give weapons to terrorists.  Their argument, premised on rational deterrence theory, is that even Iran’s leaders–who sometimes appear irrational to Western observers–are sensitive enough to the obvious costs of nuclear retaliation that they would never jeopardize the existence of their country by launching a nuclear attack that has a chance of being traced back to them.  In fact, such thinkers have favored the selective proliferation of nuclear weapons to additional countries so as to stabilize regional rivalries and make war unthinkable.

David Rothkopf, in a blog post entitled “The World is Misreading Obama on Iran,” contends that a supposedly “dovish” President Obama may contemplate using military force to prevent the Islamic Republic from getting a nuclear bomb: “But in the end, as dangerous as an attack might be militarily and politically, if the President believes there is no other alternative to stopping Iran from gaining the ability to produce highly enriched uranium and thus manufacture nuclear weapons, he will seriously consider military action and it is hardly a certainty he won’t take it.”

But why is Obama so afraid of a nuclear Iran?  If the neorealists are right, a nuclear Iran can be deterred and contained, just like the U.S. deterred and contained the ideologically driven, fiercely competitive, and nuclear-armed Soviet Union for 40-plus years during the Cold War.

What do you think?  Do the assumptions of rational deterrence theory apply to Iran’s leaders?  Why or why not?  Are there other reasons to fear a nuclear-armed Iran, other than its actual use of nuclear weapons?

Rethinking the Role of Nuclear Weapons

April 6 Press Conference Announcing the new Nuclear Policy Review document. Courtesy http://www.defense.gov/npr/

The United States has long had an ambivalent relationship with its nuclear arsenal. As the first country to develop nuclear weapons, we tried to use our (short-lived) monopoly on nuclear weapons technology to our advantage. The policy, articulated by under the doctrine of “massive retaliation,” [glossary] threatened the Soviet Union with nuclear annihilation if they launched a massive conventional attack against Western Europe. But as the Soviets developed their own nuclear arsenal, the credibility of this policy waned. In the early 1960s, the Kennedy administration offered a new vision of U.S. nuclear policy, articulating a policy of “flexible response” [glossary] which opened new possibilities for U.S. nuclear, conventional, and unconventional forces. All the while, U.S. nuclear forces were intended to protect the United States through the deterrent effect provided by the threat of mutually assured destruction [glossary].

Today, the United States maintains one of the world’s largest (and certainly the world’s most accurate) nuclear arsenal, with an estimated 5,500 warheads. Even if the new nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia is ratified, the United States would maintain a large nuclear stockpile. On Tuesday, the Obama administration released its nuclear posture review, which is an attempt to clarify the circumstances under which the United States would use its nuclear arsenal.

The document has already receive some strong analysis in the blogosphere, ranging from Steven Clemons at the Washington Note, who argues that Obama “scored big” with the new policy, to David Hoffman at Foreign Policy, who concludes that the new policy is a “good start” but much remains to be done, to Daniel Drezner, also at Foreign Policy, who observes that the new policy is of “questionable utility,” to Stephen Walt, also at Foreign Policy, who generally agrees with Drezner but also describes the document as a public relations ploy.

To be fair, the document, as Walt points out, does not radically change the reality of U.S. nuclear weapons policy. The doctrine limits the use of the U.S. nuclear arsenal under some circumstances, declaring that the “fundamental role” of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is to deter nuclear attacks. It represents a break from the Bush administration insofar as it limits the use of nuclear weapons against states that have joined and remain in good standing with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (thus excluding Iran and North Korea from security guarantees). As Walt observes,

I’ll concede that this new statement may have some public relations value — i.e, it lowers the priority given to nuclear weapons in U.S. strategic thinking, consistent with Obama’s commitment to eventually reduce global nuclear arsenals. But from a purely strategic perspective, this new statement is largely meaningless. To the extent that it does matter, it may even be counter-productive.

Here’s why. No matter what the U.S. government says about its nuclear strategy, no potential adversary can confidently assume that the U.S. would stick to its declared policy in the event of a crisis or war. If you were a world leader thinking about launching a major conventional attack on an important U.S. ally or interest, or contemplating the use of chemical or biological weapons in a situation where the United States was involved, would you conclude that it was safe to do so simply because Barack Obama said back in 2010 that the U.S. wasn’t going to use nuclear weapons in that situation?  

Of course you wouldn’t, because there is absolutely nothing to stop the United States from changing its mind. You’d worry that the United States might conclude that the interests at stake were worth issuing a nuclear threat, and maybe even using a nuclear weapon, and that it really didn’t matter what anyone had said in a posture review or an interview with a few journalists. And you’d also have to worry that the situation might escalate in unpredictable or unintended ways — what Thomas Schelling famously termed the “threat that leaves something to chance — and thereby ruin your whole day.

To the extent that nuclear weapons deter — and I happen to think they do — it is the mere fact of their existence and not the specific words we use when we speak about them.  In short, nobody can know for certain if, when or how a nuclear state might actually use its arsenal to protect its interests, and that goes for any potential aggressor too. Because the prospect of nuclear use is so awful, no minimally rational aggressor is going to run that risk solely because of some words typed in a posture statement.

A Realistic Policy in Iranian Nukes?

Stephen Walt offers an interesting critique of John Bolton’s “unrealistic realism” this week. Bolton was on the Daily Show  last week,  offering his usual policy advice on Iran, namely, that the United States should do whatever is necessary to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

But what is interesting about Walt’s analysis is his discussion of how unrealistic such a policy is. According to Walt, any U.S. efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons will likely either involve the use of coercive diplomacy, which runs the risk of helping Iran to overcome internal political differences which might produce a more open government or runs the risk of involving the United States in another protracted ground war with no clear end in sight. Neither case seems particularly promising.

Yet Bolton’s dream of a world in which the United States is the sole nuclear power, able to cajole others into ceding to its demands, is—as Walt discusses—also highly unrealistic. Such a world would only create greater impetus for other countries to acquire nuclear weapons for themselves. And contemplating such a world only creates greater incentives for countries to acquire the deterrent capabilities (glossary) nuclear weapons afford. So, in essence, the greater the force the United States brings to bear on a country to end its nuclear program, the greater the pressure for that country to actually develop and deploy its own nuclear weapons.

It is worthwhile to recall that South Africa is the only country to ever give up its nuclear weapons after developing a nuclear weapons capability. And it’s even more important to remember that it did so not because it was under immense external pressure (or indeed threat) to abandon its nuclear weapons program.  South Africa gave up its nuclear weapons because of (1) domestic political pressure to do so, and (2) because its external security situation no longer warranted the need for such weapons. Bolton’s proposed stance ensures that neither of those two criteria would be met in the case of Iran. Hardly a hopeful situation.

Five Stories You Might Have Missed

Congress finally passed a bailout package on Friday.  The bill, which promises up to $700 billion to purchase failing mortgages from banks, was quickly signed into law by President Bush.  The vice presidential debate between Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin also garnered much attention.  But will all the focus on the outcome of the bailout and the VP debate this week, you might have missed some other important developments in the world this week.  Here are my top five:

1. We discussed the political transition in South Africa last week.  One interesting (and critically important) result: a new health minister.  The incoming heath minister, Barbara Hogan, has vowed to make fighting HIV/AIDS the ministry’s top priority.  In a country where an estimated 5.6 million people are HIV positive, and more than 1,000 die from HIV/AIDS-related illness every day, the disease touches everyone.  Hogan was a well-know critic of the Mbeki government’s HIV/AIDS policy, campaigning for improved access to medicines and a greater emphasis on education.  Hogan was a white anti-apartheid activist who spent eight years in prison for fighting for democracy and majority rule. 

2. The Bush administration notified Congress of its intention to move forward with a $6.5 billion weapons deal with Taiwan.  The deal would include some of the U.S.’s most advanced weapons systems including Patriot missiles, Apache helicopters, submarine-launched Harpoon missiles, and spare parts for F-16 fighter jets.  Taiwan feels the weapons are necessary to increase the island’s ability to defend itself.  China views the sale as a provocation.

3. In another U.S. foreign policy development, the Senate appears likely to approve a civilian nuclear energy deal between the United States and India next week.  Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is visiting with Indian government officials this weekend to hammer out the deal, which could receive approval from the Senate as early as Wednesday.  The deal represents a fundamental shift in U.S.-Indian relations.  Because India had developed nuclear weapons outside of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it was subject to intense trade-restrictions on nuclear-related technologies.  In light of the U.S. move, Europe is making a similar policy shift.

4. In Angola, the government announced a plan to attract $6 billion in new agricultural investment over the next five years.  Encouraged by high global food prices, the government of Angola hopes to diversify the country’s economy away from exclusive reliance on diamonds and oil, into new areas.   The country has already attracted two new investors, Lonrho and Chiquita, both of which hope to capitalize on the new initiative.  However, the United Nations has raised concerns over the risk of “food neo-colonialism” in the context of such efforts.

5. French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Saturday summit intended to develop a plan to prevent a European-wide credit meltdown—similar to that which seems to be developing in the United States—ended without a specific plan on action.  The summit’s outcome was undermined by competition between the German and French governments over responsibility for and the nature of a rescue package.