Iranian Nuclear Weapons: Options if Diplomacy Fails

April 9, 2006 — -- A great deal of new speculation has developed over the nature of United Nations, United States, and Israeli options if Iran persists in acquiring nuclear weapons, and how Iran might respond.

Some reports rush to judgment, implying that the United States or Israel is on the edge of war. Others discuss sanctions and other measures design to coerce Iran to comply in halting proliferation and options like containment. Still others push for conventional diplomacy.

A close analysis does not predict any rush to war. No one can rule out some "smoking gun" by way of a new discovery about Iran that might lead to such action, but there are incentives to wait as well as to act.

U.S. intelligence takes the position that Iran will not have a weapon until after 2010. Israel officially uses a "rolling three year deadline" that essentially says Israel must plan for Iran to have a nuclear device within three years as prudent planning. This deadline was recently rolled forward from 2008 to 2009.

Playing the "bad cop" by tacitly threatening Iran probably makes good sense in pushing it to accept diplomatic options. Preparing the international community for possible action also makes sense.

Waiting for diplomacy to succeed or fail, however, gives the United States a number of major advantages: International credibility, more allies, avoiding the stigma of rushing forward as in the case of Iraq, time to target and assemble operating facilities, and waiting until Iran invests massively in high cost facilities.

Rushing into action would be terrible politics without a smoking gun that was credible on the U.S. and international level. It would probably also do far more to unite the Iranian people around the current regime than weaken it, and could trigger major new problems with the Shiites in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Hezbollah, and Iranian support of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The argument Iran must never be allowed to test and operate test a centrifuge -- or small chain of centrifuges -- makes no sense, and any expert knows this. There is no way we can prevent Iran from covertly dispersing facilities to do this, which could be put in any medium-sized building in Iran.

Iran can be covertly developing improved P-1s, move towards the P-2, or even adopt features of the T-21 centrifuge as research and development even if it accepts all the IAEA/EU-3 terms and there is little or no chance of being able to target something this small.

The same realities apply to weapons design. Short of fissile tests, Iran can covertly develop every aspect of a weapon and do major non-fissile tests in small scattered facilities we can neither strike at nor count on any inspection regime to find. Iran has also already shown that significant amounts of its equipment is mobile, and it can rapidly relocate activities.

It is certainly possible to stop a major Iranian deployment effort or hit major, known, fixed facilities and slow Iran or limit its capabilities. Effective inspection can do the same thing. Stopping Iran from going to the breakout point, or possible even getting a "bomb in the basement" is not possible without or without strikes or diplomacy.