No escaping Iran nuclear challenge
In the Defence Department’s just released Priorities for 21st Century Defence, the Obama administration has definitively identified China as the US’s most serious long-term security challenge. This has been coming for some time, and it was inevitable. For us, the interesting point is the desk-clearing elsewhere that this reorientation entails, particularly in the Middle East.
The highlighting of China as the US’s most serious security challenge could hardly have been more explicit. In Priorities for 21st Century Defence there were three direct references to China, all of which were negative and one of which linked its behaviour to that of Iran, which for the US is the world’s number one pariah state – part of the original ‘axis of evil’ fingered by President George W Bush in his January 2002 State of the Union Address.
After having said that the emergence of China as a regional power “will have the potential to affect the US economy and our security”, and then saying that the growth of China’s military power “must be accompanied by greater clarity of its strategic intentions”, the report said bluntly: “States such as China and Iran will continue to pursue asymmetric means to counter our power projection capabilities...” Contrast this (as Beijing will have done) with what the report says about US-India relations: “The United States is...investing in a long-term strategic partnership with India.”
So there is no ambiguity about how the US sees China; and, as a result, the report says that “while the US military will continue to contribute to security globally, we will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region”. The added emphasis is in the original.
But, as we said, it is the desk-clearing elsewhere that interests us today. In Europe, it is apparent that the US no longer considers Russia to be a serious threat. In its only reference to Russia, the report says: “Our engagement with Russia remains important, and we will continue to build a closer relationship in areas of mutual interest and encourage it to be a contributor across a broad range of issues”. It then goes on to say that there is “a strategic opportunity” for the US to “rebalance” its security investment in Europe.
In what is unlikely to have been a coincidence, simultaneously with the publication of this report Britain’s Secretary of State for Defence Philip Hammond made a speech to the Atlantic Council in which he said that the European partners in Nato had to shoulder more of the burden. In quite blunt terms, Hammond said: “Too many countries are failing to meet their financial responsibilities to Nato...Too many are opting out of operations or contributing but a fraction of what they should be capable of...The Alliance cannot rest forever on the post 9/11 surge in US defence spending.”
So far so good. The refocusing of the US’s defence effort on China is logical and inevitable; the call for the Europeans to shoulder more of the burden for the defence of Europe, at a time when Russia’s power is greatly diminished and the US is refocusing on the Asia-Pacific, is equally logical and justifiable. The problem is with the strategy for the Middle East.
The visible part of the US’s strategy in the Middle East is to end the war in Afghanistan (even if that means a return to power, or a share of power, by the Sunni-Islamist Taleban); to acquiesce in the rise to power of the Sunni-Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in the countries that have succumbed to the Arab Spring (most importantly in Egypt); to align strongly with Turkey under its Sunni-Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan; to support the Sunni-Islamist opposition against the Alawite regime in Syria; to provide support to the conservative Sunni monarchies in the Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia and Bahrain which are facing unrest from their Iranian-backed Shia populations; and, of course, to persuade Israel to reach a compromise peace with the Palestinians, where the Sunni-Islamist Hamas movement is also benefitting from the region-wide rise of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The uncertain part of the US’s Mideast strategy is what it intends to do about Iran’s nuclear programme. The past few days have seen authoritative reports that the US is resigned to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and is preparing a strategy for living with this eventuality.
But unless President Obama is intending to abandon Israel altogether, we are sceptical about the proposition that Washington is prepared to accept a nuclear-armed Iran at the same time as acquiescing in a Muslim Brotherhood ascendancy throughout most of the Arab Middle East, which inevitably will be hostile to Israel. We are even more sceptical that Washington would be able to persuade Israel to accept such a strategic transformation of the Middle East, particularly as Israel also feels threatened by Turkey.
This is such an implausible scenario that it is hard to believe that it is Washington’s real intention. A game-changing (perhaps game-winning) scenario would be if the Arab Spring were to spread to Iran and to bring about the long-awaited counter-revolution, enabling Israel to once again foster an ‘alliance of the periphery’, as conceived by David Ben-Gurion, to balance a hostile Arab centre.
It is possible that Western intelligence agencies believe that the tightening of sanctions against Tehran will bring about such an outcome, but we have heard no whisper that the intelligence agencies do think this, and there is no evidence of it happening or being likely to happen.
Western intelligence agencies may hope that the ongoing Mossad-led campaign of sabotage/assassination against Iran’s nuclear facilities and personnel will provide the time required to persuade the present Iranian regime - through tightening sanctions - to abandon its nuclear ambitions. This is possible and worth trying, but there are at least three factors working against it.
The first is that, according to the latest Russian estimates, time is running out despite the best efforts of Mossad. Western experts believe that Iran could produce enough highly-enriched uranium for a bomb within a few months. In practice, a US general said in April 2010, Iran would still need several years after that to make a device. This was narrowed down to two years by CIA chief Leon Panetta in June 2010, which is much earlier than the deadline previously given by Israel's retired intelligence chief Meir Dagan, who said it could take until 2015.
The Russian view is that from the time that the political decision is taken, Tehran needs 18 months to two years to make an explosive nuclear device, but as there is no telling if the political decision has been taken, it would be unwise to bank on more than a year’s grace. Another factor serving to concertina the timeframe is the dispersal and hardening against attack of Iran’s nuclear facilities - as exemplified by the activation of the Fordow uranium-enrichment facility near Qom, which is buried deep within a mountain. The fortification and dispersion of Iran’s nuclear facilities is as much a factor in deciding when the point of no return will be reached as the theoretical calculations about Iran’s speed of enrichment.
The second point is that there is no indication that the Iranian regime feels sufficiently threatened to succumb to the pressure of sanctions. And, linked to this, is the third point: namely that following the publication of the US’s Priorities for 21st Century Defence, China will be feeling even less inclined than hitherto to help Washington solve its Iranian conundrum.
China is already disinclined to help because it is Iran’s biggest customer for oil, taking about 20% of its exports; and a boycott by other customers, that China doesn’t join, might enable it to buy Iranian crude at a discount. Now the new US defence-strategy report has provided China with a further incentive for deepening and prolonging US difficulties in the Middle East. Why, Beijing will be asking itself, should China help the US clear the decks in the Middle East so that it can more easily rebalance its forces towards the Asia-Pacific region?
But if Tehran doesn’t succumb to sanctions, the Arab Spring, or Mossad sabotage, none of which seems likely, then the only other thing that could prevent an attack on Iran would be if the US can persuade Israel to live with a nuclear-armed Iran.
The arguments against attacking Iran are formidable, with Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, the most obvious deterrent. This has been so well publicized that we need add little here other than to note the key facts, namely that:
- The strait is 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, with the width of the shipping lane in either direction only two miles, separated by a two-mile buffer zone.
- 17m barrels of crude oil per day passed through the strait in 2011, carried by 14 oil tankers.
- This represents 20% of oil traded in 2011.
The likely effect on the price of oil and on the global economy of any serious disruption to this flow hardly needs elaborating. But nor is disrupting the flow of oil down the Persian Gulf the only weapon of retaliation open to Tehran. Iran has let it be known that its response to any attack would be worldwide. For instance, in recent days Israeli officials have said that Iran has been expanding the activities of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force in Europe and South America. Israel has warned that the increasing presence of Quds operatives overseas would be used to organize attacks against Israeli, Jewish, and selected Western targets.
In addition to this, the latest Israeli estimate of what would happen in a war with Hezbollah and Syria also applies to an attack on Iran, which would seek to mobilize Hezbollah in its defence. At the beginning of January, a senior Israeli officer was quoted as saying that Israeli cities could expect to be attacked with up to 15,000 rockets in the event of a future war with Hezbollah and Syria. Furthermore, striking back at Hezbollah would be hampered by the build-up by Hezbollah of an arsenal of around 4,000 Russian-made anti-tank missiles.
However, despite all this and more, we still cannot see how Israel can be persuaded to live with a nuclear-armed Iran. The strategic shift against Israel as a consequence of the Arab Spring and Turkey’s defection is too dangerous and cannot be compensated for by such welcome developments as burgeoning strategic links with India. Nato membership (as has been mooted recently as a possibility) might in theory work, but there is no realistic prospect of the current Nato membership extending their one-for-all and all-for-one defensive umbrella to Israel.
So that leaves a US and/or Israeli attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities before the point of no return. As of today, that remains the most likely outcome, whatever the difficulties and downsides, however strong the voices raised against it, and despite the spate of authoritative reports to the contrary. JdeC.