Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

Short of a sudden and unexpected Iranian capitulation, there are only two reasons why Israel would not attack Iran’s nuclear facilities sometime in the next six months.  The first would be if it thought that the United States were going to do the job for it.  The second would be if it believed it would fail in a unilateral attack.  The past week will have greatly increased Israeli doubts about the prospects for US military action, particularly if President Obama is re-elected in November.

On 13 September, the Wilson Center published a report on Weighing the benefits and costs of military action against Iran.  The report is a collaborative project by heavyweight former senior national security officials, military officers, and Mideast experts.  It claims that it is not an advocacy report but  rather an attempt to present an objective assessment of the costs and benefits of a military attack to the American people.

Nevertheless, there is no question in our mind that the report is intended to discourage a US military strike by emphasizing the likely costs and pointing to the paucity of the likely benefits.  There is equally no doubt that this view has strong support within the US policymaking establishment.

As a consequence, those Israeli policymakers who believe that Israel has the military capacity to act alone will, on reading this report, be further persuaded as to the dangers of allowing the Iranian nuclear programme to move into the “zone of immunity”, that is the point at which an Israeli unilateral strike would become ineffective because of Iranian countermeasures.  That Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is among this number can be taken as read.

The Wilson Center report, without actually saying that is what it is doing, makes a powerful case for the US to avoid military action.  The benefits of an attack, it says would include delaying Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon “for up to four years”.  There may also be some additional knock-on benefits such as discouraging other states from pursuing nuclear weapons.  An attack could also “disrupt government control, deplete the Iran treasury, raise internal tensions, and...weaken the regime” – but while acknowledging this as a possibility, the report believes it is much more likely that the regime will be strengthened.

The costs, on the other hand, could be very considerable.  The initial costs could include loss of lives and damage to property caused by Iranian retaliation, including through the use of “at least two dozen and possibly more than 100 conventionally armed ballistic missiles capable of striking most of the region”.  The constrained geography of the Persian Gulf could enable Iran to inflict “meaningful damage on US or allied ships”.  And Iran could succeed in closing the Strait of Hormuz “for days or even weeks by deploying a substantial number of mines and then using its naval forces and land-based anti-ship missiles to hinder efforts at clearance”.

In addition to this direct Iranian retaliation, indirect retaliation would very likely include the deployment of allies such as Hezbollah and covert action assets such as the Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force.  Retaliatory attacks could take place outside the Middle East.

The biggest concern, however, is the “escalation spiral” that the report believes could follow any US military strike.  The report believes that “uncontrollable escalation to full scale combat” would be a possibility.  This is because an aerial strike would inevitably increase Iran’s determination to become a nuclear state, and because aerial strikes alone would not be sufficient to bring Tehran to the negotiating table.  As a consequence, the report warns, “in order to achieve Iran’s capitulation or to bring down the regime, the United States would probably have to use ground forces and wage a long-term war”.  In the view of the report’s authors, “air strikes alone are not likely to lead to regime change, regime collapse, or capitulation”.  They would also, in all likelihood, strengthen not weaken internal solidarity with the regime.

At the same time, the initial strike would break global solidarity against Iran’s nuclear programme; promote regional and global instability; and increase terrorist recruitment.  And although some Gulf states would favour an attack, such as Saudi Arabia, the impact at the street level in the Arab world would be almost universally negative – “particularly in Egypt”.  This judgement would seem to have been strengthened by the events of the past week, with the killing in Benghazi of the US ambassador to Libya over the production in the US of a film critical of Mohammed.  Anti-Americanism in the Middle East is rife even in those countries recently helped by the US and would certainly explode further if the US were to launch another war against a Muslim country.

This point has been emphasized by Russian experts, and it will certainly not be lost on Iran.  As one Russian Mideast expert put it this week: “There are under these conditions diminished opportunities for the direct influence of the United States and Israel on Iran since both countries have to consider that the Arab street could be on the side of Iran, which is highly popular among the Arab youth and the Arab street in general.”

The outcome of an attack on Iran would be only slightly better, argues the Wilson Center report, if an attack were to come after an overt move by Iran to become a nuclear power, by for instance withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT).  The problem is that even in those circumstances, the US would be unable to get authorization for military action through the UN Security Council given Russian and Chinese veto powers.

The report might also have added, but didn’t, that the escalating tension in Asia between China and Japan, which is unlikely to be resolved quickly, makes it even more important that the US is not dragged into yet another major war in the Middle East.

In an interview given on 14 September, Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak said that although “there are differences about how fast the clock is ticking”, the US and Israel are in agreement on the need to stop Iran’s nuclear programme.  But the evidence of the Wilson Center report would seem to suggest that Israel cannot rely even on that if it means going to war.

A few days later, on 17 September, Israel Hayom published an interview with Netanyahu in which he emphasized once again his determination to do “the right thing” rather than what the US might want him to do.  He said that he listens to President Obama’s advice “very carefully”, but when it comes “to issues such as these...[doing] the just thing is always the right thing”.

It seems as clear to us as it can be that the US will do all that it can to avoid another war in the Middle East – and that at the very least it will delay any decision until well beyond the point at which Iran’s nuclear programme has become immune to a unilateral Israeli strike.  This is doubly certain should Obama be re-elected in November.

Iran agrees: it believes that the US will not attack, but it also believes that an Israeli attack will not happen because of US opposition.  On the latter point, on 16 September Iran’s Commander Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Mohammad Ali Jafari said: “No permit for military action against Iran will be issued to them [Israel].”

On the face of it, this looks like a rational judgement, which is why Iran is showing no sign of backing down.  However, while it is likely to be right about the US, particularly if President Obama is re-elected, we remain far from convinced that it is right about Israel, or at least about Netanyahu and his closest advisers, and they are the ones that count.  JdeC.

Note:  On the likely effects of an Israeli unilateral strike, the Wilson Center report says: “Given the extensive, concealed, and protected nature of Iran’s nuclear sites, and the scope of Israel’s military capabilities, we estimate that an Israeli attack could delay Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon by up to two years.”

The report adds that Israeli military action could do “serious damage” to the enrichment facility at Natanz and to the conversion facilities around Esfahan and Tehran.  It could also destroy “a portion” of Iran’s 3.5% enriched uranium stockpile.  Strikes against centrifuge production facilities would also help to postpone the building of a nuclear weapon.  However, Israel would not be able to achieve the level of success it achieved in its strikes against nuclear reactors in Iraq and Syria “since Iran’s nuclear sites are numerous and widely dispersed, with one (Fordow) buried deep underground.”

The report doesn’t quantify how much damage Israel could do to the Fordow site, where a portion of Iran’s 20% enriched uranium stockpile is stored.  However, it suggests that the US, using bunker-busting bombs, could inflict significant damage.  On the timeline for recovery (from a US bombing, not an Israeli one) it notes that it took from 2007 (when work was first detected) to 2009 for Fordow to be identified as an enrichment facility and another two years before centrifuges were installed.