Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu revealed his seven-member security cabinet on Monday (18 March).  This is the body that will decide on whether or not to attack Iran should it cross the red-line threshold set by Netanyahu in his address to the United Nations in September.  This threshold could be crossed by mid-2013, although a recent slowdown in Iran’s enrichment activity could push this further back.  In the meantime, some important academic work is being done on how Israel would go about deterring a nuclear Iran should sanctions fail in their purpose and/or should Israel and the US decide against military action or fail in the mission.

A working paper presented to last week’s annual Herzliya Conference, written by Louis Rene Beres, gives a good indication of the way Israeli thinking about how to deter a nuclear-armed Iran might be developing.  Beres was appointed chairman of Project Daniel in 2003 to advise the prime minister on existential nuclear questions.  His publicly expressed views, therefore, are of significance. 

Beres’s paper is based on the assumption that an Iranian nuclear weapon is now inevitable.  He says: “However regrettable and once-preventable, a fully nuclear Iran now appears to be a fait accompli.  Neither the ‘international community’ in general, nor Israel in particular, has thus far displayed a sufficient willingness to support pertinent preemptions.   Jurisprudentially, such preemptions could have been entirely consistent with the criteria of anticipatory self-defence under international law.  The so-called economic ‘sanctions’ sequentially levelled at Tehran by elements of the ‘international community’ have had no meaningful effect.”

Beres’s starting point is that nuclear weapons are legally usable, particularly by Israel, as “more than any other nation on earth” Israel’s “basic physical survival is problematic”.  Israel, Beres says, already faces “considerable survival risks” due to “expanding regional anarchy”, but these risks will soon be multiplied because “Israel’s existing regional adversaries will soon be joined by a newly nuclear Iran”.

Beres believes that without nuclear weapons “Israel would literally be unable to survive in a persistently anarchic world”, and he points to an Advisory Opinion handed down by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague on 8 July 1996, as providing legal cover for their use or threat of use.  The ICJ opinion concludes:

“The threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law.  However, in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”

This is hardly categorical, but Beres thinks it is enough, and in extremis Israel’s political leaders no doubt would as well.  And it is on this basis that Beres reaches his principal conclusion, namely that Israel’s most-important response to Iran’s nuclear ambitions should be to “remove the bomb from the basement” and selectively disclose details of its nuclear capabilities.

For Beres, “it will be important that…hostile or potentially hostile states believe that Israel controls distinctly usable nuclear weapons, and that Israel would be willing to employ these mega-weapons in certainly readily identifiable circumstances”.

The core argument is that the probability of enemy attacks in the future could be reduced if certain information about Israel’s nuclear capabilities – and “decisional willingness” were to be made public.  Iran, it is argued, needs to understand beyond doubt that Israel’s nuclear capability would survive a surprise attack and that it could, subsequently, penetrate Iran’s active and passive defences.

One important point is that Israel’s weapons are not thought to be too big or powerful to be used.  Israel’s deterrent capability could “vary inversely with the perceived destructiveness of its nuclear arms”.  Accordingly, the release of general information about the availability of low-yield weapons could increase the deterrence value of Israel’s nuclear weapons.  Israel should also, argues Beres, release information about “the hardening, dispersion, multiplication, and obfuscation of these strategic forces”.

But Beres says that Israel must also emphasize that it would not necessarily strike back only against military targets.  He says: “If attacked with any Iranian nuclear weapons, Israel would certainly respond with a nuclear retaliatory strike.  Such an expression of self-defence, technically not a reprisal, would likely be launched against the aggressor’s capital city of Tehran and/or against similarly high-value urban targets.”

He also says that enemy states need to know that Israel has the full spectrum of nuclear weapons, from low yield to high yield.  He says: “The credibility of Israel's nuclear deterrent will ultimately require prospective enemy perceptions of retaliatory destructiveness at both the low and high ends of the nuclear yield spectrum.”

Beres specifically mentions the importance to Israel of having the option to use nuclear weapons against an overwhelming conventional attack.  As we have emphasized many times, this option would clearly be threatened by Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear capability.  But Beres argues that it is not removed altogether, provided Israel can demonstrate its ability to escalate further and more quickly than its enemy.

Beres argues: “Should Israel absorb a massive conventional first-strike, a nuclear retaliation could not be ruled out…Recognizing Israel's relatively small and prospectively still diminishing size, the plausibly calculated threshold of existential harms would be far lower than the country’s total physical devastation.  Israel should soon take steps, including certain changes to deliberate ambiguity, to ensure that this particular set of calculations could also be brought to the attention of would-be aggressors.” 

In the case of an Israeli non-nuclear pre-emptive strike, if the enemy’s retaliation were to be directed towards Israeli civilian populations then – equally - “an Israeli nuclear counter-retaliation could still not be excluded”.  A nuclear counter-retaliation would only be ruled out “if the enemy state’s conventional retaliations were entirely proportionate to Israel’s pre-emption” – that is circumscribed by the legal limits of ‘military necessity’ and accompanied by “explicit and verifiable assurances of no further escalation”.

However, despite all his arguments for the effectiveness of Israel’s nuclear deterrent (provided it is removed from the basement), Beres is unable to offer any solace to those who fear an irrational move by Iran.  If the Iranian leadership were to be motivated by end-times visions of a Shiite apocalypse, then he admits it could “cast aside all rational behaviour” and “effectively become a nuclear suicide-bomber in macrocosm”.  There is little answer to this other than the Samson Option, described by Beres as meaning: “We (Israel) may have to die, but (this time) we won’t die alone.”

What Beres’s paper does is serve to emphasize how incredibly more dangerous the Middle East will become should Iran succeed in its ambition.  And, perhaps after all, he has not completely given up hope that Netanyahu will act pre-emptively against Iran as he does also appear to offer some advice as to the role that Israel’s nuclear weapons could play in any such non-nuclear  preemptive strike.

He argues for “a partial and selective end to Israel’s nuclear ambiguity” ahead of such a strike, and he says: “Following any such pre-emption, Israel, in order to prevent a damaging response, would have to make clear to Iran that any significant conventional missile retaliatory attack(s) upon Israel would certainly be met with an unacceptably destructive Israeli nuclear counter-retaliation.”

He adds: “For any such counter-retaliatory threat to be compelling, Iran’s leadership would first have to believe, inter alia, that Israel’s pertinent nuclear weapons were operationally usable – a belief that could be critically enhanced by bringing Israel’s bomb out of the basement.”

We doubt that Netanyahu will follow this advice, given that a public end to Israel’s nuclear ambiguity before Iran had achieved nuclear-armed status would just provide Tehran with further motivation and ‘justification’ for its actions.  

All the evidence also suggests that Netanyahu is still committed to preventing Iran becoming a nuclear power.  He has only just reiterated that the “paramount task” of his new government is to “stop Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons”, and sources in Jerusalem believe that the new security cabinet, although less experienced than its predecessor, will be more hawkish.  It consists of Netanyahu, Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon, Finance Minister Yair Lapid, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, Communications and Home Front Defence Minister Gilad Erdan, and Trade and Labour Minister Naftali Bennett. 

The main obstacles to Netanyahu within the security cabinet would seem to be Lapid, who is thought to be close to Meir Dagan, the retired head of Mossad who has openly argued that an attack on Iran would be fruitless, and Livni, who was quoted as saying, when she was foreign secretary in 2007, that a nuclear-armed Iran would not threaten the existence of Israel.  But the opposition of those two would not be enough to stop a determined Netanyahu.

And Netanyahu’s fears of what a nuclear armed Iran would mean can only have been increased, not diminished, by Beres’s paper – with its clear dismissal of any idea that there could be any resemblance between a nuclear-armed Middle East and the stable stand-off that pertained during the latter years of the Cold War.  Nevertheless, if by any chance Iran does succeed in its ambitions, Beres provides a valuable insight into what the future may look like.  JdeC.

NOTE: In an interview given to CNN to coincide with President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel, Israel’s President Shimon Peres said he is convinced that the US is prepared to use military force to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.  He said of Obama: “He is a man of values...a man I respect (and) a man that thinks before he speaks.”