WarSclerotic

Nuclear roulette as US, Israel scrutinise Iran’s reactor and enrichment programs | The Australian.

A LOT of issues slide on and off the front pages of newspapers. Most of them are of little broader consequence, just part of the drama that we call the international system.

A few, however, reappear regularly, and could have incalculable consequences.

One is Iran’s apparent determination to become a nuclear weapons state or, at least, a state in a position to go nuclear quickly.

Iran is a party to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and has a safeguards (inspections) agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Parties to the treaty can engage in the full range of nuclear activities provided they do so transparently and allow the agency to verify that they are not going the extra step and giving themselves nuclear weapons capability.

In 2003, Iran was caught in the act of aspiring to acquire uranium enrichment capability without having informed the IAEA.

It quickly transpired that Iran had been on this path — with the assistance of Pakistan’s notorious AQ Khan — for nearly 20 years.

Tehran flatly denied any clandestine bomb program and implied that it had been forced to proceed in this way because the US and/or Israel would seek to destroy its nuclear capabilities even if they were legitimate.

Those suspicions have been intensified by things like the prompt dismantling of a major facility in Tehran before it could be inspected, refusing to allow access to many senior figures in Iran’s nuclear program, conducting a ballistic missile development program suggestive of an interest in delivering nuclear weapons and seeking, generally, to meet only its minimal legal obligations under the treaty. All this without giving the slightest hint that it recognised an international obligation to restore confidence in its nuclear intentions.

Iran has not avoided censure. Four Security Council resolutions have demanded that it suspend uranium enrichment and fully address international concerns about its past and present nuclear activities. Each resolution has imposed harsher sanctions, but Tehran has dismissed the resolutions as illegal.

US presidents, including Obama, have said a nuclear-armed Iran is “unacceptable”. The US routinely reminds Iran that it prefers a diplomatic solution, but “all options are on the table”.

Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mullen has confirmed publicly that the US has developed plans to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. The US is aware, however, that the military option is unlikely to do more than set back Iran’s program by a few years.

Moreover, a surgical strike without wider consequences is extremely unlikely. Iran could seek to retaliate in a number of ways.

It could seek to disrupt the oil-tanker traffic through the Straits of Hormuz. Since it borders both Iraq and Afghanistan, it could find ways to complicate the US missions in these fragile states.

And it is very close to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which lured Israel into a costly war in 2008.

Most of the (Sunni) Arab states in Iran’s neighbourhood may be nervous about (Shiite) Iran’s regional aspirations but they will be loath to join with the US without complete confidence that Washington was able and willing to stay the course.

Costly new security obligations are the last thing the US wants or needs at the moment, but it has promised to build a defence shield over Iran’s neighbours to deny Tehran any coercive influence it may hope to derive from nuclear weapons capability.

If the US is not attracted to the military option, it is far from clear the same is true of Israel.

Iran’s leaders have more than once indicated they wished to see the end of Israel. This is in addition to denying the Holocaust and suggesting the US itself carried out the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks, in part to (somehow) bolster Israel’s security.

Israel is prone to speak of Iran as an existential threat, and has a record of pre-empting perceived nuclear threats from Arab states: Iraq in 1981 and Syria last year.

Iran’s nuclear facilities are at the extreme limit of the range of the Israeli Air Force. An Israeli attack would have to be a single strike, and would require violating the airspace of Arab states such as Iraq or Saudi Arabia.

Such a strike against Iran’s dispersed nuclear facilities would involve committing many of Israel’s frontline aircraft, which would need to return quickly to deal with any threats to Israel itself that may arise as a consequence.

Israel may regard any disruption of Iran’s nuclear program as worth the risk. It would probably inform the US of its intentions, but most likely not until it was too late for Washington to stop it.

Washington knows it could not distance itself from an Israeli strike, and keeping Israelis optimistic about a US strike is perhaps the best deterrent.

This poisonous state of affairs is fraught with risk. Exactly what Iranian nuclear capability would be seen by Israel or the US as mandating a strike is unclear.

Whether Iran knows, and plans to stop short of, this trigger point is also unclear. Iran has some 2800kg of low-enriched uranium, enough to produce bomb-grade material for two bombs (50kg) if it devoted its enrichment centrifuges to this task.

That is hardly a nuclear weapons capability, especially as the agency monitors the primary enrichment facility. But Iran is also developing more centrifuges, preparing to increase its enrichment locations, and is trying to perfect more advanced centrifuges that can enrich more uranium faster. Place your bets.

Ron Huisken is a senior fellow at ANU’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre

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