WarSclerotic

Although an attack against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is unlikely given the high risk that it would ignite a broader Middle East conflict, it certainly cannot be ruled out. The internal discussion under way in Israel about whether to strike Iran soon is a genuine debate, not one confected to deter Iranian decision-makers from further accelerating their program.

Reports that Iran has transferred high-speed uranium enrichment centrifuges to a hardened underground facility near the city of Qum indicate that Tehran is taking the threat very seriously. Israel’s preventive strikes on Iraq’s near-operational nuclear reactor at Osiriq in 1981 render extremely credible any threats from Tel Aviv, irrespective of whether they have the backing of Washington (which they did not in 1981).

The conventional wisdom regarding Israel’s deep concerns over Iran’s nuclear program is that they are motivated by fear Iran would use nuclear weapons against the Jewish state and Tehran may be tempted to transfer intact nuclear devices or fissile material to Islamist terrorist groups. Yet Israeli policymakers are probably equally concerned about the prospect that nuclear weapons would provide the necessary strategic equaliser for a conventionally weaker Iran to adopt a more assertive approach in its dealings with other states in the region, including Israel.

Overshadowing the IAEA report on Iran this week were reports from Seoul that North Korea is about three-quarters of the way to acquiring nuclear warheads from its uranium enrichment program. Unlike Iran, North Korea has already tested its nuclear capability (twice) and possesses sufficient plutonium to produce anywhere from four to 10 nuclear bombs.

It is likely Iran is following in Pyongyang’s footsteps by covertly developing nuclear weapons under cover of Non-Proliferation Treaty membership; once it has acquired the capability, it will withdraw from the treaty and declare itself a nuclear power.

It’s highly likely Israeli strategists have been watching North Korea’s behaviour as a newly minted nuclear power as a pointer to how Iran may behave if it acquires the same capability. It is also very likely they are disturbed by what they have seen.

South Korean officials have become increasingly worried about their ability to deter North Korea from carrying out lower-level military provocations under the threshold of general war.

Policymakers are concerned that Pyongyang has become emboldened by its acquisition of nuclear weapons and that North Korea’s leadership feels it can control escalation during any conventional crisis because it believes Seoul and Washington are deterred by the prospect of nuclear use in any general war.

North Korea’s sinking last year of the South Korean destroyer the Cheonan, and the subsequent artillery attack on the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, provide evidence that Pyongyang sees nuclear possession as conferring the necessary “cover” to engage in highly destabilising behaviour on the Korean peninsula. This is the textbook model of the stability-instability paradox. New nuclear-armed powers become more adventurous and risk-acceptant in crises on the assumption nuclear weapons will deter all sides from escalating the crisis to general war. Nuclear possession may promote stability by deterring war, but it increases instability by promoting the assumption that nuclear powers have a licence to engage in escalation below that threshold.

Even if a nuclear-armed Iran is deterred from using nuclear weapons, or from exporting fissile material, there is a real risk that it will seek to leverage nuclear weapons to promote strategic advantage for itself in the Middle East. Iran’s engagement in provocative and destabilising behaviour on the assumption that no state will respond and risk exposing its territory to an Iranian nuclear strike has the potential over time to substantially dilute Israel’s relative strategic authority in the Middle East acquired through its conventional superiority and its nuclear force capability.

Israeli officials understand that if they do not at least attempt to neutralise Iran’s nuclear program, their successors will confront this scenario, perhaps sooner than they think. The policy dilemmas for Israel are stark and acute: is it willing to live with a nuclear-armed Iran that will probably be deterred from using or exporting nuclear weapons but which will almost certainly be emboldened to engage in more aggressive behaviour in the region? Is it willing to risk full-scale war in the Middle East in an attempt to terminate Iran’s nuclear program through decisive force?

Andrew O’Neil is director of the Griffith University Asia Institute