War and Bluff: Iran, Israel and the United States

September 11, 2012 | 0900 GMT

By George Friedman

For the past several months, the Israelis have been threatening to attack Iranian nuclear sites as the United States has pursued a complex policy of avoiding complete opposition to such strikes while making clear it doesn't feel such strikes are necessary. At the same time, the United States has carried out maneuvers meant to demonstrate its ability to prevent the Iranian counter to an attack -- namely blocking the Strait of Hormuz. While these maneuvers were under way, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said no "redline" exists that once crossed by Iran would compel an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. The Israeli government has long contended that Tehran eventually will reach the point where it will be too costly for outsiders to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

The Israeli and American positions are intimately connected, but the precise nature of the connection is less clear. Israel publicly casts itself as eager to strike Iran but restrained by the United States, though unable to guarantee it will respect American wishes if Israel sees an existential threat emanating from Iran. The United States publicly decries Iran as a threat to Israel and to other countries in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia, but expresses reservations about military action out of fears that Iran would respond to a strike by destabilizing the region and because it does not believe the Iranian nuclear program is as advanced as the Israelis say it is.

The Israelis and the Americans publicly hold the same view of Iran. But their public views on how to proceed diverge. The Israelis have less tolerance for risk than the Americans, who have less tolerance for the global consequences of an attack. Their disagreement on the issue pivots around the status of the Iranian nuclear program. All of this lies on the surface; let us now examine the deeper structure of the issue.

Behind the Rhetoric

From the Iranian point of view, a nuclear program has been extremely valuable. Having one has brought Iran prestige in the Islamic world and has given it a level of useful global political credibility. As with North Korea, having a nuclear program has allowed Iran to sit as an equal with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany, creating a psychological atmosphere in which Iran's willingness merely to talk to the Americans, British, French, Russians, Chinese and Germans represented a concession. Though it has positioned the Iranians extremely well politically, the nuclear program also has triggered sanctions that have caused Iran substantial pain. But Iran has prepared for sanctions for years, building a range of corporate, banking and security mechanisms to evade their most devastating impact. Having countries like Russia and China unwilling to see Iran crushed has helped. Iran can survive sanctions.

While a nuclear program has given Iran political leverage, actually acquiring nuclear weapons would increase the risk of military action against Iran. A failed military action would benefit Iran, proving its power. By contrast, a successful attack that dramatically delayed or destroyed Iran's nuclear capability would be a serious reversal. The Stuxnet episode, assuming it was an Israeli or U.S. attempt to undermine Iran's program using cyberwarfare, is instructive in this regard. Although the United States hailed Stuxnet as a major success, it hardly stopped the Iranian program, if the Israelis are to be believed. In that sense, it was a failure.

Using nuclear weapons against Israel would be catastrophic to Iran. The principle of mutual assured destruction, which stabilized the U.S.-Soviet balance in the Cold War, would govern Iran's use of nuclear weapons. If Iran struck Israel, the damage would be massive, forcing the Iranians to assume that the Israelis and their allies (specifically, the United States) would launch a massive counterattack on Iran, annihilating large parts of Iran's population.

It is here that we get to the heart of the issue. While from a rational perspective the Iranians would be fools to launch such an attack, the Israeli position is that the Iranians are not rational actors and that their religious fanaticism makes any attempt to predict their actions pointless. Thus, the Iranians might well accept the annihilation of their country in order to destroy Israel in a sort of megasuicide bombing. The Israelis point to the Iranians' rhetoric as evidence of their fanaticism. Yet, as we know, political rhetoric is not always politically predictive. In addition, rhetoric aside, Iran has pursued a cautious foreign policy, pursuing its ends with covert rather than overt means. It has rarely taken reckless action, engaging instead in reckless rhetoric.

If the Israelis believe the Iranians are not deterred by the prospect of mutually assured destruction, then allowing them to develop nuclear weapons would be irrational. If they do see the Iranians as rational actors, then shaping the psychological environment in which Iran acquires nuclear weapons is a critical element of mutually assured destruction. Herein lies the root of the great Israeli debate that pits the Netanyahu government, which appears to regard Iran as irrational, against significant segments of the Israeli military and intelligence communities, which regard Iran as rational.

Avoiding Attaining a Weapon

Assuming the Iranians are rational actors, their optimal strategy lies not in acquiring nuclear weapons and certainly not in using them, but instead in having a credible weapons development program that permits them to be seen as significant international actors. Developing weapons without ever producing them gives Iran international political significance, albeit at the cost of sanctions of debatable impact. At the same time, it does not force anyone to act against them, thereby permitting outsiders to avoid incurring the uncertainties and risks of such action.

Up to this point, the Iranians have not even fielded a device for testing, let alone a deliverable weapon. For all their activity, either their technical limitations or a political decision has kept them from actually crossing the obvious redlines and left Israel trying to define some developmental redline.

Iran's approach has created a slowly unfolding crisis, reinforced by Israel's slowly rolling response. For its part, all of Israel's rhetoric -- and periodic threats of imminent attack -- has been going on for several years, but the Israelis have done little beyond some covert and cyberattacks to block the Iranian nuclear program. Just as the gap between Iranian rhetoric and action has been telling, so, too, has the gap between Israeli rhetoric and reality. Both want to appear more fearsome than either is actually willing to act.

The Iranian strategy has been to maintain ambiguity on the status of its program, while making it appear that the program is capable of sudden success -- without ever achieving that success. The Israeli strategy has been to appear constantly on the verge of attack without ever attacking and to use the United States as its reason for withholding attacks, along with the studied ambiguity of the Iranian program. The United States, for its part, has been content playing the role of holding Israel back from an attack that Israel doesn't seem to want to launch. The United States sees the crumbling of Iran's position in Syria as a major Iranian reversal and is content to see this play out alongside sanctions.

Underlying Israel's hesitancy about whether it will attack has been the question of whether it can pull off an attack. This is not a political question, but a military and technical one. Iran, after all, has been preparing for an attack on its nuclear facilities since their inception. Some scoff at Iranian preparations for attack. These are the same people who are most alarmed by supposed Iranian acumen in developing nuclear weapons. If a country can develop nuclear weapons, there is no reason it can't develop hardened and dispersed sites and create enough ambiguity to deprive Israeli and U.S. intelligence of confidence in their ability to determine what is where. I am reminded of the raid on Son Tay during the Vietnam War. The United States mounted an effort to rescue U.S. prisoners of war in North Vietnam only to discover that its intelligence on where the POWs were located was completely wrong. Any politician deciding whether to attack Iran would have Son Tay and a hundred other intelligence failures chasing around their brains, especially since a failed attack on Iran would be far worse than no attack.

Dispersed sites reduce Israel's ability to strike hard at a target and to acquire a battle damage assessment that would tell Israel three things: first, whether the target had been destroyed when it was buried under rock and concrete; second, whether the target contained what Israel thought it contained; and third, whether the strike had missed a backup site that replicated the one it destroyed. Assuming the Israelis figured out that another attack was needed, could their air force mount a second air campaign lasting days or weeks? They have a small air force and the distances involved are great.

Meanwhile, deploying special operations forces to so many targets so close to Tehran and so far from Iran's borders would be risky, to say the least. Some sort of exotic attack, for example one using nuclear weapons to generate electromagnetic pulses to paralyze the region, is conceivable -- but given the size of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem-Haifa triangle, it is hard to imagine Israel wanting to set such a precedent. If the Israelis have managed to develop a new weapons technology unknown to anyone, all conventional analyses are off. But if the Israelis had an ultrasecret miracle weapon, postponing its use might compromise its secrecy. I suspect that if they had such a weapon, they would have used it by now.

The battlefield challenges posed by the Iranians are daunting, and a strike becomes even less appealing considering that the Iranians have not yet detonated a device and are far from a weapon. The Americans emphasize these points, but they are happy to use the Israeli threats to build pressure on the Iranians. The United States wants to undermine Iranian credibility in the region by making Iran seem vulnerable. The twin forces of Israeli rhetoric and sanctions help make Iran look embattled. The reversal in Syria enhances this sense. Naval maneuvers in the Strait of Hormuz add to the sense that the United States is prepared to neutralize Iranian counters to an Israeli airstrike, making the threat Israel poses and the weakness of Iran appear larger.

When we step back and view the picture as a whole, we see Iran using its nuclear program for political reasons but being meticulous not to make itself appear unambiguously close to success. We see the Israelis talking as if they were threatened but acting as if they were in no rush to address the supposed threat. And we see the Americans acting as if they are restraining Israel, paradoxically appearing to be Iran's protector even though they are using the Israeli threat to increase Iranian insecurity. For their part, the Russians initially supported Iran in a bid to bog down the United States in another Middle East crisis. But given Iran's reversal in Syria, the Russians are clearly reconsidering their Middle East strategy and even whether they actually have a strategy in the first place. Meanwhile, the Chinese want to continue buying Iranian oil unnoticed.

It is the U.S.-Israeli byplay that is most fascinating. On the surface, Israel is driving U.S. policy. On closer examination, the reverse is true. Israel has bluffed an attack for years and never acted. Perhaps now it will act, but the risks of failure are substantial. If Israel really wants to act, this is not obvious. Speeches by politicians do not constitute clear guidelines. If the Israelis want to get the United States to participate in the attack, rhetoric won't work. Washington wants to proceed by increasing pressure to isolate Iran. Simply getting rid of a nuclear program not clearly intended to produce a device is not U.S. policy. Containing Iran without being drawn into a war is. To this end, Israeli rhetoric is useful.

Rather than seeing Netanyahu as trying to force the United States into an attack, it is more useful to see Netanyahu's rhetoric as valuable to U.S. strategy. Israel and the United States remain geopolitically aligned. Israel's bellicosity is not meant to signal an imminent attack, but to support the U.S. agenda of isolating and maintaining pressure on Iran. That would indicate more speeches from Netanyahu and greater fear of war. But speeches and emotions aside, intensifying psychological pressure on Iran is more likely than war.


"War and Bluff: Iran, Israel and the United States is republished with permission of Stratfor."

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/war-and-bluff-iran-israel-and-united-states?utm_source=freelist-f&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20120911&utm_term=gweekly&utm_content=readmore&elq=644d96aba342469693a5ccc1ceb9c24a


With all the hysterical extrapolation tossed around this site lately, this article puts the affair into a more reasonable perspective.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel inserted himself into the mostcontentious foreign policy issue of the American presidential campaign on Tuesday, criticizing the Obama administration for refusing to set clear “red lines” on Iran’s nuclear progress thatwould prompt the United States to undertake a military strike. As a result, he said, the administration has no “moral right” to restrain Israel from taking military actionof its own.
Mr. Netanyahu’s unusually harsh public comments about Israel’s most important ally, whichclosely track what he has reportedly said invivid terms to American officials visiting Jerusalem, laid bare the tension between him and President Obama over how to handle Iran. They also suggested that he is willing to use the pressure of the presidential election to try to force Mr. Obama to commit to attack Iran under certain conditions.
He appeared to be responding to a weekend statement by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that the United States was “not setting deadlines” beyond which it would turn to a military solution.
Mr. Netanyahu, speaking at a news conference in Jerusalem, said, “Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.”
In another sign of tensions, the Israeli Embassy in Washington said late Tuesday that the Obama administration had declined a request from Mr. Netanyahu’soffice for a meeting with Mr. Obama when the Israeli leader attends the United Nations General Assembly thismonth. The Obama administration said the decision was due to a scheduling problem and had been conveyed to Israel long ago.
On Tuesday night, Mr.Obama called Mr. Netanyahu to try to calm the situation. The two talked for a full hour, hashing through the Iran confrontation and their misunderstandings.
“President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu reaffirmed that they are united in their determination to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and agreed to continue their close consultations going forward,” the White House said in astatement after the phone call.
The White House alsotried to tamp down controversy over the request for a meeting, saying that after a possible New York encounter was ruled out, Mr. Netanyahu did not request a meeting in Washington. “Contrary to reports in the press, there was never a request for Prime Minister Netanyahu to meet with President Obama in Washington, nor wasa request for a meeting ever denied,” the statement said.
The United States says it has no evidence that Iranianleaders have made a final decision to builda bomb. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest report says the country has amassed a stockpile of low- and medium-enriched uranium that, with further enrichment, could fuel as many as six nuclear weapons.
The United States concluded several years ago that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons development program at the end of 2003, though there has been evidence of sporadic work since. The Israelis say Iran is quietly reconstitutinga much larger effort.
In demanding that Mr. Obama effectivelyissue an ultimatum to Iran, Mr. Netanyahu appeared to be making maximum use of his political leverage at atime when Mr. Obama’s Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, has sought to make an issue of what Mr. Romney says is the administration’s lack of support for Israel.
It is not clear what level of development in Iran’s nuclear program would constitute a “red line” in Israeli eyes. Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a research institute, and a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview last week, “It is very important to draw a line about the quantities of enriched uranium and the levels of enrichment.”
One option that has been widely discussed among experts advising the United States government is capping Iran’s uranium enrichment at a reactor-grade level. Also, Iran would be permitted to stockpile no more than 1,764 pounds of that uranium, less than is required, if further enriched, to make a single bomb.

Historically, countries who sought the "bomb", got the bomb. Iran's intent is clear behind the rhetoric.

There are several issues mentioned in the OP that the general public do not fully understand.

Dispersal - Iran has huge human resources and sufficient tech to dig deep holes in the ground. The addition of common reinforced concrete layers above eventually prevent destruction by the best bunker buster bombs. Multiple facilities of this type make accurate targeting impossible. Just like the cold war, having too many target locations for the enemy to take out reduces the probability of a first strike.

Progress - It is overly optimistic for the US or Israel to state that they know that "Iran is far from their goal". It took other countries less time with less resources to build a bomb. There is no way of knowing what help Iran has gotten from Pakistan or North Korea.

Intent - The hardest factor to determine is the level of zeal the Iranian leaders have for acquiring a bomb and using it. Their leaders appear to act more like religious fanatics than reasoned world players. If one was only to go by the public statements of their politicians and cleric, the world, especially Israel, should be afraid.

Good points. These indeterminate factors drive current policy and lobbying.