Containing and Deterring a Nuclear Iran
Questions for Strategy, Requirements for Military Forces
Thomas Donnelly, Danielle Pletka, and Maseh Zarif
With a Foreword by Frederick W. Kagan
December 2011
A Report by the American Enterprise Institute
Acknowledgments
This report is the culmination of a project executed with the support of numerous individuals, including groups of experts gathered in July and September 2010 at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Our colleagues at AEI contributed vital assistance, understanding, and analysis in the completion of this report. We are grateful for their support in this endeavor and for their commitment to further our collective efforts to address a key national security challenge facing our country. In particular, we thank Frederick W. Kagan, Michael Rubin, Gary Schmitt, Ali Alfoneh, Ahmad Majidyar, Katherine Faley, Will Fulton, Grant Gibson, Stephen Gailliot, Lazar Berman, Richard Cleary, Laura Shen, and Henry A. Ensher. We would also like to thank the publications staff at AEI for their keen editorial and technical assistance. As always, credit belongs to many, but the contents of this report and any errors and interpretations are the responsibility of the authors alone.
Foreword
The challenge of a nuclear Iran will be among the most difficult the United States has faced. Iran will not soon pose an existential threat to the United States in the way that the Soviet Union did from the 1960s until its collapse—at least, not in the sense that it will have a nuclear arsenal capable of literally annihilating the United States. But Iran will reach another threshold by acquiring nuclear weapons—the ability to keep America and its allies in constant fear. For a state that has formed its national security policy largely around terrorism, that is quite an accomplishment. It will unquestionably change American foreign and national security policy profoundly for the foreseeable future and introduce a source of permanent unease into a region and a world already suffering from more than enough worry and distress.
Many American and international leaders have said that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is unacceptable for these and other reasons. But at this moment it seems nearly certain that the international community, including the United States, will accept it. Anything is possible, but it is very difficult to imagine the current American administration going to war with Iran to prevent Tehran from advancing its nuclear program, whatever reports come out of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or elsewhere. None of America’s allies, apart from Israel, will take military action. There is no reason to imagine that a sanctions regime, or attempts to “isolate” Iran diplomatically, will succeed in the next year or two, having already failed spectacularly for more than a decade. And with the US failure to secure a binding relationship with Iraq, it is much more likely that the sanctions regime will steadily erode as Tehran uses Iraq to bypass it.
The Iranians thus face an opportune policy window during which sound strategy would lead them to field a nuclear capability if they have the ability to do so. The Obama administration seems certain not to attack. But the outcome of the next American presidential election is entirely uncertain, and the attitudes of some of the Republican candidates—particularly, the front-runners—are much less clear. Strategically, Iran’s leaders would be foolish to wait until after November 2012 to acquire the capability to permanently deter an American attack on their nuclear program.
Sound American strategy thus requires assuming that Iran will have a weaponized nuclear capability when the next president takes office in January 2013. The Iranians may not test a device before then, depending, perhaps, on the rhetoric of the current president and his possible successor, but we must assume that they will have at least one.
The prospect of an Israeli strike in the interim—the odds of which have increased again in the wake of the president’s decision to withdraw all US forces from Iraq at the end of this year—do not necessarily alter this calculus much. The Israeli Air Force can no doubt strike known facilities in Iran, including the enrichment facility at Natanz. It can likely destroy any above-ground structures and verify their destruction. It may be able to destroy known buried structures, such as those at Natanz, but verification may prove much more difficult. The biggest problem is that the known facilities are primarily those involved in the enrichment process—creating the nuclear fuel that would go into a weapon. Do the Israelis know the locations of all of the facilities in which that fuel might be mated with a warhead? Can they hit and destroy them? Can they, or anyone else, be certain when the dust has settled that they have gotten them all? If the Iranian leadership pops up the next day and says, “You missed! We still have a weapon!” then what? The United States will almost certainly be forced to behave as though this is true, and the following months and years will be spent attempting to prove or disprove the claim—and to examine Iran’s almost-inevitable efforts to rebuild its program (probably without benefit of IAEA access). And all that is to say nothing of the regional and even global consequences of an Israeli strike and an Iranian response.
The next American president is very likely to find himself or herself willy-nilly pursuing a policy of containing a nuclear Iran—or, at least, an Iran suspected of having nuclear weapons rather than simply of having a program that could produce them. Yet there is no such policy now under development (since no world leader can explicitly discuss a possibility he has dismissed as “unacceptable”), and little thought has been given to what such a policy might look like. When the project that produced this report began, we believed it was important to compare the costs and challenges of a containment strategy against other possible courses of action aimed at preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. But the situation has changed. Our task is now to start setting the terms of the discussion about what a successful strategy of containing a nuclear Iran will look like.
Make no mistake—it would be vastly preferable for the United States and the world to find a way to prevent Iran from crossing that threshold, and we wholeheartedly endorse ongoing efforts that might do so. But some of the effort now focused on how to tighten the sanctions screws must shift to the problem of how to deal with the consequences when sanctions fail. That is the aim of this paper, and we hope it will become the aim of a significant portion of the Iran policy community sooner rather than later.
Note: I was a part of this discussion and this project from the outset, but circumstances required me to spend the period during which it was written in Afghanistan. I was not able, therefore, to take part in writing it, as I and my colleagues had originally expected, leaving them to carry the burden alone. They have done so brilliantly, and I proudly associate myself with the work they have produced.
—Frederick W. Kagan
Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar in defense and security policy studies and director of the Critical Threats Project at AEI.
Key Findings
•Many have suggested that containing a nuclear Iran is a reasonable option, possibly more desirable than confrontation. The United States may choose the containment of Iran as the least-worst option. Alternatively, containment may be thrust upon us at the moment Iran becomes a nuclear state, a moment that has been difficult to predict in the past.
•Containment is hardly a cost-free policy, but aside from a small handful of policy sketches proffered heretofore, little thought has gone into what an effective containment and deterrent regime will require of the United States and its allies.
•Even without a nuclear weapon, Iran is difficult to deter: its diffuse leadership structures and constant domestic power struggles make it hard to determine which individual leaders, groups of leaders and institutions should be the objects and targets of deterrence. Furthermore, the Iranian approach to military power is a highly asymmetrical strategy that substitutes nuclear weapons, irregulars, proxies, and terrorism for conventional strength.
•Modeled on Cold War containment practices, the following are essential components of a coherent Iran containment policy: that it should seek to block any Iranian expansion in the Persian Gulf region; to illuminate the problematic nature of the regime’s ambitions; to constrain and indeed to “induce a retraction” of Iranian influence, including Iranian “soft power”; and to work toward a political—
if not a physical—transformation of the Tehran regime.
•A further essential characteristic of Cold War containment applicable to Iran is that such a policy demands a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach driven by consistent diplomacy. Containing Iran requires effecting the isolation of the Iranian regime, disconnecting it from great power patrons, limiting its ability to peel off neighbors and regional players to serve its agenda, limiting its use of proxies, and more.
•The keystone of any containment policy is a military strategy of deterrence. An Iran policy of containment must meet the basic Cold War standard of credibility, which includes three criteria. The deterrent posture depends on an adequate US nuclear arsenal of offensive systems; a substantial investment in forward-deployed and reinforcing conventional forces; and the preservation of strong alliances that permit relatively good policy integration, military cooperation, and basing and access for US forces.
•Adopting a serious policy of containment and strategy of deterrence will have implications for US nuclear policy and forces. A credible US offensive deterrent must be “persistent”: that is, dedicated forces must be active, available, and “present,” at least in the mind of the adversary. In addition, the role of US offensive nuclear forces as the central feature of a “defense umbrella” covering American allies and their interests across the greater Middle East will be critical. Current policies and plans, however, do not reflect such considerations.
•A serious policy of containment and deterrence calls for a constant and significant conventional force presence around Iran’s perimeter. Current US nuclear forces are not well prepared to provide deterrence against a nuclear Iran, and the deterrent value of US conventional supremacy is being undercut by continuous and well-publicized reductions in defense spending, which has been marked, in recent years, by a growing number of terminations and cancellations of the very weapons most likely to provide a proximate danger in Tehran’s eyes.
•US military planners must also consider the feasibility of eliminating Iran’s nuclear retaliatory options in a single raid or rapid-strike campaign given that Iran stands on the brink of developing not just a single weapon but a modest breakout capability for a more robust arsenal that would provide a survivable deterrent.
•The diplomatic, strategic, and military costs of containing and deterring are already high. Consider the military costs alone: a renewed offensive nuclear deterrent, both in the United States and extended to the region; prolonged counterintelligence, counterterrorist, and counterinsurgency operations around Iran’s perimeter; a large and persistent conventional covering force operating throughout the region and a reinforcing force capable of assured regime change; and energetic military-to-military programs with coalition partners. Such a deterrent posture is not only near or beyond the limits of current US forces—and we know of no substantial body of studies that has analyzed in sufficient detail the requirements for a containment posture—but also would certainly surpass the capabilities of the reduced US military that proposed budget cuts would produce.
•In conclusion, we find that though containment and deterrence are possible policies and strategies for the United States and others to adopt when faced with a nuclear Iran, we cannot share the widespread enthusiasm entertained in many quarters. Indeed, the broad embrace of containment and deterrence appears to be based primarily on an unwillingness to analyze the risks and costs described. Containing and deterring may be the least-bad choice. However, that does not make it a low-risk or low-cost choice. In fact, it is about to be not a choice but a fact of life.
Executive Summary
It has long been the policy of the US government that a nuclear-armed Iran would be unacceptable. Yet, whether the conventional and nontraditional means of US and Western policy can secure the end of keeping Tehran from fulfilling its longtime nuclear ambition is far from clear. While it is possible military action will deprive Iran of its nuclear option, that the current regime in the Islamic Republic will be overthrown, or that sanctions will bring the regime to the table with meaningful concessions, there is also every possibility that none of these scenarios will come to pass. Moreover, if there is a rising consensus that sanctions ultimately will fail, there is an equally strong belief among the foreign-policy establishment in Washington and other Western capitals that preemptive military action is unappealing, leading many to suggest that containing a nuclear Iran is a reasonable option. Should Iran acquire nuclear weapons, all the tools used heretofore will remain on the table, but there will be a new layer of strategic challenges and constraints—not simply the day after but also well into the future.
Containment is hardly a cost-free policy, but aside from a small handful of policy sketches, little thought has gone into what an effective containment and deterrent regime will require of the United States and its allies. The public discussion of containing a nuclear Iran has been conducted in a haze of good feeling about the successes of the Cold War, but containing the Soviet Union was hardly simple. The successes of the Cold War policy certainly provide a framework for thinking about the difficulties of a nuclear Iran, even allowing for the unique circumstances of the two situations and the different and unique ideologies embraced by both adversaries. A deeper examination of the original Cold War policy choices is necessary.
Throughout the Cold War, the policy of containment oscillated between periods of strategic expansion and contraction, but the underlying policy remained remarkably consistent. Those principles are essential components of a coherent Iran containment policy: that it should seek to block any Iranian expansion in the Persian Gulf region; to illuminate the problematic nature of the regime’s ambitions; to constrain and indeed to “induce a retraction” of Iranian influence, including Iranian “soft power”; and to work toward a political transformation, if not a physical transformation, of the Tehran regime.
A further essential characteristic of Cold War containment applicable to Iran is that such a policy demands a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach driven by consistent diplomacy. Containing Iran requires effecting the isolation of the Iranian regime, disconnecting it from great power patrons, limiting its ability to peel off neighbors and regional players to serve its agenda, limiting its use of proxies, and more. The isolation of Iran should not be intended as a punishment for nuclear transgressions, but rather as a means of limiting Iranian exploitation of its newfound status as a nuclear power. The US government will need to build and institutionalize coalitions to box Iran in to deny it the opportunity to project power.
Beyond diplomacy and sanctions, containing a nuclear Iran will require increased efforts on other fronts, to include but not be limited to competing with and disrupting Iranian regional and global economic strategy, working with allies to diminish Iranian influence in energy markets, and supporting effective opposition groups. But as Cold War precedent reveals, and as many advocates of containing Iran acknowledge, the keystone of any containment policy is a military strategy of deterrence.
The United States has been practicing a loose form of deterrence against Iran for the better part of three decades, yet the range of possible conflict points has mushroomed. What might be called the canonical military threat from Iran—the closing of the Strait of Hormuz—remains a serious concern, as do a variety of direct Iranian threats such as regular harassment of US shipping by Iranian small boats. Further, the dangers of Iranian irregular combatants or proxies are a critical and possibly existential worry to the United States’ newest allies in the region: Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, the shadow of Iran’s nuclear program casts a pall from the Persian Gulf to Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia. A central question for a strategy of deterrence is which Iranian leaders, groups of leaders, and institutions are the objects and targets of deterrence. Iran’s diffuse leadership structures and constant domestic power struggles make the job of deterrence extremely challenging. Taken in sum, even without a nuclear weapon of its own, Iran is difficult to deter; the current de facto deterrence regime does not prevent Iran from isolated acts of military aggression or aggression by Iranian proxies.
While there can never be certain deterrence, Cold War presidents often had confidence that the United States had sufficient military power to support a policy of containment through a strategy of deterrence. For most of the period they felt deterrence was assured. Assured regime-change capability is required to have confidence in a policy of containment and a strategy of deterrence toward Tehran. An Iran policy of containment based upon a strategy of deterrence must meet the basic Cold War standard of credibility, which included three criteria. The deterrent posture depends on an adequate US nuclear arsenal of offensive systems; a substantial investment in forward-deployed and reinforcing conventional forces, and the preservation of strong alliances that permit relatively good policy integration, military cooperation, and basing and access for US forces.
The success of this inherently complicated endeavor demanded—as a similar effort toward Iran would demand—an immense and sustained US effort. Adopting a policy of containment and a policy of deterrence would have implications for US nuclear policy and forces. Current policies and plans, however, do not reflect such considerations, and current US nuclear forces are not well prepared to provide deterrence against a nuclear Iran. A serious policy of containment and strategy of deterrence calls for constant and significant conventional force presence around Iran’s perimeter, yet the deterrent value of US conventional forces is uncertain, if only because US policy and posture throughout the region is in flux.
Two questions require analysis: What kind of force is operationally capable of conducting a regime-change campaign in Iran? What kind of threat would be understood by the Iranian regime as a credible deterrent? Current US defense planning is entirely devoid of such analysis, and the military posture required for containment and deterrence cannot be assumed. In both nuclear and conventional realms, the United States and its “containment coalition” partners are likely to lack the military means to make a deterrent posture credible either to the Iranians—who are inherently difficult to deter—or to ourselves. This reprises a recurring Cold War lesson: empty attempts at containment and deterrence are not just half-answers but positive incentives to an adversary ambitious for power and predisposed to discover weakness and regard itself with a historic destiny.
For containment and deterrence to succeed, the United States will need to demonstrate that it can deter both Iran’s use of nuclear weapons and aggression by Tehran’s network of partners and terrorist proxies. The United States also has a concomitant requirement to assure its allies in the region and around the world of its commitment to stability in the region. Underlying all of this is the classic requirement that the United States be capable of demonstrating its ability to execute a declaratory policy to respond to a possible Iranian nuclear attack. The United States has neither the forces available nor the capability under current projections to do so.
In conclusion, we find that though containment and deterrence are possible policies and strategies for the United States and others to adopt when faced with a nuclear Iran, we cannot share the widespread enthusiasm entertained in many quarters. Indeed, the broad embrace of containment and deterrence appears to be based primarily on an unwillingness to analyze the risks and costs described. It may be the case that containing and deterring is the least-bad choice. However, that does not make it a low-risk or low-cost choice. In fact, it is about to be not a choice but a fact of life.
Introduction
It has long been the policy of the United States government that a nuclear-armed Iran would be unacceptable. “It is unacceptable to the United States. It is unacceptable to Israel. It is unacceptable to the region and the international community,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared last year.1 As he was running for president in 2008, Barack Obama told Fox News that “it is unacceptable for Iran to possess a nuclear weapon; it would be a game changer.”2 This was only an extension of previous Bush administration policy; an Iranian nuclear weapon “to blackmail or threaten the world” would be “unacceptable.”3 Even French President Nicolas Sarkozy used the word, saying, “If Iran develops nuclear weapons, it’s unacceptable to our country.”4
Whether the means of US and Western policy—sanctions—can secure the end of keeping Tehran from fulfilling its longtime nuclear ambition is far from clear. There is also a persistent belief that nontraditional means, such as the Stuxnet computer-virus attack or covert sabotage operations, can keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons without provoking a confrontation. Even if these reports are accurate, they amount to no more than a postponement of the day of reckoning. As Patrick Cronin of the Center for a New American Security, a think tank close to the Obama administration, observed, “There is no credible evidence that the current Iranian regime can be dissuaded from crossing that fateful point to possessing the bomb.”5 Gary Samore, President Obama’s senior arms control and nonproliferation adviser, essentially agrees, observing, “It may be that the current leadership in Iran is so committed to developing a nuclear weapons capability that all of the offers of engagement and all the threats of pressure and sanction simply may not be enough.”6
If there is a consensus that sanctions ultimately will fail, there is an equally strong belief among the foreign-policy establishment in Washington and other Western capitals that preemptive military action is unappealing. Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, frames the conundrum, saying either an Iranian bomb or an attack on Iran would be “a calamity, a disaster.” Even if Tehran neither used nor threatened directly to use a nuclear weapon, its possession of nuclear weapons would boost its regional ambitions and hegemonic designs. Other regional powers would be tempted to acquire their own nuclear capabilities, igniting an arms race among unstable states. A preemptive strike—no matter how successful—is likely to be only the first shot in a war in a volatile region that supplies much of the developed world’s energy resources. Thus Brzezinski and many others argue that the least-bad choice is “containment,” or, as Cronin terms it, “comprehensive containment.”7
An undeniable attraction of a containment policy is that it worked during the Cold War in the face of a truly existential Soviet threat. “There is reason to think we can manage a nuclear Iran,” MIT’s Barry Posen wrote in the New York Times:
The fear is that Iran could rely on a diffuse threat to deter others from attacking it, even in response to Iranian belligerence. But while it’s possible that Iranian leaders would think this way, it’s equally possible they would be more cautious. Tehran could not rule out the possibility that others with more and better nuclear weapons would strike Iran first, should it provoke a crisis or war. Judging from Cold War history, if the Iranians so much as appeared to be readying their nuclear forces for use, the United States might consider a preemptive strike.8
Christopher Layne, like Posen another member of the so-called realist school, concedes that while “a nuclear-armed Iran is not a pleasant prospect, neither is it an intolerable one. . . . The United States has adjusted to similar situations in the past and can do so this time.”9
James Lindsay and Ray Takeyh are perhaps the most notable recent advocates of a policy of containing Iran. Their Foreign Affairs article, “After Iran Gets the Bomb: Containment and Its Implications,” carefully weighs the pros and cons of such a policy. Takeyh served briefly as an aide to Dennis Ross, then–State Department special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, who also counsels containment. While Lindsay and Takeyh acknowledge that “containing a nuclear Iran would not be easy,” they conclude that the alternatives are worse and that an Iranian nuclear capability is not unacceptable and may represent an opportunity:
Containment could buy Washington time to persuade the Iranian ruling class that the revisionist game it has been playing is simply not worth the candle. Thus, even as Washington pushes to counter Iran, it should be open to the possibility that Tehran’s calculations might change. To press Tehran in the right direction, Washington should signal that it seeks to create an order in the Middle East that is peaceful and self-sustaining. The United States will remain part of the region’s security architecture for the foreseeable future. But it need not maintain an antagonistic posture toward Iran. An Islamic Republic that abandoned its nuclear ambitions, accepted prevailing international norms, and respected the sovereignty of its neighbors would discover that the United States is willing to work with, rather than against, Iran’s legitimate national aspirations.10
Even while acknowledging that Iran poses a qualitatively different threat than did the Soviet Union, Lindsay and Takeyh also extend the underlying Cold War analogue in arguing that military “deterrence would by necessity be the cornerstone of a U.S. strategy to contain a nuclear Iran.” They further recognize that, though this ultimately was a winning approach in the Cold War, deterrence can fail and nearly did so during the Cuban missile crisis and at several other junctures:
Iran’s revisionist aims and paranoia about U.S. power may appear to make the country uniquely difficult to deter. But that conclusion conveniently—and mistakenly—recasts the history of U.S. confrontations with emerging nuclear powers in a gentler light than is deserved. At the start of the Cold War, U.S. officials hardly saw the Soviet Union as a status quo power. In the 1960s, China looked like the ultimate rogue regime: it had intervened in Korea and gone to war with India, and it repressed its own people. Mao boasted that although nuclear war might kill half the world’s population, it would also mean that “imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world would become socialist.11
In sum, should sanctions and negotiations fail to dissuade Iran from fulfilling its nuclear ambitions, some consider containment an increasingly acceptable alternative to military action. We agree that escalated confrontation with Iran—and there is undeniably, a low-level war already being waged by Iranian operatives or proxies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere—would throw an already volatile region into chaos, perhaps spread and involve other great powers, and place a heavy burden on overstretched American forces and finances. The costs of war are all too obvious and painfully familiar.
Purposes, Presumptions, and Processes
Containment is hardly a cost-free policy. Substantial research exploring the nature of and prospects for biting sanctions designed to dissuade Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons already exists. Research institutions and various militaries and intelligence agencies have repeatedly gamed military options. Others have examined ways and means to aid and influence the Iranian opposition. Beyond the kind of policy sketches of the sort offered by a number of sources—including the 2008 Bipartisan Policy Center report;12 the Lindsay and Takeyh article; and a rebutting Foreign Affairs article by Eric Edelman, Andrew Krepinevich, and Evan Montgomery13—little thought has gone into what an effective containment and deterrent regime will require of the United States and its allies.
This paper is the product of an American Enterprise Institute project designed to examine the challenges of containment and the costs of deterrence. We agree with containment proponents that the successes of the Cold War policy provide a framework for thinking about the difficulties of a nuclear Iran, even allowing for the unique circumstances of the two situations and the different and unique ideologies embraced by both adversaries. However, we feel that a deeper examination of the original Cold War policy choices is necessary. Similarly, the immense corpus of Cold War deterrence literature provided a resource that other studies have not fully mined. We seek to extract enduring principles or structures of deterrence as a way to assess the prospects for deterring a nuclear Iran. Further, we understand strategy making as a way to achieve US policy goals and therefore find that any worthwhile assessment of deterrence requires thinking about the US side of the equation. Finally, though a thorough appraisal of the military requirements for deterrence would demand more detailed analysis than resources allow, we offer some broad outlines of capabilities and force levels.
These assessments required that we make some presumptions and projections about the nature and scope of Iranian nuclear capabilities, as well as its other military powers and its asymmetric potential. Current debates tend to focus too narrowly on questions such as when Iran will break out, whether Tehran will declare a nuclear capability or embrace ambiguity, or whether it will test a weapon. For the sake of this study, we presumed that Iran would follow the traditional strategic logic of emerging nuclear powers, building an arsenal that would provide a minimum but robust deterrent and seeking to reduce any vulnerability to a preemptive strike. An evaluation of the prospects of containment and deterrence demands nothing less. US policy and strategy must take reasonable worst-case scenarios into account. Conversely, any effort at containment that cannot withstand such a stress test is a prescription for failure. As will be argued in fuller detail below, we ensure these presumptions are well within the realm of the possible of the current Iranian program. In particular, we assumed that Iran has acquired a nuclear-weapons capability and may have tested a device; Iran continues to advance its nuclear-weapons program and warhead-delivery systems; there has been no military intervention in Iran; and there has been no substantial change in form or composition of the government in Tehran.
The Meaning of Containment
The public discussion of Iran containment has been conducted in a haze of good feeling about the successes of the Cold War, but as Lindsay and Takeyh suggest, containing the Soviet challenge was hardly simple. As John Lewis Gaddis, perhaps the period’s foremost historian, has written, the Cold War witnessed many different—and substantially varying—codes of containment. In the early 1980s, Gaddis had already identified five such codes; arguably Ronald Reagan formulated a sixth and George H. W. Bush, responding to the unanticipated break-up of the Soviet empire, formulated a seventh.14
The seeds of the Cold War containment policy were bred in George Kennan’s seminal “Long Telegram” of 1946.15 The essence of this communiqué appeared as the “Mr. X” Foreign Affairs article in 1947; its title, “Sources of Soviet Conduct,” indicated that at the core of Kennan’s insight was an analysis of Soviet strategic culture, that is, the ingrained habits and patterns of Soviet strategic behavior. As the telegram stated, the “party line is not based on any objective analysis of [the] situation beyond Russia’s borders. . . . It arises mainly from basic inner-Russian necessities which existed before [World War II] and exist today.”16 The question of the fundamental, ingrained nature of the Iranian regime, as will be developed at length below, is key for any policy of Iran containment.
And although Kennan would later complain about the militarization of containment, he did admit from the first that the underlying balance of military power was key to his policy recommendation. The strength of US armed forces, he wrote, “is probably the most important single instrumentality in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy.”17 Other “instrumentalities”—diplomacy, economic policy, and what we today would term elements of soft power—were also important tools, but credible military deterrence proved to be the one necessary, if not sufficient, means of containment.
Kennan understood that what would become the Cold War, though a bipolar geopolitical competition, was not simply a binary equation. His underlying insights provide enduring guidance in considering how to contain Iran. For example, Kennan wrote, the United States would need to defend vulnerable allies, especially in a Europe devastated by World War II. Containment required the “strengthening of the natural forces of resistance within the respective countries which the communists are attacking.” Nevertheless, in the end there was a natural limit to Soviet expansionism. “The Kremlin leaders are so inconsiderate, so relentless, so overbearing and so cynical in the discipline they impose on their followers that few can stand their authority for long,” he wrote. It has similarly proved that, for Iran’s neighbors and even for Iranian minorities, familiarity with Persian leaders has bred contempt. Kennan did not see containment as a passive posture, but rather made a case for comprehensive counter pressure. He argued that it is “the way you marshal all the forces at your disposal on the world chessboard. I mean not only the military force you have . . . but all the political forces.”18
Kennan’s principles were not codified—that is, they did not amount to a practical strategy—until the Truman administration. This began with the articulation of a Truman Doctrine, the president’s March 12, 1947, speech to Congress, and, prior to the Korean War, the drafting of National Security Council (NSC) report 68.19 More than analyzing the sources of Soviet conduct, President Truman described a policy rooted in American political principles, saying, “I believe it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures.”20 The NSC document also settled an ongoing debate about the strategy behind containment. Some had advocated a “strongpoint” strategy, hoping to retain the strategic initiative and limit the costs of containment by concentrating on solely critical points of confrontation such as Western Europe, but Truman decided in favor of a perimeter approach. As NSC 68 put it, “The assault on free institutions is worldwide now, and in the context of the present polarization of power a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere.”21 Finally, the Truman administration concluded that while the Soviet empire might ultimately collapse of its own internal contradictions, “without superior aggregate military strength, in being and readily mobilizable, a policy of ‘containment’. . . is no more than a policy of bluff.”22
As Gaddis observed, however, subsequent administrations operationalized this basic policy in a number of ways; there were multiple strategies for achieving the goals of containment. Indeed, the pendulum could be said to have swung between two poles: one meant to limit costs and narrow the strategic focus and the other, originating with Truman, more expansive and more expensive. The Eisenhower New Look strategy, with its emphasis on massive nuclear response and the détente strategy of the Nixon-Carter years reflected the narrow pole; Truman, the Kennedy-era strategy of flexible response and the Reagan rollback approach to Soviet client states embodied the more expansive pole. Nonetheless, the underlying policy remained remarkably consistent:
[1] block further expansion of Soviet power
[2] expose the falsities of Soviet pretensions
[3] induce a retraction of the Kremlin’s control and influence and [4] in general, so foster the seeds of destruction within the Soviet system that the Kremlin is brought at least to the point of modifying its behavior to conform to generally accepted international standards.23
Likewise, we have taken these to be essential components of a coherent Iran containment policy: that it should seek to block any Iranian expansion in the Persian Gulf region; to illuminate the problematic nature of the regime’s ambitions; to constrain and indeed to induce a retraction of Iranian influence, including Iranian soft power; and to work toward a political transformation, if not a physical transformation, of the Tehran regime.
A further essential characteristic of Cold War containment applicable to Iran is that such a policy demands a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach driven by consistent diplomacy. Containing Iran requires effecting the isolation of the Iranian regime, disconnecting it from great power patrons, limiting its ability to peel off neighbors and regional players to serve its agenda, limiting its use of proxies, and more. Particularly because the shock value of an Iranian nuclear breakthrough will diminish over time, a prime task for diplomats will be to ensure that the global coalition now in place is not divided and that no party seeks to make a separate peace. Because the world today is more multipolar than it was when the Soviet Union was the chief adversary, preventing any separate peace will be more difficult.
The isolation of Iran should not be intended as a punishment per se for nuclear transgressions, but rather as a means of limiting Iranian exploitation of its newfound status as a nuclear power. Much as the United States ultimately sought to encircle the Soviet space via the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and organizations of like-minded nations, the US government will need to build and institutionalize coalitions to box Iran in and to deny it the opportunity to project power.
A strong United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution that authorizes the various measures necessary to underpin any global containment regime will be easier to achieve if the Islamic Republic’s break with the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty is overt and it declares that it is in possession of nuclear weapons. Parts of such a regime are already in place, but the history of UN-mandated sanctions regimes (Libya, Iraq, Iran, and Bosnia) is that they are flouted with little consequence and they erode quickly over time.
What diplomatic pieces are required to successfully contain Iran?
•Global isolation of the regime. Iran’s strategy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution has been to divide and conquer the international community, seeking to pit centers of power (the United States, European Union, Russia, China) against each other. Diminishing the benefits Iran would derive by going nuclear will require limiting Tehran’s ability to divide and conquer and preventing Tehran’s integration into the international community as a nuclear state.
•Regional encirclement. The government of the Islamic Republic has repeatedly made clear that it views itself as the natural leader of the Middle East, calling the shots not only in the Persian Gulf region but also in the Levant. “The Persian Gulf has always, is and shall always belong to Iran,” Iranian military chief of staff General Hassan Firouzabadi said in early 2011.24 It has sought to insert itself into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and sponsored Hezbollah’s rise in Lebanon.25 Both Egypt and Jordan have accused Iran of seeking to interfere in their domestic affairs.26 Indeed, Iran’s willingness to play a regional role is clear from its willingness—at least publicly—to criticize the regime of Syria’s embattled president, Bashar al Assad.27 Iran has sought to destabilize Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait internally to its own advantage; to dominate the waterways of the Shatt al Arab and the Persian Gulf; and to shut out US influence where possible.28 The Islamic Republic has also embraced a soft-power strategy throughout the region by funding development, education, bricks and mortar, electrical grids, and more to tie countries more closely to Persian influence.29 Nuclear weapons will add to Iran’s persuasion as these efforts continue and will require substantial diplomatic counterbalancing. In addition, the costs of enhanced US and allied military presence that containment will demand will necessitate heavy diplomatic lift to counteract the likely reaction from not only Iranian proxies but also other groups, such as al Qaeda. Indeed, Osama bin Laden’s main preoccupation in his first years after founding al Qaeda was the expulsion of American troops from Saudi Arabia.30
•Building strategic alliances in the context of Iranian interests. Iran has effectively exploited key economic relationships to undermine existing sanctions regimes. The United States has countered with secondary sanctions to reduce incentives to conduct business with Iran, but much more will be needed. Among democratic nations, India continues to trade with the Islamic Republic despite growing international pressure. South Korea and Japan have also resisted efforts to isolate the regime even as its behavior has worsened. Their behavior highlights the need for further coalition building, substitution of other providers for goods Iran offers, and to strengthen incentives to work with the international community. Efforts to address these countries’ interests and wrap them into regional constructs will build credibility. In the case of Iran, Turkey presents a special challenge. While Turkey is a key partner in NATO, its Islamist government has sought to reposition itself as an independent heavyweight if not a regional hegemon. How this will play out vis-à-vis Iran is difficult to predict. Ultimately, many predict that Turkey’s neo-Ottoman ambitions will clash with Iran’s Shia revolutionary aims. It will require major diplomatic investment to ensure Turkey remains a responsible member of the Atlantic alliance and an important element in containing Iran.
•Undermining the global network of malign actors. Iran has successfully built a network of international pariahs and rejectionists to bolster its diplomatic defenses. Syria, Venezuela, Belarus, and Brazil have thrown their votes at the UN to protect Iran from the consequences of its own actions. Despite this pattern, few efforts have been made to isolate or co-opt Iran’s partners. This is a major lacuna in US foreign policy and a sine qua non of any successful containment strategy. If Iran is to be cut from the web of the civilized world in the wake of going nuclear, it cannot be offered a backdoor for reentry. These nations will require a strategy to address the role that they play in cushioning Iran from international opprobrium. The same can be said for Iran’s substate proxies, particularly groups that straddle the line between politics and terrorism such as Hamas and Hezbollah. The United States has made efforts to persuade its allies that these groups play a dangerous role in the Middle East and to cut such groups off from recognition and assistance. Such efforts will require a redoubling to prevent these groups from being strengthened—not just militarily—by a nuclear Iran.
•Sever Iran from great power patrons. Russia and China have consistently been willing to front for Iran in the United Nations and other international forums. Though some of Iran’s recent actions—particularly revelations that it had constructed a secret nuclear facility near Qom—have alienated Moscow and Beijing to a certain extent, the two are likely to seek rapid rapprochement with Iran subsequent to its acquisition of nuclear weapons. Just as the loss of Russian patronage was a blow to Tehran, recouping Russian support will also be high on the regime’s list of priorities. Diplomatic efforts to maintain Russian and Chinese solidarity in a coalition to isolate nuclear Iran will be key but costly. Both states are mercantilist in their approaches and have economic and strategic rationales for resuscitating ties with Iran quickly. Russia has long watered down international efforts to sanction Iran to protect its own nuclear and arms trade, and China may well demand concessions on North Korea in exchange for solidarity on Iran.
•Encourage a unified European Union (EU) strategy for Iran. The European Union has historically been reluctant to work in concert on foreign-policy matters, particularly in such contentious areas as Iran. Success on the questions of Libya and Syria may encourage greater future cooperation, but the issue has been sufficiently debated that observers might suspect the EU’s divergent positions are rigid. At various times, Italy, Greece, and Sweden have undermined EU efforts to maintain a united front. Indeed, more than Russian or Chinese wobbliness, a failure by Europe to stand firm in containing Iran will be a major flaw in any effort.
Diplomacy and sanctions are best thought of as the point of departure for a successful containment policy toward Iran, but these are not the only steps. Even if economic isolation does not dissuade the Iranian regime from acquiring a nuclear arsenal, the economic isolation of a nuclear Iran would be an essential element for after-the-fact containment.
Certainly there ought to be no reward in the form of lessened economic isolation should Iran go nuclear. Some form of economic sanctions has been in place against Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Since 1995, executive orders and US law have progressively tightened the economic noose around the Iranian leadership, largely with the aim of bringing Iran to the negotiating table to give up its nuclear-weapons program. An Iran with nuclear weapons is an Iran against which sanctions will have failed. Nonetheless, sanctions will be a vital part of any containment regime, and the financial, trade, energy, and other sanctions currently in place can be expected to remain—with efforts needed to expand, invigorate, and maintain them over time. Similarly, it will be important to deny Iran access to capital from investment and trade and to limit the ability of Iranian officials and business leaders to trawl for support around the world.
Beyond diplomacy and sanctions, containing a nuclear Iran would require increased efforts on other fronts, including:
•Competing with and disrupting Iranian regional and global economic strategy.
•Working with allies inside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to diminish Iranian influence in energy markets. This is a tall order, as the chambers of OPEC have hitherto been almost sacrosanct. However, there are myriad examples of politically motivated manipulation of the market, including Saudi efforts to balance prices in response to both Iranian and Iraqi threats, as well as Gulf efforts to incentivize both Russia and China to corral Iran. Iran is an important oil supplier, and revenues from oil sales are the Islamic Republic’s lifeline. Cutting it will be key.
•Supporting effective opposition groups. While this policy has long existed in name, effecting a genuine policy toward the Iranian opposition will become more urgent once Iran possesses nuclear weapons. Identifying organized opposition groups, ensuring they are not connected to any terrorist organization, and finding usable channels to provide useful assistance is no small challenge. Independent and indigenous labor unions present a special opportunity, as do human rights and civil-society groups. Meaningful support—economic, political, and moral—to groups like Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Solidarity in Poland has historically been instrumental in chipping away at authoritarian regimes and, ultimately, in toppling them from power. Once identified, such groups might receive financial and diplomatic support, if they are willing. The US government should not be overly concerned that the regime will seek to taint groups receiving foreign funding as disloyal, because the regime hurls such accusations about any and all opponents, regardless of their financing sources.
•Conducting information operations and public diplomacy. This effort requires a multidirectional approach, but is a key element in any effective containment regime. Exposing the Islamic Republic’s falsities demands international effort as well as effort within Iran. It also requires facilitating information flow into and out of the country better, something the United States has yet to master despite major investments in surrogate radio and Voice of America.
•Promoting human rights. The promotion of human rights has been a hallmark of US foreign policy. However, both during and after the Cold War, human rights issues have too often taken a back seat to other policy priorities. Nonetheless, the use of the issue as a casus belli in operations against Libya may have infused it with newfound international credibility. The human rights issue proved an enormously effective wedge issue during the Cold War and can again play a role in delegitimizing the Iranian regime in world opinion.
•Controlling the movement of regime leaders. The Iranian regime exploits the willingness of the international community to explore engagement—economic or political—and avails itself of generous access to the outside world. It shows no such generosity in extending visas to foreigners. Information and access to alternative viewpoints will strengthen the hand of the Iranian public vis-à-vis the leadership. Imposing visa parity is a possible way to crowbar Iranian doors open, or at the least to constrain efforts by Iranian leaders to further their influence.
As Cold War precedent reveals—and as many advocates of containing Iran acknowledge—the keystone of any containment policy is a military strategy of deterrence. Absent a credible deterrent posture, the United States risks Iran calling its bluff.
Structures of Deterrence
As with the broader policy of containment, the vast literature of Cold War deterrence provides a useful framework for thinking about deterring a nuclear Iran. The nature of the Iranian regime is much different than the Soviet regime, and the extent of Iranian power is a fraction of Soviet power, but while the particular circumstances may be unique, there are structural similarities.
What is deterrence? In a classic 1983 study, John Mearsheimer defined it broadly as “persuading an opponent not to initiate a specific action because the perceived benefits do not justify the estimated costs and risks.”31 A decade later, Paul Huth, Christopher Gelpi, and D. Scott Bennett adopted a similar definition: deterrence is a “policy that seeks to persuade an adversary, through the threat of military retaliation, that the costs of using military force will outweigh the benefits.”32 Samuel Huntington observed that retaliatory or preemptive capabilities were useful in creating offensive or counteroffensive military options even within a defensive strategic posture.33 This also brings forth the distinction between deterrence based upon denial and deterrence by threat of punishment. Indeed, the original US Cold War strategy embraced both means of deterrence, as Dean Acheson wrote in Power and Diplomacy:
We mean that the only deterrent to the imposition of Russian will in Western Europe is the belief that from the outset of any such attempt American power would be employed in stopping it, and if necessary, would inflict on the Soviet Union injury which the Moscow regime would not wish to suffer.34
As the size of the Soviet nuclear arsenal grew and the costs of a nuclear exchange, even if it seemed to achieve its military objectives, grew intolerable, late in the Cold War deterrence came to be synonymous with denial. Yet it is worth recovering these important nuances in thinking about deterring Iran. If nothing else, deterrence by threat of punishment is a more economical approach to employing military force than deterrence by denial.
What is common to these traditional definitions is that deterrence is seen as a subjective measure: its value can be understood only in terms of the state of mind it creates in the mind of an adversary. The adversary must be persuaded. Estimated costs must outweigh perceived benefits. Thus the military bean count—the objective reckoning of the correlation of forces—is only a part of the deterrence equation. Likewise the operational calculus, the likely performance of forces in combat that includes not just the capabilities of their weaponry but the training, doctrine, and other less-tangible military capacities of the forces, is not fully determinative of any deterrent effect. Nonmilitary factors have an equal, if not greater, weight. Thus Mearsheimer refines his definition:
Decision makers might well assess the probable reaction of allies and adversaries, aspects of international law and possible reaction in a forum such as the United Nations, the likely effect upon the economy. In short, deterrence broadly defined is ultimately a function of the relationship between the perceived political benefits resulting from military action and a number of nonmilitary as well as military costs and risks.35
Even this expanded definition does not deal directly with domestic political calculations, which often are the most powerful determinants of all involved. These domestic variables also call into question another basic tenet of deterrence theory as practiced during the Cold War: that states are unitary rational actors—that is, that national decision making is generally coherent (unitary) and motivated by comprehensible calculations of risk and reward (rational). Although there was a school that recognized a distinct Russian or Soviet strategic culture (and even, occasionally, a glimmering that the United States viewed the world through a unique set of lenses produced by its principles and its history), more frequently it was assumed that both sides operated from a clear understanding of material national interest. Indeed, much US policy proceeded from the premise that Americans might better appreciate Soviet interests than the Russians themselves. Despite the effort put into “Kremlinology”—charting the rise and fall of individuals and factions within the bureaucracy—there was an analogous premise that when a Soviet premier spoke or negotiated seriously, he acted in the name of the state. Both these assumptions remain deeply entrenched in the views of the US policymaking establishment. Brzezinski’s argument for containing Iran allowed that Iranians “may be dangerous, assertive, and duplicitous, but there is nothing in their history to suggest they are suicidal.”36
Surveying the political science literature of the Cold War years suggests eight general questions that frame the calculation of deterrence.37
•The Polarity Question. Where do the two (or more) parties stand in the constellation of the international system? Current conventional wisdom is that the post–Cold War “unipolar moment” of US dominance is coming to its conclusion.38 Two trends point in this direction: the rise of new great powers with global interests and the perceived withering of the state in light of increased globalization. Despite these broad trends, for the purposes of assessing the policy of Iran containment, the United States still should be regarded as the principal architect of international security while Iran’s overall standing is that of a relatively weak regional power.
•The Interest Question. What are the two sides’ relative strategic interests? Past literature is likewise only partially useful in assessing the scope of relative interests in the twenty-first century. Political science has posited a strong correlation between the strength of the national interests at risk in a dispute or the proximity of the battlefield with the willingness to accept risk. However, there is a strong tendency to reify strategic interests, whereas a more important question may be how each side perceives its interests, including its ideological interests. In general terms, we assume that the United States will conceive its Iran policies in light of its global strategy and its long-standing commitment to securing a favorable balance of power in the Persian Gulf region. Conversely, we see Iran’s nuclear ambitions as an expression of its desire to establish a very different balance of power that suits its geopolitical and ideological interests. That is, the behavior of both the United States and Iran—their own assessments of their interests—will be shaped to some degree by fundamental beliefs about the nature of a just international order.
•The Involvement Question. How do the two sides’ roles in other conflicts or confrontations affect the prospects for deterrence? The professional literature asserts that when challengers are involved in a third-party dispute, they are less likely to take additional risks or escalate conflicts; conversely, if the challenger sees that a defender is occupied elsewhere, this will appear as an opportunity to exploit. Answering this question in the context of Iran deterrence will be a delicate calculation. Both the United States and Iran already have many intertwined involvements throughout the Persian Gulf region and beyond. The United States in particular has a long habit of multiple involvements in disparate regions. In recent years, Iran has been active globally, courting a variety of partners, including some—like Venezuela—in South America. In sum, both Iran and the United States are involved with many third parties, simultaneously defending and challenging each other’s interests. Answering the involvement question will be a complex assessment.
•The Risk Question. Are the parties likely to be risk averse or willing to run risks? There are two elements to the risk question: one is structural, reflecting the nature of the international system, and the other is cultural, reflecting the nature of the competing states. A multipolar system is not only inherently less stable, but also creates opportunities for risk takers. As the number of actors in the international system rises—states, coalitions of states, or even nonstate actors—it often becomes harder to predict or to calculate the likely outcome of a conflict or the behavior of the larger number of actors. The character of states and actors tends to become more pronounced: risk takers become bolder while status-quo, risk-averse states become more cautious. In a multipolar world, risk takers see greater opportunities and more likely rewards while the risk averse feel more constrained and more at risk. Thus the strategic culture question takes on increased importance. The nature of the competing regimes is given greater play.
•The Dispute-Behavior Question. How does each party’s behavior in recent conflicts and the perceptions of that behavior add or detract from deterrence? In addition to the structural question of risk taking within the international system, there is the question of each party’s track record, that is, its actual and perceived exercise of political willpower. Deterrence literature concludes, not surprisingly, that backing down in a public dispute increases an adversary’s propensity to assume risks. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have expressed the importance of preserving the global and regional perception of the United States as the guarantor of Persian Gulf security. Conversely, Iran has been unable or unwilling to act overtly to protect its proxies, such as during the Israeli incursion in Lebanon against Hezbollah in 2006, in response to the Israeli strike on Syria’s nuclear facilities in 2007, or during the 2011 Syrian popular rebellion.
•The Nuclear Question. How does either party’s nuclear capability affect the question of conventional-force deterrence? One of the key issues in considering this question is assessing each side’s second-strike capability, about which an enormous amount of ink was spilled over the course of the Cold War. While we have sidestepped this question to a degree in the course of this study’s assumptions, we do so as a result of the conclusion that any US deterrence strategy must take such capabilities into account to succeed. We will also consider Iran’s prospects for creating such a capability.
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