IV. The Implications of a Nuclear Iran
As Iran's uranium stockpiles grow and diplomacy falters, the discourse around the nuclear crisis is growing both more apprehensive and more polarised. In this context, there has been a fresh series of warnings that a nuclear Iran would be more dangerous and costly than any plausible alternative. Even with strenuous and protracted diplomacy, and despite âor because of â a war with Iran, it is not beyond the realm of plausibility that Iran will obtain nuclear weapons. This would herald not the end of the crisis, but its mutation into a new and almost certainly more permanent form.
Many observers and policy-makers believe that such a new and intensified crisis is, literally, intolerable. In February 2012, thirty-two US senators from both parties introduced a non-binding resolution to rule out 'any policy that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat'.1 The following month, the US House of Representatives approved a resolution, with 314 sponsors, reiterating this message and that further specified 'the unacceptability of an Iran with nuclear-weapons capability' â that is, not just nuclear weapons, but even nuclear capabilities short of weaponisation.2 In September 2012, President Obama did not go that far, but reiterated his earlier message that 'a nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that can be contained'.3
The assumption of these resolutions is that the cost of a nuclear Iran exceeds any cost whatsoever that might result from a policy of prevention through diplomatic or military means â including a full-scale war in the Gulf.
Concerns over the prospect of Iranian nuclear weapons is not confined to the US and Israel. British Foreign Secretary William Hague has warned of âthe most serious round of nuclear proliferation since nuclear weapons were inventedâ, resulting in âa new cold war in the Middle Eastâ lacking all the âsafety mechanismsâ of the US-Soviet rivalry.4
These and similar warnings typically rest on one, or all, of at least three distinct assumptions. First, that Iran is an irrational actor immune to the self-preservative logic of nuclear deterrence. Second, that a nuclear Iran or regional nuclear rivalry would present unprecedented challenges in terms of stability and safety. Third, that a nuclear Iran would precipitate an unstoppable chain reaction of regional nuclear proliferation. This section suggests that each of these assumptions reflects valid concerns that, through embellishment and imprecision, have resulted in overly simplistic understandings of the costs of a nuclear Iran.
Why does this analysis matter? In the past, even where the US has avowedly reasserted its non-proliferation aims â whether in relation to Israel, India, Pakistan or North Korea â it has eventually accepted a policy of containment rather than prevention or 'rollback' through military means. In May 2003, for instance, President Bush insisted that 'we will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea. We will not give in to blackmail. We will not settle for anything less than the complete, verifiable and irreversible elimination of North Korea's nuclear weapons program'.5 North Korea tested nuclear devices in 2006 and 2009. Iraq is a contradictory case, of course, insofar as American threats were sincere; but the prolonged and largely unsuccessful war in that country has reinforced Western caution in using force for non-proliferation objectives and has therefore made a war against Iran less likely.
The North Korea precedent alone indicates why it is important to develop our understanding of the implications of a nuclear Iran, both for Iran itself and for the region â even while acknowledging that such an outcome remains improbable.
Iranâs Nuclear Options
Nuclear Posture
If Iran does decide to make one or, as would be more likely, more nuclear weapons, and successfully does so, it would then face a choice over its nuclear posture and doctrine. Nuclear posture refers to the âcapabilities, deployment patterns, and command and control procedures a state uses to manage and operationalize its nuclear weapons capabilitiesâ.6 Nuclear doctrine refers to the declaratory side of those operational arrangements, such as a stateâs articulated conditions for using nuclear weapons. In practice, posture and doctrine are interdependent, and may be considered together.
Roughly speaking, nuclear posture can vary along a spectrum from highly ârecessedâ to highly âreadyâ.
Examples of recessed postures include Pakistan in the late 1980s (said to be âtwo screwdriver turnsâ away from bomb assembly), India in the 1990s, or South Africa in the 1980s. These states built nuclear weapons or created the option of doing so in a negligible amount of time, in some cases without directly testing their weapons. In South Africaâs case, only six nuclear weapons were produced. These were stored unassembled in a vault, separately from their delivery systems, and under highly stringent political controls that made hair-trigger readiness impossible.7
A more 'ready' â but still relatively recessed â posture was chosen by India in the years after 1998. India's posture involved 'de-mating and dispersing its weapons components across civilian agencies. . . to enhance their survivability and to establish a credible capability to retaliate against a nuclear strike'.8 Indian scientists control the warheads and must hand them over to the military in a crisis.9 Unlike South Africa, India has deployed its weapons; but it has done so with tight limits on the size, scope and readiness of the arsenal as a whole.
A third, more assertive posture is exemplified by Pakistan, which has developed a posture âgeared for the rapid (and asymmetric) first use of nuclear forces against conventional attacks to deter their outbreak, operationalizing nuclear weapons as usable warfighting instrumentsâ.10 Unlike the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War, Pakistan does not intend or plan to launch a massive, disarming nuclear first strike on its opponentsâ nuclear forces. However, in contrast to India, Pakistan has placed less stringent limits on the size, diversity, readiness and target set of its arsenal.11
Posture is also related to the concept of 'opacity', referring primarily to the discourse around nuclear weapons, rather than their physical arrangements, and involving the non-acknowledgement of nuclear weapons, through secrecy, government censorship and self-censorship. Israel's nuclear arsenal offers the purest example of opacity.12 On the one hand, certain nuclear postures do not allow for opacity. For example, one cannot openly and independently test a nuclear bomb whilst pretending not to have one. However, it is possible to have opaque arsenals that are both highly limited and highly advanced â indeed, Israel's arsenal has moved from the former to the latter, with only small concessions to transparency. Iran COuld similarly choose to build nuclear weapons and even deploy them, but publicly deny that it has done so.
This discussion of nuclear posture is, admittedly, an oversimplification. Nuclear postures vary along a number of dimensions other than readiness. These dimensions include: the threshold for use (for instance, whether as a response to nuclear attack or lesser regime-threatening actions); the targets of weapons (counterforce or countervalue); the role of weapons (perhaps war-fighting or signalling); the flexibility of response (ranging from massive retaliation to graduated deterrence); the delivery system (aircraft, missiles or naval platforms); and many others. There is an elective affinity between these dimensions (for example, a state that chooses a counterforce posture is likely to choose a larger arsenal) but they may exist in various combinations.13
Why Does Posture Matter?
There are at least three reasons why nuclear posture matters. First, different postures can alter crisis dynamics. Should a crisis break out, for instance, Iran may have â or, more importantly, be perceived to have â more leverage if it has a dozen nuclear weapons deployed on missiles rather than a few unassembled warheads in storage.
Second, different postures may increase the risk of crises occurring in the first place. For example, if Iran were to deploy or threaten to deploy nuclear-armed missiles capable of striking European targets, this could prompt overt or covert attacks on Iranian missile sites, or a period of coercive diplomacy that induces a cycle of escalation.
Third, the response of regional powers, including their decisions whether or not to pursue nuclear capabilities of their own, is likely to depend on the nuclear posture chosen by Iran. If Iran shuns a nuclear test, refrains from declaring itself a nuclear power, and signals that its warheads would only be assembled in the event of a major threat to the state, this would likely meet with a different, more limited response than would the Iranian declaration of a deployed arsenal or a nuclear test. Iranâs degree of nuclear opacity is likely to be particularly important in this regard.
Iranâs Choice of Nuclear Posture
It must be considered, then, what sort of nuclear choices Iran might make should it acquire nuclear weapons. A number of factors would shape its choice.
First, states with civilian-dominated governments are loath to choose nuclear postures that empower and entrust their armed forces with such significant weaponry. For example, India's military in the 1990s, exceptionally subordinate to civilian institutions, had little idea of how many nuclear weapons India possessed or how they might be used in wartime (sealed instructions for nuclear use were given to a theatre commander, only to be opened in case of nuclear attack).14...