asianaffairs

Countering Iran in the covert world

Reva Bhalla examines how a recent chain of Iran-related events sheds light on the geopolitical environment in which Iran's adversaries are operating.

Editorial

Iran in the cross-hairs — again

Amassive explosion rocks a missile base outside Tehran, killing a senior missile expert, along with at least 16 members of the Revolutionary Guard, only weeks after allegations surface of an Iranian plot to murder the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

Suspicions immediately focus on Israel where the national debate on whether to take out the Iranian nuclear programme by force has become an intense and very public exchange between hawks and doves.

Is it all talk or is the stage being set for a military strike to eliminate the potential threat from Iranian nuclear weapons? Is Israel signalling to the rest of the Middle East, and more particularly to President Obama, that its patience is exhausted and the time to act is now before it is too late?

Certainly diplomacy seems to have got nowhere and even the famous stuxnet computer virus that infected the Iranian uranium enrichment process is now said not to have been as effective as first thought.

But is the putative Iranian bomb that we keep hearing about such a threat and is it worth risking another Middle East war to tackle it? The Israelis say that Iran's existential threats to them must be pre-empted and all the way down through the Gulf states, a long stretch which used to be part of the Persian Empire, the fears are of an equal magnitude, though for different reasons. Saudi Arabia itself wants Iran cut down to size.

Key military and intelligence figures both in the United States and Israel have warned against a military solution. For very good reasons: intelligence on where the various nuclear plants are located is said to be sketchy and one of the most important ones, at Qom, is reportedly deep beneath the rocky terrain. So wouldn't it take a nuclear attack to dislodge Iran's nukes? Probably; cue an announcement from the United States Air Force that it has just deployed a new 15-ton bunker buster bomb with six times the explosive power of those that took out Saddam Hussein's underground lairs. The Israelis, meanwhile, have a new, unmanned drone that can reach Tehran.

But much as the military planners might like it, and wargame it, it would not simply be a matter of knocking out each pesky nest of nuclear boffins and their missiles and that being an end of it.

Two wars in Iraq and the recent debacle in Libya proved three times over that military planners have undoubted skills in starting wars but little or no concept of how they are going to end.

The Iranians could be expected to retaliate against Israel directly by air and possibly missile attack and through its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon and in the West Bank. Israel would most likely respond against such retaliation.

The Gulf would quickly become impassable for ships and tankers and the Iranian navy and Republican Guards would make a nuisance of themselves by disrupting traffic through the Suez Canal.

The world economy, already teetering on the brink, would be further threatened.

How would the rest of the Middle East react? The Israelis have never faced such an uncertain political outlook in their neighbourhood, with Egypt no longer a certain ally and their Syrian neighbour in the process of disintegrating. President Assad has been an enemy they had the measure of but a successor regime could be a very different prospect and open to Iranian pressures in a post-strike scenario.

But, all military considerations aside, the decision to attack Iran would be a political one. In Jerusalem they might find it relatively simple, as a matter of survival. But for their 'big brother' in Washington the calculation is a much finer one. President Obama has not been a close friend of Israel and may find his re-election prospects threatened as a result. But would a decisive military move from a president who has been every bit as militaristic as his predecessor do the trick?

On the broader front this is a hard sell as a threat to the American people, especially as there is dire need for cash to create jobs and hope for people at home. The American military itself is facing cutbacks and remains heavily committed in Afghanistan, even as the Iraq engagement winds down.

Britain is already planning its contribution in anticipation that its nuclear-armed submarines would be called into action. But having turned in such a marginal performance in the Libyan operation and suffering a shortage of funds, the other members of NATO might sit this one out.

That is a stance that all Iran's antagonists might well be advised to take for the moment. There is surely need for more on-the-ground efforts to resolve this issue before force takes over. The world has seen too much of that of late.

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