The Bush administration is talking tough about the prospects of a nuclear armed Iran, even rattling the nuclear saber. This may not be a replay of the build up for the war in Iraq as anyone paying the slightest attention knows our intelligence on this issue has been and is now very poor, and no one argues there is an imminent threat. David Isenberg, a Straus Military Reform Project adviser, explains in a commentary published at the widely read TomPaine.com website.

April 25, 2006

Saber Rattling Backed Up by Weak Intelligence

David Isenberg’s commentary, “What We Know About Iran,” was originally published at TomPaine.com on April 25, 2006.

Is Iran’s nuclear program really an immediate threat? There is reason to be doubtful. In fact, the entire debate over the prospect of Iran getting nuclear weapons has been unduly alarmist, if not outright hysterical. Recent media reports indicate that the Bush administration has gone beyond mere saber-rattling and is now deep into contingency planning for military strikes against Iran.

But the evidence, even from within Bush’s own administration, doesn’t support the claim that Iran poses any imminent threat. For example, on April 20, 2006, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte testified before Congress that, “even though we believe that Iran is determined to acquire or obtain a nuclear weapon, we believe that it is still a number of years off before they are likely to have enough fissile material to assemble it into, or to put it into, a nuclear weapon—perhaps into the next decade, so that I think it's important that this issue be kept in perspective.”

The Bush administration is making noises that if the U.N. Security Council doesn’t give it authorization for a military strike, it might just ignore it, proceed unilaterally and do it anyway. That might sound like bluster, but again, remember Iraq. Nobody knows for certain whether these threats are sincere or just psychological pressure from an administration that thinks talking tough is the only way to go.

But the recent news reports, such as the April 9 Washington Post report that Pentagon and CIA planners are considering a strike on the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan, coupled with the media drumbeat from the usual war hawks at The Weekly Standard, Wall Street Journal and Fox News, are alarming enough to consider the pros and cons of military action. And by any objective standard the liabilities outweigh the benefits. The negatives include the likelihood of alienating most of the world—which is already out of patience with the United States after Iraq—and inciting additional terrorist attacks, all for the hope of setting back Iran's nuclear program by a few years.

Consider the recent New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh claiming that some military planners are considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons to target deeply hardened underground Iranian nuclear facilities. Putting aside for a moment the enormous moral and legal concerns that breaking the nuclear weapons taboo would involve, the simple truth is that even using so-called nuclear bunker busters are no guarantee. Successful use of such weapons depends on a number of variables: the depth at which the facility is buried, the composition of the ground and rock, the manner in which the bunker is built, the expected yield of the weapon and the depth to which the weapon could penetrate before it detonates.

While Hersh’s article has attracted the most attention, an equally compelling source of information has been the commentary by noted military affairs analyst William Arkin. In a series on his Washington Post blog , he has detailed U.S. military planning for the past few years—since before the invasion of Iraq—and the development of specific contingency planning for military operations against Iran. Arkin notes that this “adaptive” system promotes “the particular Rumsfeld style of war, which is light and fast and blind to the demands of the real world.”

Even if all the questions are answerable, much would still depend on having excellent intelligence. And our intelligence on Iran, to put it politely, stinks. U.S. News & World Report recently reported that Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said that, “we have not made the progress on our oversight of Iran intelligence, which is critical.” Last year, the report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction stated, “From Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons to the inner workings of al-Qaida, the intelligence community frequently admitted to us that it lacks answers.”

Similarly, a new Center for Strategic and International Studies report released earlier this month said, “[T]here are still major gaps and uncertainties about the knowledge of Iran's nuclear programs, facilities and weapons development efforts.”

About the reliability of U.S. intelligence on Iran, Martin van Creveld, a prominent Israeli military historian, recently wrote:

Last but not least, before deciding to bomb Iran's nuclear installations the Bush administration must seriously question whether the intelligence on which its decision is based is reliable. Those of us who have followed reports on the development of Iran's nuclear program know that the warnings from American and other intelligence agencies about Tehran building a bomb in three and five years have been made again and again—for more than 15 years.

For 15 years, the intelligence agencies have been proven dead wrong. And to this gross exaggeration of Iran's true intentions and capabilities must be added the fairy tales the same intelligence agencies have been feeding the world regarding Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Indeed, there was something surreal regarding Iranian President Ahmadinejad's recent claim that Iran has successfully enriched uranium, using a 164-centrifuge cascade "We are a nuclear country!" he said. Even if his claim were true, he still needs tens of thousands of additional centrifuges to enrich enough uranium for a nuclear weapon. Yet here in the United States this unverified claim has been taken as gospel. Currently Iran has only set up that one cascade, and plans to install another 3,000 later this year as the government works toward its goal of 54,000. Even if it does install those additional 3,000 that would mean it has 6 percent of its goal; hardly a dire threat. Furthermore, the Iranian claim says nothing about how efficient the claimed use of a small 164-centrifuge chain was, what its life cycle and reliability is, and about the ability to engineer a system that could approach weapons-grade material.

The hawks in both the Republican and Democratic Parties must understand that invading and occupying Iran is simply not an option—for starters, it has three times the size and population of Iraq, where a substantial portion of the U.S. military’s combat units remain occupied—which leaves an air attack as the only feasible option. But such an option is a quick fix, not a solution. Israel’s air strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 made the limitations of such an option clear, as evidenced by the fact that 10 years later, the IAEA found Iraq far more advanced in its covert bomb program than anyone had thought possible.

The U.S. military also understands that attacking Iran would almost certainly shore up the power of the regime by inciting nationalist sentiment and massively tilt internal debates in favor of its most hard-line element—exactly the worst result the United States could want. Iran would not be without options to respond, and those, in turn, would force the U.S. to escalate its own response, thus escalating the limited strike the neo-conservatives claim to want into a full-fledged war.

The end result is lots of pain for no gain. The cons outweigh the pros and everyone, except for neo-conservatives, should understand this.

David Isenberg is a senior research analyst at the British American Security Information Council, a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, and an adviser to the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information. The views expressed are his own.

Winslow T. Wheeler
Director
Straus Military Reform Project
Center for Defense Information
202 797-5271 (in DC)
301 840-8992 (in MD)

But what if David Isenberg’s wrong?

What would your reponse to Bush's leadership be if Bush does nothing then an atomic bomb is detonated in Boston harbor? Or a Semi trailor truck pulls into the loop in Chicago and blows up a dirty bomb spreading nuclear contamination all over downtown Chicago?

I know your answer, what ever Bush does will be wrong.

This is very good information, but I remain a bit skeptical that this
is not a replay of the build up to the war in Iraq if the main
arguments are that "our intelligence on this issue has been and is now
very poor, and no one argues there is an imminent threat. " Our
intelligence, or at least that conveyed to the public, leading up to
Iraq was very poor, and Iraq was by no means an imminent threat. This
is documented in Cobra II, which points out that Iraq was understood to
the be less threatening that Iran or North Korea in terms of nuclear
capacity, perhaps the reason for the choice to attack Iraq.

Which I would think would be the reason why Iran wants nuclear - so they would be less likely to get attacked.

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April 24, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Bombs Away
By MAX M. KAMPELMAN
Washington

IN my lifetime, I have witnessed two successful titanic struggles by civilized society against totalitarian movements, those against Nazi fascism and Soviet communism. As an arms control negotiator for Ronald Reagan, I had the privilege of playing a role — a small role — in the second of these triumphs.

Yet, at the age of 85, I have never been more worried about the future for my children and grandchildren than I am today. The number of countries possessing nuclear arms is increasing, and terrorists are poised to master nuclear technology with the objective of using those deadly arms against us.

The United States must face this reality head on and undertake decisive steps to prevent catastrophe. Only we can exercise the constructive leadership necessary to address the nuclear threat.

Unfortunately, the goal of globally eliminating all weapons of mass destruction — nuclear, chemical and biological arms — is today not an integral part of American foreign policy; it needs to be put back at the top of our agenda.

Of course, there will be those who will argue against this bold vision. To these people I would say that there were plenty who argued against it when it was articulated by Mr. Reagan during his presidency.

I vividly recall a White House national security meeting in December 1985, at which the president reported on his first "get acquainted" summit in Geneva with President Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union the previous month.

Sitting in the situation room, the president began by saying: "Maggie was right. We can do business with this man." His reference to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher prompted nods of assent. Then, in a remarkably matter-of-fact tone, he reported that he had suggested to Mr. Gorbachev that their negotiations could possibly lead to the United States and the Soviet Union eliminating all their nuclear weapons.

When the president finished with his report, I saw uniform consternation around that White House table. The concern was deep, with a number of those present — from the secretary of defense to the head of central intelligence to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — warning that our nuclear missiles were indispensable. The president listened carefully and politely without responding.

In fact, we did not learn where he stood until October 1986, at his next summit meeting with Mr. Gorbachev, which took place in Reykjavik, Iceland. There, in a stout waterfront house, he repeated to Mr. Gorbachev his proposal for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. Though no agreement was reached, the statement had been made.

More remarkably, it had been made by someone who understood the importance of nuclear deterrence.

In March 1985, before Reagan's first meeting with Mr. Gorbachev, I received a telephone call on a Friday from the president's chief legislative strategist telling me that the administration's request for additional MX missiles was facing defeat in the House of Representatives, and that the president wanted me to return from Geneva (where I was posted as his arms negotiator) for a brief visit. The hope was that I might be able to persuade some of the Democrats to support the appropriation.

I was not and never have been a lobbyist, but I agreed to return to Washington. I wanted my first meeting to be with the speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill, who, I was informed, was the leader of the opposition to the appropriation.

So there I was on Monday morning in O'Neill's private office. I briefed the speaker on the state of negotiations with the Soviets. I made the point that I too would like to live in a world without MX missiles, but that it was dangerous for us unilaterally to reduce our numbers without receiving reciprocal reductions from the Soviets. I then proceeded with my round of talks on the Hill.

At the end of the day, I met alone with the president and told him that O'Neill said we were about 30 votes short. I told the president of my conversation with the speaker and shared with him my sense that O'Neill was quietly helping us, suggesting to his fellow Democrats that he would not be unhappy if they voted against his amendment.

Without a moment's hesitation, the president telephoned O'Neill, and I had the privilege of hearing one side of this conversation between two tough Irishmen, cussing each other out, but obviously friendly and respectful.

I recall that the president's first words went something like this: "Max tells me that you may really be a patriot. It's about time!" Suffice it to say that soon after I returned to Geneva I learned that the House had authorized the MX missiles.

THERE is a moral to these stories: you can be an idealist and a realist at the same time. What is missing today from American foreign policy is a willingness to hold these two thoughts simultaneously, to find a way to move from what "is" — a world with a risk of increasing global disaster — to what "ought" to be, a peaceful, civilized world free of weapons of mass destruction.

The "ought" is an integral part of the political process. Our founding fathers proclaimed the "ought" of American democracy in the Declaration of Independence at a time when we had slavery, property qualifications for voting and second-class citizenship for women.

Yet we steadily moved the undesirable "is" of our society ever closer to the "ought" and thereby strengthened our democracy. When President Gerald Ford signed the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, he was criticized for entering into a process initiated by the Soviet Union. But the agreement reflected a series of humanitarian "oughts," and over the course of the next 10 years, the Soviets were forced by our European friends and us to live up to those "oughts" if they were to attain international legitimacy.

An appreciation of the awesome power of the "ought" should lead our government to embrace the goal of eliminating all weapons of mass destruction.

To this end, President Bush should consult with our allies, appear before the United Nations General Assembly and call for a resolution embracing the objective of eliminating all weapons of mass destruction.

He should make clear that we are prepared to eliminate our nuclear weapons if the Security Council develops an effective regime to guarantee total conformity with a universal commitment to eliminate all nuclear arms and reaffirm the existing conventions covering chemical and biological weapons.

The council should be assigned the task of establishing effective political and technical procedures for achieving this goal, including both stringent verification and severe penalties to prevent cheating.

I am under no illusion that this will be easy. That said, the United States would bring to this endeavor decades of relevant experience, new technologies and the urgency of self-preservation. The necessary technical solutions can be devised. Now, as I can imagine President Reagan saying, let us summon the will.

Max M. Kampelman headed the United States delegation to the negotiations on nuclear and space arms in Geneva from 1985 to 1989.

Cobra II was written after the fact and is an example of 20/20 hindsight.

I suspect North Karea was not choosen as "next" ahead of Iraq was the Chinese had yet to realize sheltering North Korea was in fact bad for China. I am sure the United States inquired with China as to how they would feel about ending North Korea's existence. China was not ready to allow that to happen four years ago but they are coming around.

Iran's days are numbered unless they abandon their quest for an atomic bomb.