Mutually assured uncertainty
By Yossi Melman

Henry Kissinger is very worried. His forecast regarding the Iranian nuclear program is grim and gloomy. He voiced it in April, in an off-the-record session in Washington of the Trilateral Commission, a prestigious club in which former leaders of states, CEOs of international corporations and experts of various kinds gather to hold informal talks. Kissinger stated that contemplating what the West must do to curb Iran and prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons is making him lose sleep. As a historian and theorist of international relations at Harvard University, Kissinger wrote about nuclear strategy.

As U.S. secretary of state and national security adviser during the Nixon and Ford administrations in the Cold War, he dealt with several international crises that threatened to slide into a nuclear confrontation between the two superpowers. In his talk, Kissinger explained that as one of the officials who had guided American nuclear and strategic policy, he understood how difficult and complicated it will be to manage the Middle East in a situation in which Iran possesses nuclear arms.

According to Kissinger, in addition to the devastating effects on the Middle East, the ramifications for the Western world will also be intolerable. An ardent supporter of diplomacy that rests on military power, he believes that the West must unite with the goal of bringing effective pressure to bear on Iran. In his view, however, Iran will not be deterred by diplomatic pressure alone; economic pressure, including an oil embargo, must also be applied. Preparation for that move, he holds, should have been done yesterday.

No balance of terror

The election of the mayor of Tehran and representative of the country's conservative circles, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as the new president of Iran has heightened the apprehension in Israel and throughout the West that Iran will possess nuclear weapons within a few years.

"I am appalled at the thought that Iran will have nuclear arms," says Dr. Uzi Arad, who finds it difficult to understand why, at a time when the Iranians are liable to manufacture nuclear weapons, the government of Israel is investing all its resources in the disengagement plan. "History will determine whether this is the correct order of priorities or a deep strategic miscalculation," notes Dr. Arad, who served as a policy adviser to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and chief of the research division of the Mossad espionage agency.

"I am appalled not only as an Israeli, but as an analyst of strategic processes internationally and in the region," adds Arad, who is now an adviser to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and head of the Institute of Strategic Policy at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya.

What could a nuclear Iran foment in the region?

Arad: "A situation in which Iran has nuclear weapons will lead the Palestinians and the Arabs to toughen their positions and will undermine the prospects of achieving peace settlements."

That is the generally held view among experts. A minority opinion, held by a few experts who do not dare identify themselves by name, is that a nuclear Iran will actually stabilize the region, as a state of mutual deterrence will be achieved vis-a-vis Israel. In terms drawn from nuclear strategy theory, based on the interwoven relations between the United States and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, a possible situation of this kind is known as a "balance of terror."

However, MK Ephraim Sneh (Labor) says that it is impossible to apply the balance-of-terror model in the Middle East. Sneh, who was deputy defense minister in the government of Ehud Barak, dealt with a sphere which Dr. Avner Cohen (author of "Israel and the Bomb") - in his new book, "Hataboo ha'aharon" ("The Last Taboo," to be published in English by the Columbia University Press in 2006) - calls "the kingdom of the secret," referring to the bureaucratic mechanism that is responsible for all aspects of Israel's nuclear policy.

Says Sneh: "There can be no true strategic deterrence between Israel and Iran, because such deterrence requires symmetry. However, there is no symmetry between the two countries - not in size of territory, not in size of population and not in the character of the decision-making apparatuses. Iran's ability to absorb military blows, as [former Iranian president Ali Hashemi] Rafsanjani said himself, is immeasurably greater than that of Israel. And given our vulnerability, there can be no true deterrence."

How will a situation in which Iran possesses nuclear weapons affect Israel's strategic posture?

Sneh: 1. "Israel will find it difficult to conduct free negotiations on its vital interests with Arab states, because it will be confronted by Iran's power of extortion. An example is possible negotiations with Syria on the Golan Heights. The Iranians will tell the Syrians not to make concessions and will back them with their nuclear might.

2. "In every situation of tension there will be Israelis who will prefer not to be here. Fear will prompt them to leave Israel.

3. "The decision-making processes in Israel will be affected by the Iranian threat. Even if the prime minister or the cabinet will not admit it, there is no doubt in my mind that the government will not have full freedom of action in the shadow of the thought that Iran has the Bomb. We can already see this happening in miniature in the north of Israel today. The fact that Hezbollah has deployed 12,000 Katyusha rockets aimed at Israel has created a kind of crippling balance of terror, which is hampering Israel's decision-making capability. So just imagine how decisions will be made when nuclear missiles are aimed at Israel."

Uzi Arad: "A nuclear Iran has very broad aspects, which go beyond its impact on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Iran will become the dominant country in OPEC [Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries] and will take a hard, hawkish line on the issue of oil prices. An increase in prices will be harmful to the Western economies. This is the nightmare of the major oil consumers.

"Another aspect of a nuclear Iran is that its self-confidence will grow and it will intensify its subversive-revolutionary stance, aimed at expanding its influence in several close circles, such as the Persian Gulf, and also more distant ones. But the most potent shock wave, the greatest danger, is that nuclear weapons in Iran's possession will breach all the dams of nuclear proliferation. It will generate a chain reaction. Egypt, with its regional ambitions, will find it difficult to accept the new situation. It is not clear what Algeria, which has a certain nuclear capability, will do. But above all, Saudi Arabia will not be able to stand idly by, and I assume that it will try to acquire nuclear weapons, too. Reports not long ago stated that Saudi Arabia was taking an interest in the subject."

No `long arm'

For more than a decade, fear of erosion of its deterrent capacity has driven Israel to seek new solutions. However, when it comes to nuclear strategy, it is difficult to "reinvent the wheel": The origin of most of the available solutions lies in the Cold War. Another option, apart from the balance of terror, is "second-strike capability": the development of means to launch a nuclear strike after a country is attacked with nuclear weapons. This entails ensuring the survival of the country's nuclear weapons, either by "hardening," housing the missiles and bombs in underground silos immune to nuclear attack, or by storing them in secret places that are immune to discovery. According to foreign reports, Israel keeps its nuclear warheads, which are attached to Jericho 2 missiles, at a secret site in the Judean Hills near Zecharia and Sdot Micha, two villages close to Beit Shemesh.

Another way in which a country can ensure the survival of its nuclear arsenal in the event of an attack is to convert submarines into launching pads for nuclear weapons, the premise being the difficulty of locating the submerged submarines. According to foreign reports, one of the reasons for Israel's purchase of advanced Dolphin-class submarines from Germany and for the development of a cruise missile based on the Jericho and Shavit models, is its desire to acquire second-strike capability. However, foreign naval experts doubt that Israel will succeed in obtaining capability that will be effective and will restore its deterrent edge. According to these commentators, at least nine submarines are required to maintain effective second-strike capability while simultaneously continuing to maintain seaborne routine security and conventional warfare. It is highly unlikely that Israel, with its meager resources (it is currently begging Germany to finance at least one more Dolphin-class submarine) will ever be able to acquire the needed capacity.

The difficulties in acquiring effective second-strike capability are not the only reason for Israel's limited ability to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat. According to military experts in Israel and elsewhere, the Israel Air Force does not have the strength that is needed to destroy the sites in Iran in a preemptive strike that will make it impossible for Iran to manufacture nuclear weapons. This assessment is based on a number of facts. First, the Iranians learned well the lessons of Israel's bombing of the nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981 and have dispersed their nuclear sites around the country, including eastern Iran, which is very distant from Israel. And they also situated the most vital laboratories and facilities in underground sites that are well fortified.

On June 9, The Los Angeles Times reported that the production facilities at Iran's gas centrifuges plant to enrich uranium at Natanz, about 250 kilometers south of Tehran, were built deep underground, are protected by some eight meters of reinforced concrete and are padded with layers of earth that are immune to penetration by bombs or rockets. Israel's Air Force lacks true strategic capability to bomb remote targets. An operation of that kind necessitates long-range bombers capable of carrying heavy bunker-busting ammunition and with the capacity for carpet-bombing by raining down 40-ton bombs on the target.

No official Israeli spokesperson will admit it, but the majority of experts agree that Israel has no true and effective military option to strike alone against Iran. This awareness is trickling down to the military-political establishment and is one of the reasons for the change that is emerging in Israeli policy. For years - in fact, until a few months ago - we heard militant pronouncements by generals, air force commanders and cabinet ministers about Israel's "long arm," which can reach any site in Iran. Such declarations are hardly heard now. The new bon ton, whose main spokesman is Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, is to urge the international community to curb Iran's nuclear program.

"I have in fact noticed a change in the Israeli approach," says Dr. Ephraim Asculai, a senior researcher with the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. Until 2001, Dr. Asculai held a series of senior positions with the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), the supreme body that is responsible for shaping and conducting Israel's nuclear policy (including the running of the nuclear reactor at Dimona) and also plays a central role, together with Military Intelligence and the Mossad espionage agency, in analyzing and assessing the nuclear capabilities of the countries in the Middle East. "My personal opinion," he adds, "has always been that Iran's nuclear program is not only Israel's problem - it is a world problem. The more so that Israel is secondary in the Iranian considerations for acquiring nuclear weapons."

Of late we have also heard less of the term "point of no return," of which the outgoing director of Military Intelligence, Major General Aharon Farkash Ze'evi, was so fond. Asculai: "History teaches us that there were countries that achieved the technological ability to enable them to go nuclear, but they did not do so. Examples are Sweden, Japan, Argentina and Brazil. In my opinion, then, even what is defined as a point of no return can be reversed."

No reform in Tehran

Iran has been working secretly for nearly 20 years to obtain nuclear weapons. Its civilian nuclear program, which is intended for purposes of research, industry, medicine and energy production, also acts as a cover for hidden intentions. Iran is thus following in the footsteps of India, Pakistan, South Africa, North Korea and - according to foreign reports - Israel as well. However, according to Meir Javendafar, Iran's ambition to become a nuclear power has its roots back in the period of the shah.

The Iranian-born Javendafar, who was educated in British universities, runs an information Web site and a consulting firm in Tel Aviv and London on economic and political issues concerning the Middle East (www.meepas.com). According to Javendafar, the shah wanted to obtain "the Bomb" to aggrandize his name and regime, to achieve regional hegemony and make Iran the mightiest power between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. The same approach guides the present regime in the Islamic Republic. However, an additional motive also exists, Dr. Asculai notes: Iran wants nuclear weapons in order to increase its deterrent capacity vis-a-vis the United States. A quick glance at the map will explain this aspiration: Iran is surrounded by U.S. military forces, which are deployed on or near all its borders - in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Turkmenistan, in Uzbekistan, in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait and in Qatar.

"Iran believes that nuclear weapons will deter the United States from attacking it," Asculai says. Javendafar cites another motive: Nuclear weapons are perceived as a tool to preserve and entrench the regime.

In practice, Iran has never desisted from its efforts in this area. Everything was done in secret, without the intelligence communities of Israel and the United States obtaining reliable and accurate information. Since 1985, Iran has built research labs, sent its nuclear experts to take advanced studies abroad, signed agreements with Russia to establish the power-producing plant at Bushehr, and has acquired know-how, technology and equipment, including centrifuges from the smuggling network that was headed by the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. Throughout this period, Iran's nuclear experts succeeded in carrying out dozens of secret experiments in which they separated plutonium in minuscule amounts and enriched uranium - two processes from which fissionable material needed to assemble a nuclear bomb is produced. The scale of the deceit was only revealed in the past three years, in the wake of information which began to flow from the Mujahedin Khalq, a movement of opposition to the Tehran regime.

The Iranians admitted that they had misled the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), even though Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Interestingly, the treaty does not bar Iran from engaging in nuclear development, including uranium enrichment. It only requires that Tehran report such activity.

Since the lies were discovered, the heavy international pressure on Iran has had its effect. Iran agreed to suspend all its nuclear development activity. The agreement was achieved in talks with representatives of Germany, Britain and France, and will expire at the end of this month. The majority of the experts in Israel - within the intelligence community and outside it - believe that Iran views the agreement as a means to buy time and ward off international pressure, including pressure regarding the fairness of the elections held last week.

Dr. Dan Eldar, a former senior member of the Mossad's research division, believes that the election of the new president "symbolizes a major social change. In this election the urban proletariat and the peasants, to a certain extent, had their say against the sated, upper-middle class and landowning bourgeoisie, to which former president Rafsanjani belongs. In retrospect, it can be said that the rule of the outgoing president, Khatami, was no more than a passing episode, which did not lead Iran to moderation or to reforms. The election of Ahmadinejad means that the revolution had degenerated and the decision was made to return it to its social sources and to its roots. His election also reflects a generational revolution. In the revolution that brought Khomeni to power in 1979, he was not part of the senior revolutionary establishment. Equally interesting is the fact that the president-elect does not fit the image of the Iranian young generation, as it was portrayed in the West and in Israel, according to which young Iranians supposedly want to immerse themselves in Western culture and are fed up with radical Islam."

Does Islamic rule in Iran remain firm and perhaps even stronger?

Eldar: "Definitely. Furthermore, the Iranian clerics are no less nationalist than were the members of the shah's regime. Accordingly, to acquire nuclear power is - in their view - a status symbol and a national asset, which fortifies Iran's standing as a regional power."

The United States has the capability to destroy the nuclear infrastructure in Iran. However, in the coming years it will find it difficult to realize that capability. Washington held out a certain hope in the election of Rafsanjani, who is a pragmatist in Iranian terms. But once more it has been shown that the United States does not know much about what is going on in Iran. Now, in light of the surprise at the election of the new president, it is difficult to assess how the relations between Iran and the United States, and the West as a whole, will develop, and what will happen regarding the nuclear question.

"It is very doubtful that there is any substance to all the noise that is being heard about American offensive intentions toward Iran," says Eldar, who is currently a researcher on the Middle East in various Israeli research institutes. "In light of the intervention in Iraq, it is doubtful that Bush and his administration will invest in an Iranian adventure. Iran is not Iraq from the point of view of capabilities and military readiness, consciousness and feelings of national honor and pride. Therefore, I tend to think that the United States is thinking more in terms of the Libyan model of `the taming of the shrew,' and that under cover of militant rhetoric and threats, quiet negotiations are taking place in secret channels between Iran and America on all the elements of the relations between the two countries, including the nuclear issue."

Eldar takes note of another indication that attests to some form of understanding in the United States concerning the need to enter into a dialogue with Iran and jettison the military option. He is referring to a surprising change that occurred in the administration's stand on the continued serving of the Egyptian jurist Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei as director general of the IAEA. In the past three years, administration spokesmen (and Israeli officials) were critical of ElBaradei's approach toward Iran, which they found too soft. In May, he met in Washington with senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The content of the meetings is not known, but in their wake the United States dropped its opposition to ElBaradei's election to a third term. It seems likely that a deal was struck between ElBaradei and the administration, according to which he would take a tougher line with Iran, to the point of supporting sanctions against Tehran, in return for American support for him.

Another sign of a change in U.S. policy is the decision to try Larry Franklin on a charge of passing information over to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel lobby, and through it to Israel. Franklin worked on the Iranian desk at the Pentagon and was known for his hawkish stance on Iran. His research approach was tendentious and biased toward the Israeli perception of the need to dictate a hard line against Iran and eliminate its nuclear program. Franklin made several visits to Israel, met with senior officials of AIPAC (two of them are facing trial with him), with figures in the Israel Defense Ministry and the intelligence community, and with experts from academia including Uzi Arad - who, on his last visit to the United States, was questioned by the FBI about his ties with Franklin.

It is possible that the administration's determined handling of the Franklin case signals dissatisfaction with Israel's behavior on the Iranian issue, which has been characterized by hyperactivity on the part of its official and semi-official representatives in the Washington arena, with the aim of feeding the decision-makers there biased and one-sided intelligence that is intended to influence their judgment. Apparently, the decision to try Franklin shows that the administration has garnered the impression that Israel is deliberately overstating the threat that would be posed by a nuclear Iran.

No happy end

Because Israeli (and American) intelligence has no reliable and accurate intelligence about Iran's nuclear capability; because Israel has no military option; and mainly because Israel is being compelled to rely on European diplomacy (backed by the IAEA) and American pressure (including a threat to impose sanctions on oil exports, as recommended by Kissinger) to restrain the appetite of the regime of ayatollahs - even if everyone agrees that no such restraint is in sight - Israel must ready itself for a new era which is liable to unfold in the near future, in which Iran will have nuclear weapons.

This is the point of departure of a recently published novel, "Ani hanivhar" ("I the Chosen," in Hebrew) which centers around the question of what an Israeli prime minister will do if he receives intelligence information that Iranian missiles armed with nuclear warheads will strike Tel Aviv within 48 hours. The author, Shabtai Shoval, is a partner in a startup company with Major General (res.) Amiram Levine, who was deputy chief of the Mossad. For many years Shoval did his reserve duty in the "Control Unit" of Military Intelligence, whose role is to play devil's advocate and challenge the assessments of the intelligence community. As such, Shoval frequently drew up possible future scenarios.

The novel describes how the Mossad recruits an Iranian student by means of sexual allurements via chat rooms on the Internet. He becomes an agent who ascends to a key position in Iran's nuclear missiles command, and sends the warning about the intention to launch missiles at Tel Aviv.

In the novel's future scenario, the prime minister orders the Jericho missiles and the Dolphin submarines, which are armed with nuclear warheads, to be deployed. On at least two occasions in the past, according to foreign reports, Israel placed its nuclear weapons on standby, or made preparations to do s during the "waiting period" before the Six-Day War in June 1967, and on the third day of the Yom Kippur War (October 8, 1973). Although both cases involved serious crises, which Israel perceived as being liable to endanger its existence, the character of the threats was conventional. If and when Iran acquires nuclear weapons, the threat will bear an entirely different character.

As far as is known, very few discussions have been held here on the question of whether Israel can survive a nuclear attack. In 1982 (following the attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor the previous year), a report on the subject was written in Israel. The report stated - on the basis of calculations involving the weather, the winds and the airflow, the launch means, the location of the explosion and data concerning radioactivity - that in the assessment of experts, such a nuclear attack would kill between 100,000 and 300,000 people. The conclusion of the report's authors was, therefore, that Israel could survive such an attack.

The majority of experts believe that this conclusion is fatuous nonsense. Israel does not have the medical capability to treat such large numbers of casualties, nor does it have the financial, technological or human resources to rehabilitate itself after a nuclear attack - and, above all, it would not have the psychological fortitude the task would require. Therefore, the logic that guided the country's founding fathers to acquire nuclear capability - for deterrence and for what the media calls "the Samson option" ("let the Philistines die with me," or "no one will survive us") - is no less valid today than it ever was.

However, if Israel realizes its nuclear potential or reacts by nuclear means to a nuclear attack - it will cease to exist as a state. On the other hand, if peace agreements are reached with the Arab states and with the Palestinians despite Iranian nuclear might, they will help reduce the threat such might embodies.