Iranian nuclear issue

Diplomacy works if both parties stand to gain something from the painfully long negotiations, writes Bhaskar Dasgupta.

After I wrote my essay about the way forward on the Iranian Nuclear Arms issue, I was embroiled in a rather tough dispute with a couple of friends, who insisted that there are diplomatic and military means that the USA can adopt to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. I argued otherwise and pointed to my previous two essays where I had pointed out that given the current geo-political situation, it is simply not possible for anybody to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. In this essay, I go a bit deeper into the options open to the USA and explain more on what exactly the USA can or cannot do.

On the diplomatic front, there is the EU3, which is working on trying to get Iran to give up nuclear weapons. Frankly speaking, all their diplomacy has been worth sweet sod all. Diplomacy works if both parties stand to gain something from the painfully long negotiations. Iran is unhappily (for the EU and USA) in the situation that, its minimalist position is that it craves the security of nuclear weapons so as to provide the ultimate trump card against any invasion either by the USA and/or its allies. The minimalist position of the EU3 is that it should not have nuclear weapons. When the basic premise of the diplomatic negotiations is so far apart and no mutually acceptable compromise is possible, then it is simply not surprising that the negotiations collapsed. All Iran is doing now is to play for time on the diplomatic front, while carrying on nuclear research in the background. IAEA itself has admitted that it does not have full visibility on all centres of nuclear research.

Now let us take a step forward and consider two additional factors, which will mean that, diplomatic efforts are doomed to fail. The first factor is that the coalition of the willing to attack Iran is going to be even smaller than that was the case with Iraq. The enthusiasm of many countries currently engaged in Iraqi operations is already waning, with some country or other regularly announcing the reduction and/or removal of its operations in Iraq. To add an Iranian adventure to the list will almost certainly bring the number of willing countries down rather dramatically. The second factor is that if military action is even considered against Iran, it will really inflame the Muslim World and it will become very clear, at least to their minds, that it is indeed a war against Islam and not against terror or for safety. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair may talk and talk, but it will be very difficult to justify this otherwise. If the USA and its potential allies think that the number of jehadis is still manageable right now, it will indeed be faced with a tidal wave of them, if it does go ahead, not to mention the small chance of an oil embargo (remember the 1973 oil embargo was started by none other than Iran). Given these two situations, the diplomatic options are frankly going to be extremely costly and very difficult to put into operation.

The second option of Special Forces attacks also suffer from the above problems with one major addition. Since the number of targets is so high, there is a high probability that some soldiers will be killed. You can just think about the propaganda victory this will give to the Iranians. As we already know, the American public's threshold for military deaths is decreasing and opposition to war is increasing with each additional death in Iraq. Let us also incorporate the fact that the number of Special Forces soldiers is very limited and they were already redeployed from Afghanistan to help out in Iraq. Now we are talking about another 400 odd targets to scout, monitor, destroy or what have you. The pool of these special elite soldiers is tiny compared to the regular army and manpower constraints itself vitiate against this option. So the end result would be partial or near total destruction of physical sites, a delay in the programme but long-term objectives and target will still remain open.

The advantage of the first two options is that they can be carried out relatively quickly, more secretly and that will give Iran less time to react and plan. But as we saw, it also has a smaller chance of success. The third option is a bigger one, in which there will be elements of ground invasion, a brief holding period to search out all potential nuclear programme sites, physically destroy them, search out and secure the key chaps in the programme (something like what was done with the old USSR scientists if the Americans are feeling generous or like the Iraqi scientists if they are not) but leave the "mullahcracy" alone. In short: a bigger task, bigger force, lesser amount of surprise, but a better chance. It will take much longer to arrange for this ground invasion to take place. Mind you, it can be done, by attacking from Iraq, Afghanistan, Qatar, Pakistan and say Georgia simultaneously, during troop rotations, but will still be a logistic nightmare. The supply lines will be longer and more vulnerable to suicide bombings as Iran is many times bigger than Iraq and the targets are widely distributed.

In addition, the Iranian geographical features are much more challenging than in Iraq and finally, Iran has something which Iraq didn't have, namely a chokehold on the Gulf on Hormuz. There is simply no way that the Americans can control the entire coast line, and it will be ridiculously easy to attack shipping in that nightmarishly narrow waters (either through silkworm missiles or simply through a Kodiak boat loaded with explosives (Ã la USS Aden). If the leadership isn't removed, then the driver behind the nuclear programme isn't removed, so the end result will still be the same, a bit delayed, but still the same. And if you want to remove the leadership, it will call for the full solution, go in with all guns blazing, take over the country and impose a totally new leadership, purge the institutions (judiciary, executive, military, municipal, you name it) and basically rebuild Iran from scratch to remove this idea of having a nuclear programme. The only way to get Iran to abandon its nuclear programme or even the desire to have one is to eviscerate its theocratic leadership. I need not tell you the challenges which this option will face and the sheer impossibility of doing so. America just does not have the money or the military boots on the ground to do so. It will simply be unable to handle a challenge of this order.

This does not mean that America may not try. Senator McCain has said that if diplomatic efforts fail, then the hard options will have to be considered. Well, I tried to give it a shot and I simply cannot see how the hard options can be implemented. Actually, let me rephrase the statement. My stock answer to anybody who wants me to do something at work, "anything can be done, provided there is sufficient time, money and people available". Similarly, applying hard options (any of the four or a combination of them) is not the problem, it can be done. That is what the military is there for. If the president orders them in, they will go in. What matters is whether the President will consider the cost benefit analysis, and whether the military option is the right option to attain the objective of stopping Iran from having nuclear weapons. On this question, I can categorically say that the military option is not the right option at all as the costs are going to be massively higher than the benefits. If a puking little war like the Iraq war can end up (so far and it isn't finished yet!) costing $2,000 billion overall (all inclusive), a potential Iranian war can well end up costing 10 times more (and I may well be conservative in my back of a fag-pack estimate here). Even the USA, with the world's largest economy cannot take that hit. Definitely not so soon after Iraq, or rather while the Iraq wound is still bleeding and if they wait for 3 more years for Iraq to settle down, Iran may already have the nukes by then.

In a way, I suspect the mullahs are indeed begging for the USA to take military action, simply because the costs are so high and the benefits fleeting/non-existent. The flip side of the argument is that if the USA does indeed attack Iran, it will simply benefit the Iranians more. It will provide them with justification to carry on with their theocracy and their anti-Americanism. They will immediately gain more control over Iraq (at least over the Shia areas). It will bring them back into the Islamic fold (there is always that tension around Shia driven Islamic revolutions which causes the Sunni majority countries a bit of angst). It will give them more money from the sky rocketing oil prices and crush the little bit of westernisation or as they call it " westoxification" which is present. It will give their armies of un- or underemployed youths something to do (go blow yourself up against an M1-Abrams tank) and so on and so forth.

If you wanted to have an idea about what the mullah's think, here is what Ahmad Khatami, a senior cleric in the theocracy said during his recent Friday sermon: "Thank God our enemies are idiots. They threaten us (but) their threats and sanctions have made us independent. The Europeans must understand they should not use the language of force with the great Iranian nation, as it will come to nothing." Mind you, the Europeans can only use the language of force, the question simply does not arise of the Europeans actually utilising force (President Chirac's vague threat to use nuclear weapons notwithstanding). So it will be boiling down to the Americans if they wanted to do something. As we have seen, while they can definitely do something, will they be willing to pay the price for it? And to end I find this Persian Proverb relevant as a reminder to the USA, which says: "He who makes the same mistake twice deserves disillusion."

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!