War with Iran is not the answer.

• Author: Logan, Justin
• Position: National Affairs

IT APPEARS INCREASINGLY likely that the Bush Administration's diplomatic approach to Iran will tail to prevent that country from going nuclear, and that the U.S. will have to decide whether to use military force to attempt to delay Iron's acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability. Some analysts already have been promoting air strikes against Iran, and the Bush Administration has pointed out repeatedly that the military option is "on the table."

Evaluating the two ultimate options in the face of a prospective final diplomatic collapse--military action on the one hand and acceptance and deterrence on the other--reveals that neither course is appetizing. However, the evidence strongly suggests that the difficulties with military action would outweigh the downsides of acceptance and deterrence. A strategy of attacking Iran's nuclear program has several problems with it: U.S. intelligence seems likely to be poorer on Iran than it was on Iraq; Iran has hardened and buried many nuclear facilities in a way that would make them hard to destroy: Iran could respond in such a way that the U.S. would feel forced to escalate to full-blown regime change: and attacking would have a host of unintended consequences inside and outside Iran.

Acceptance and deterrence also is an unattractive prospect. Iran likely would be emboldened by the acquisition of a bomb. and could destabilize the region and inject more problems into an already bleak prospect for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Still, given the costs of the military option, the only compelling rationale for starting a war with Iran would be if there is good reason to believe that the Iranian leadership fundamentally is undeterrable. However, available evidence indicates that Iran is deterrable, and would be particularly so when faced with the devastating repercussions that would result from the use of a nuclear weapon.

On May 31, 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held a press conference to announce that the U.S. would be open to joining the European Union Three (EU3) negotiations on Iran's nuclear program. This new approach represented a significant shift away from Washington's previous attempts to pressure and isolate Iran, and increased the chances for a peaceful solution to the conflict over Iran's nuclear program.

Still, even Washington's fresh tact to the Iran issue has a good chance of failing. Pres. George W. Bush added a potential "poison pill" precondition--that the Iranians suspend uranium enrichment before talks could take place. For its part, Ivan irritated Washington and the international community by stalling its response, offering to reply months, rather than weeks, after having received the offer. Iran eventually said it was willing to enter talks, but not under any preconditions. The U.S. then tried pressuring its allies into signing on to a restrictive sanctions package against Iran with little--especially in Europe--success. More broadly, unless Washington offers to put security guarantees and overall diplomatic and economic normalization on the negotiating table--a so-called grand bargain approach--it is unlikely that Iron will decide that the benefits of a diplomatic deal will outweigh the costs.

It is important to emphasize that the option of starting a war does not involve eliminating Iran's potential to develop a nuclear weapon. Experts agree that Iran's nuclear infrastructure is far too diffuse to make that feasible, and even optimistic scenarios offered by pro-war commentators have estimated that military strikes could delay Iran's nuclear program by roughly three years--a timeframe within which some have argued that we could work to overthrow the government in Tehran. Others contend that air strikes should be coupled with a campaign of internal destabilization, utilizing dissident groups, in order to disrupt the nuclear program and change the regime at the same time.

Iran's strategy of defense against a U.S. attack could involve further destabilizing Iraq, in particular the southern Shi'a region; conventional or possibly chemical or biological attacks against either U.S. personnel in the region or against Israel; the use of mines or civilian boats to attack oil tankers covertly in the Strait of Hormuz, similar to the attack against the USS Cole: and a long, protracted guerrilla war, should the conflict escalate to regime change and involve U.S. personnel on the ground in Iran. These possibilities must be factored into any decision about whether to start a war with Iran. So, it is worth looking systematically at the possible costs and benefits of the military option.

Worse intelligence than in Iraq? The U.S. government appears to know very little about Iran's nuclear program. It is quite difficult to gather worthwhile intelligence on a country with which America has not had commercial or diplomatic relations for almost three decades, and a successful attack against a nuclear program as dispersed and effectively hidden as Iran's apparently is would require very good intelligence. In 2002. the U.S. learned of startling advances in Iran's nuclear program after revelations regarding the Natanz enrichment facility and the Arak heavy water reactor were made very publicly by the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq's (MEK's) political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI). Given that these facilities obviously would rank highly on any list of potential targets, we must understand that the Iranian leadership knows that we know about them. It is likely that the leadership in Tehran has taken into account that those locations would be fast on a list of American aim points, and have adjusted their programs accordingly, either by diversifying the locations even further than they were, or by relocating nuclear activity.

The intelligence gap

Another problem, according to The New York Times' James Risen, is that the entire CIA intelligence network inside Iran was "rolled up" in 2004 when a CIA operative accidentally sent a full roster of U.S. assets inside Iran to an Iranian double agent. This left the CIA "virtually blind in Iran." Even before the "roll-up," a presidential commission concluded in 2004 that the U.S. intelligence community has "disturbingly little" information on Iran's nuclear activities.

Some neoconservatives loudly criticize the CIA for its pre-Iraqi war failings, and disdain its capability to assess the Iranian program. At the same time, though, they seem to assume that the intelligence we--or they--possess on the Iranian nuclear program is good enough to make striking munitions sites remarkably easy. On March 5, 2006, during a presentation to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Pentagon advisor Richard Perle presented the option thus: "I trust we know where [the Iranian nuclear facilities] are. If we don't know where they are, what should we think about a diplomatic solution? So, either we know where they are, or we don't, and if we know where they are, let me tell you that with six or eight B-2 aircraft ... those facilities could be eliminated in a single evening."

In reality, the difficulty of preventive strikes against Iran's nuclear program is closer to that described by the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Anthony Cordesman and Khalid al-Rodhan: "To be effective, a military strike against Iran's nuclear efforts would virtually have to attack all probable and possible Iranian facilities to have maximum impact in denying Iran the capability to acquire a nuclear weapon or ensuring that its efforts would be delayed for some years .... The problem for anyone who starts a shell game is that some players either will insist that all shells be made transparent or else will proceed to smash all the shells."

Site dispersal and burial and the question of escalation dominance. Perle's suggestion simplifies a complex situation with the assumption that we know where the relevant Iranian nuclear...