In the euphoria the Obama administration feels upon attaining
final agreement with Russia on the New START Treaty, Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton spoke of how American and Russian strategic
arms reductions have set an example for others to follow. Yet
shortly after that announcement, Iran aired one of its own: The
regime plans to build additional nuclear plants. Our latest
national intelligence adjustment anticipates that with
“sufficient foreign assistance” Iran could field an ICBM by 2015.
Iran’s rocketry program is quite sophisticated, and the regime
may not even need assistance. Finally, a UN report concludes that
Iran already has enough enriched uranium to make two
atomic bombs. Iran it seems, is responding to the example we have
set by running all nuclear engines full speed ahead.
Team Obama has jettisoned sanctions against Iran that would
prevent the regime, a crude oil producer with a shortage of
refinery capacity, from importing refined oil, as part of
American concessions to win passage of a fourth weak UN sanctions
resolution. In testimony to Congress, Secretary of State Clinton
likened the confrontation with Iran to diplomacy during the 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis:
[We] are engaged in very intensive
diplomacy. My reading of what happened with President Kennedy
is that it’s exactly what he did. It was high-stakes diplomacy.
It was pushing hard to get the world community to understand,
going to the UN, making a
presentation, getting international opinion against the
placement of Russian weapons in Cuba, making a deal eventually
with the Russians that led to the removal of the weapons. That
is the kind of high-stakes diplomacy that I’m engaged in, that
other members of this administration are, because we take very
seriously the potential threat from Iran.
As to high stakes, Secretary Clinton has a point indeed.
But her analogy applies beyond diplomacy. Other factors played a
huge role in 1962, and bid fair to play an even bigger role in
possible future confrontations in a nuclear Mideast.
Specifically, consider four: (1) vulnerability to nuclear
first-strike; (2) short warning times; (3) lack of communication
channels; (4) lack of leader impulse control.
Vulnerability to Nuclear
First-Strike. In the 1950s and early 1960s
the two superpowers faced each other with strategic forces that
were primarily above ground and small in number. As Peter Huessy,
president of the defense consulting firm GeoStrategic Analysis
notes, Iran’s nuclear forces may not be readily identifiable as
such; conversely the Gulf States, lacking nuclear missile
capability, must use readily identifiable aircraft as their
delivery systems, making them vulnerable to a nuclear
first-strike. Given far fewer military installations and few
cities with populations above 100,000 in tiny countries of the
Gulf (plus Israel), countries could face, if not national
extinction, devastation beyond recovery if caught in a surprise
salvo of Hiroshima-size bombs.
Short Warning Times. A
Russian ICBM launched from the Ural Mountains will travel the
roughly 6,000 miles to America’s Atlantic coast in about thirty
minutes. With flight distances between potential targets in the
Mideast often less than 1,000 miles, a high-speed jet can cover
the distance in little more time than an ICBM can traverse
oceans. Factor in missiles that fly several times the speed of
sound. While far slower than ICBMs hurtling through space at
twenty times the speed of sound, they are fast enough over short
ranges; in some cases times from launch to impact will be less
than ten minutes. Also, Iran’s solid-fuel models can be rapidly
launched.
Lack of Communication
Channels. Start with numbers. Between
Washington and Moscow the only functioning channel was commercial
telegraphy in 1962. Imagine a Mideast with a nuclear Iran, Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey and Egypt and Israel. With six nations
there are 64 possible two-way interactions, with all the
attendant prospects for misunderstandings during a crisis. Israel
has used hot-line telephonic communications with adversaries,
including the Palestinians, with mixed results. If with a single
channel results are mixed, how will the result be with many
diplomatic channels, and hours — perhaps minutes — to Mideast
Armageddon? Add in that these countries do not trust each other,
making communication problematic at best. Assurance that a single
unintended missile launch was in fact accidental may easily fail
to convince a nervous target.
Leader Impulse Control. Which
brings us to perhaps the most important personality of the 1962
crisis, one whose impulse control was, to put it charitably,
weak: Fidel Castro, flush with his improbable revolutionary
triumph and seething with rage at the United States, partly borne
of ideological Marxist fervor and partly due to the efforts of
the Kennedy administration to get rid of him. Fidel wanted the
Russians to incinerate the United States and was willing, even
eager, to sacrifice his six million subjects in a nuclear
holocaust.
It is today’s Islamic Castro who should worry us the most.
Religious messianism and secular militarism can be as lethal as
romantic revolutionary fervor. Compound this with several new
Mideast nuclear powers and the recipe for accidental nuclear war
is cooking in the regional pot. Fidel’s reckless abandon may well
be the future augury of nuclear wars to come. It should be noted
that although Israel has been a nuclear power (albeit undeclared)
for over forty years, its status has not ignited a Mideast arms
race. And when Israel took out Iran-backed Syria’s North
Korea-supplied nuclear plant in September 2007, the silence in
the Mideast was deafening.
A Mideast arms race can rapidly be ignited if Iran crosses
the nuclear weapons threshold. The Gulf States will not start a
25-year development program. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar can
simply call Pakistan and ask how many atomic bombs the Pakistanis
will part with for how many petrodollars. With dozens of nuclear
weapons plus in-place weapons production capability,
cash-strapped Pakistan can easily afford to sell part of its
arsenal or make A-bombs to order. The current Pakistani
government might decline, but this could change should a militant
Islamic government seize power.
The advanced jets that the Gulf States purchased from the
United States can carry nuclear bombs. Then parties would be
armed fully, without the extended learning curve that enabled
America and the former Soviet Union to learn how to safeguard
their weapons from accidental or unauthorized use, and to base
forces securely protected from surprise attack. In the face of an
apparent surprise attack indicator — which could be a flock of
geese on a radar screen — countries with a “use or lose” launch
alert posture (known in the strategic community as “launch on
warning”) could feel compelled to launch. Even a small-scale
attack can extinguish tiny states, unlike the United States and
Russia, whose huge territories and vast, dispersed populations
make only a large-area attack capable of ending national
life.
Put simply, an arms race in the Mideast will be a
collection of nuclear accidents waiting for places to happen.
Just as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was then the lesser
danger, so today Russia’s leaders, though dangerous adversaries,
pose less of an immediate nuclear first-strike threat than do
Iran’s leaders. The 21st century Castro most likely to unleash a
nuclear war likely lives in the Mideast, not Moscow. Setting an
example by reducing our nuclear arsenal further than the vast
reductions we have already made will only embolden the world’s
most dangerous leaders.
Mention should also be made of Iran’s other delivery mode:
terror proxy Hezbollah. Hezbollah has implanted several dozen
terror cells within the United States. The group was nicknamed by
Colin Powell’s State Department deputy, Richard Armitage,
“terrorism’s A-Team” — this coming after 9/11. If Iran
gives Hezbollah nukes to set off in one or more American cities,
tracing the devices definitively back to Iran could prove beyond
the current state of nuclear forensics.
Nuclear crises arise suddenly, take novel forms and impose
immense stress on leaders, with little margin for error. With
survival at stake, the temptation to strike first could well
prove irresistible. The result would be global
catastrophe.
