Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned recently against a military attack against Iran’s nuclear program. Gates brings three arguments to the table against a strike:
1. it would only delay Iran’s program;
2. Iran’s resolve to rebuild its program and acquire weapons would be strengthened by the attack;
3. Iran’s hatred for those who attacked its program would only increase.
Earlier this week, former IAEA director Hans Blix added the weight of his opinion to this view:
“The consequences of an attack on Iran would very likely be a nuclear-armed Iran,” Blix said. “There would be a delay, but nuclear weapons that are hypothetical today would be certain in a few years time. Secondly, an attack would probably have horrible consequences on the supply of oil coming through the Persian Gulf; it would impact the world economy.”
One could add to the above that Iran’s nuclear program would be forced even deeper underground, a claim occasionally voiced by Blix’s successor, Mohammad ElBaradei.
Now, far be it from us to wish to contradict such well informed officials and international civil servants. Still, it’s hard to see why Iran getting nuclear weapons in, say, three or five years’ time is worse than Iran getting them in six months’ time. It’s also hard to see how Iran’s current resolve to acquire nuclear weapons is somehow weak enough to be broken by polite diplomacy; so far, at least, this approach has not worked. And it is hard to imagine that Iran’s hatred for Israel or the U.S. could get worse — or how hatred at the present levels is so inconsequential that one can dismiss it, with or without nuclear weapons. Blix’s distinction between weapons being “hypothetical today” and “certain in a few years time” is also unconvincing. For not stopping them today means that weapons will be more certain sooner than if an attack were to occur. Stopping them through military action might also fail to work in the end — but if the international community chooses inaction based on this false choice, it will get a nuclear Iran for sure. When, it is hard to tell without the relevant intelligence — but inaction basically means that our policy rests on the hope the Iranians will either never overcome the technological hurdles or will give up on their quest out of their own volition.
The only serious point raised by Blix and others is that an attack could have an impact on the supply of oil — then again, there were three major wars in the Persian Gulf between 1980 and 2003. They disrupted the supply, alright. But we survived, and the price of oil, after initial shocks, returned to manageable levels. Conversely, massive price hikes, such as the ones between 2006 and 2008, had much less to do with war, and more with factors mostly exogenous to the Persian Gulf. But if Iran became a nuclear weapons state, one can be sure that its long reach and penchant for destabilizing neighbors and dominating the region will guarantee that oil prices remain very high for a very long time to come.
So overall, the price of not attacking is very bad. And the price of attacking might be, at worst, just as bad.
Whether a military strike can retard Iran’s program and to what extent, we should leave to others to determine. What impact that could have on the regime’s survival, nobody seems to know — or give thought to.
But those who oppose a strike better come up with more convincing arguments. So far, all this sounds like a pretext for doing nothing, which is basically what the international community has done since Iran’s program was exposed seven years ago.