Unthinkable (51 page)

Similarly, it seems likely that Israel would
not
draw a red line prohibiting
attack by Iranian proxies against Israel—or against direct Iranian attack on Israeli proxies. Throughout the Cold War, U.S. and Soviet proxies fought one another, as well as the actual forces of the other superpower, without engendering a forceful response. Iranian proxies (Hizballah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad) have attacked Israel and Israelis without provoking Israeli military retaliation against Iran for decades. And for its part, Israel may be providing support to Iranian opposition forces in Khuzestan, Kurdistan, and Baluchistan, but this alleged assistance has not triggered an Iranian attack on Israel. It seems unlikely that Israel would try to lay down a red line on this matter for fear that it would prove unenforceable and would compromise Israel's deterrent credibility.

Beyond these rather clear decisions, there are several big “unknowns,” actions that Israel might choose to try to forbid Iran from taking by threatening a military response. However, in every case there is considerable ambiguity and uncertainty that would make it difficult for Israel to know for certain what had happened, let alone prove it to the rest of the world. And this complexity might convince Jerusalem not to make them red lines for Tehran.

A low-probability but high-impact concern for Israel would be the possibility that Iran might transfer nuclear technology, radioactive material, or even nuclear weapons themselves to one or more of its terrorist allies. As unlikely as it may be, Israel would probably want to ensure that Iran understands that this is a red line for Jerusalem rather than leaving any possible doubt in Tehran's mind. The specifics of such a red line are unclear. Many Israeli policymakers might prefer to warn Tehran that just the transfer of nuclear-related materials to a terrorist group would trigger a direct Israeli attack on Iran, in hope of convincing Tehran not to even think about doing so. Since Israel might not know about any transfers, and because any information they got could be deeply suspect, Israeli decision-makers could be loath to act on it, especially if “acting” on it meant launching a nuclear strike on Iran.

The alternative would be to lay down a different red line, namely that any use of nuclear material or weapons against the state of Israel by any
nonstate actor will be met with a massive Israeli response
against Iran
. For some Israelis, this red line will be inadequate because it only punishes Iran after the fact. However, it would eliminate most of the intelligence problems associated with threatening a nuclear response to a mere transfer. Again, Iran has never provided any of its terrorist allies or proxies with chemical or biological agents, almost certainly because Tehran feared that any country attacked by those agents would retaliate massively
against Iran
regardless of what it could or could not prove in a court of law.

As for the GCC states, they would doubtless seek to lay down red lines against any Iranian attack on them—nuclear, conventional, or by subversion. It is the last that will prove the most problematic for the reasons described above. The GCC states will see Iranians behind every palm tree and have often blamed Iran unfairly for internal problems. Moreover, unless or until the GCC states develop nuclear or conventional military capabilities of their own, they will be reliant on the United States to enforce any warnings to Iran, and therefore the red lines themselves will have to be negotiated with Washington.

For at least a decade, the United States has been insistent that Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons would be “unacceptable” and that we would “prevent” Iran from acquiring this capability. This overblown rhetoric has served a purpose, but if Iran ever does deploy a nuclear arsenal it will come back to haunt us. Other countries will question American resolve and that doubt could creep into other corners of their thinking about the United States. If the United States was unwilling to back up this claim, could it be relied on to back up other claims? “Imagine what Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard Corps will think of the Americans, and especially the Israelis, if, after announcing repeatedly that an Iranian nuclear weapon is ‘unacceptable,' they permit it?” asks Reuel Gerecht.
²⁸
Gerecht leans hard right on this issue, but he is an intelligent and experienced
observer of Iran. He is also not alone. Other experts and policymakers on the right worry about the same issue.
²⁹

The jury is out regarding the importance of reputation in international politics. Some scholars believe that past behavior does affect the calculus of other states.
³⁰
Others argue that this consideration is minor because leaders tend to focus far more on the interests of a state and its capability to defend those interests in the matter at hand.
³¹

Historical examples can be cited in both directions. America's withdrawals from Lebanon and Vietnam played an important role in Saddam Husayn's thinking about how to handle the United States before and during the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War. Based on this, he famously told U.S. ambassador April Glaspie, “Yours is a society which cannot accept 10,000 dead in one battle,” a week before launching his invasion of Kuwait.
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Turning to more typical decision-makers, the Kennedy administration worried that to do nothing in response to the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles to Cuba would cause Moscow to see Washington as irresolute and so the Russians might come to doubt the U.S. commitment to Berlin. For his part, Khrushchev apparently did see Kennedy as naïve and weak at their summit in Vienna in June 1961, prompting the shift to nuclear brinksmanship that produced both the 1961 Berlin and 1962 Cuban Missile crises.
³³
In contrast, the Soviets reportedly believed that the American withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973 would make Washington more bellicose and willing to back up our deterrent commitments, not less, which successive American administrations had feared. Moreover, in those instances when a country has contemplated attacking another, even when reputational considerations have played into those deliberations, they have often been outweighed by the balance of power and other more tangible matters.
³⁴

How would a tarnished American reputation actually affect the dynamics of the Middle East in the event Iran acquired a nuclear arsenal? If the Iranians believed that the United States had been proven to be a paper tiger by its failure to prevent them from acquiring a nuclear weapon, they might be further emboldened to press ahead with acts of
subversion and unconventional warfare. Similarly, like Khrushchev, they might opt to employ a more aggressive form of brinksmanship that would lead to more nuclear crises. While this would be dangerous, it is hard to know just how dangerous it would be. At least some nuclear crises will be inevitable if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, and what is unknowable is how many more nuclear crises we would face as a result of an Iranian perception of weak American resolve.

There is nothing innately different about a nuclear crisis motivated in part by an Iranian perception of our reputation. As the Kennedy administration learned during the Cuban Missile Crisis, prior reputational considerations will not necessarily keep us from prevailing in a nuclear crisis. Moreover, once that crisis is resolved, its outcome creates a new reputation, superseding any prior considerations. For instance, Saddam was not the only Middle Easterner who took America's retreats from Vietnam and Lebanon as proof of American diffidence, even cowardice. However, after Desert Storm, there was no one in the Middle East who believed that. Thus, even if the Iranians did pick a fight with the United States in part because they believed that our unwillingness to prevent them from crossing the nuclear threshold revealed us to be weak and cowardly, staring them down in that crisis would become the dominant reputational consideration coming out of it.

Beyond the ambiguous and potentially temporary role it might play in both encouraging Iranian unconventional aggressiveness and triggering nuclear crises, the greatest potential impact of any American reputation for weakness stemming from a failure to prevent Iran's acquisition of a nuclear arsenal would be on the alignment and behavior of America's allies in the region. If America's regional allies saw this failure as a sign that America was weak and unwilling to stand up to Iran on their behalf, one course of action open to them would be to cozy up to Tehran, accommodate its wishes, even appease it. Alternatively, they could decide to find other ways to resist Iran on their own, without American support. The former behavior is what scholars call “bandwagoning” or “co-optation,” and the latter is called “balancing.”
³⁵
Both are potentially
dangerous, albeit in different ways, and both constitute further challenges of containment.

BANDWAGONING, BALANCING, AND BLACKMAIL.
Bandwagoning behavior by weak states is meant to avoid conquest or other forms of punishment by more powerful states. It is ultimately a response to implicit or explicit blackmail by the more powerful state. However, pure “nuclear blackmail” is a nonstarter. The historical evidence of it is both meager and ambiguous at best. More to the point, no country has ever told another, “Give up such-and-such piece of your territory or else we will nuke you,” and gotten away with it. In theory, Tehran could call up Riyadh and tell the Saudis that if they did not transfer control of the Kingdom's heavily Shi'a, oil-rich Eastern Province to Iran then Riyadh would be vaporized. In the real world, the United States would step in and back the Iranians off. Only an utterly craven United States would act otherwise.

A more realistic concern would be the problem of Finlandization, the impalpable accommodation of regional actors to Tehran's wishes. Barry Rubin, the director of Israel's Begin-Sadat Center, fears that many of the Gulf states would “subtly” bandwagon with Iran, accepting American security guarantees but acting in ways to ensure that they do not cross Iran on any major issues.
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Obviously, this would not apply to Israel—because it can stand on its own military power—and probably not to Turkey, either, which can always rely on its NATO membership. However, the GCC states would not necessarily have either to fall back on.

Nevertheless, we should not assume that even a widespread presumption that the United States will not back them in a showdown with Iran would produce bandwagoning. It is at least equally likely that the GCC states would look for ways to balance against a nuclear Iran even without reliable American support. Historically, balancing has been the consistent preference of countries around the world, over bandwagoning. Over the past two centuries, the GCC states have consistently opted for balancing rather than bandwagoning behavior, allying with Britain against Iraq and Saudi Arabia, allying with the United States (and Iraq) against revolutionary
Iran, allying with the United States against Saddam's Iraq, and finally allying with the United States against a resurgent Iran. As the noted Arabist Marc Lynch pointed out at the height of the Arab Spring in 2011:

There is little sign of any regional bandwagoning with Iran today among either regimes or newly empowered publics. Indeed, Iran's push for a nuclear weapon and regional influence has alarmed the regimes of the Gulf. Arab regimes have chosen to balance against Iran rather than join it in a challenge to U.S. policy, and are deeply fearful of Iranian power. They have moved closer to the United States and to Israel out of fear of Iranian power, and have been increasingly active in their efforts against Iran. They have also intensified their military relations with the United States, including massive arms purchases and military cooperation. These leaders fear that American engagement with Iran will come at their expense, and are as worried about abandonment as they are to exposure to Iranian retaliation.
³⁷

The Saudi and UAE threats to acquire nuclear weapons of their own are the ultimate form of balancing behavior. Neither country is suggesting that it is ready to acquiesce to what they fear would be a domineering nuclear Iran. Quite the contrary: They are insistent that they plan to resist it however they can, including by matching Iran's nuclear capability with their own if need be. That is what balancing is, and it is the exact opposite of bandwagoning.

It is logically impossible to fear that in response to an Iranian nuclear capability, the GCC states will both proliferate (balance) and Finlandize (bandwagon). They will do one or the other, not both. Nor is it likely that some would do one and others the opposite: when it comes to matters of such importance, the GCC acts as one, with Saudi Arabia leading the way. Nor is it clear that it would matter much even if the GCC states split on this. If Saudi Arabia decides to balance against Iran—something Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE will axiomatically adopt—does it matter if Qatar or Oman decides to take a more accommodating line with Iran?
In theory, it is possible that the GCC might try a mild form of accommodation with Iran first, as a way of buying time to build nukes of their own, but in practice this is not credible. Historically, states that decide to balance against a threat by acquiring a nuclear arsenal of their own make clear their determination to balance right from the start. For good reason, history has never seen a state feign accommodation with an overbearing nuclear neighbor only to turn against it when the country had acquired a nuclear weapon. That is the stuff of pulp fiction.

By the same token, it would also be a mistake to assume that the GCC states will balance against Iran and dismiss the danger of proliferation. Given historical proclivities as well as past GCC behavior, it is far more likely that they will balance against a nuclear Iran rather than bandwagon with it. But this also means that they will be sorely tempted to acquire nuclear weapons of their own to ensure that they can do so without any external assistance, just as they have threatened repeatedly. In the end, they may choose not to, but the inclination to balance is going to push them hard in that direction and it will require a major effort on the part of the United States to convince them not to, if it is possible at all.