Unthinkable (55 page)

There is also the improbable but not impossible likelihood that a crisis with a nuclear Iran gets out of hand and produces a war that results in a significant disruption of oil exports from the Persian Gulf. In that case, all bets are off. Because of the world oil market's dependence on Persian Gulf oil (which will remain for decades to come, regardless of how much oil the United States itself produces), such a disruption could cause catastrophic damage to the global and U.S. economies, including a major recession. By way of comparison, the 1973 Arab oil embargo resulted from a reduction of just 2.75 percent of global oil production. The 1979 Iranian Revolution pulled 5.68 percent of global production off the market.
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Yet these relatively mild oil price shocks were responsible for the worst recessions in U.S. history between the Great Depression and the 2008 recession.
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Saudi Arabia accounts for about 10 percent of annual oil production alone, while all of the oil that flows through the Strait of Hormuz constitutes almost 20 percent of global consumption.

As difficult as it is to come up with even rough estimates of how a nuclear Iran could affect the price of oil, these various points concerning the risks related to oil should make us recognize several critical issues. First, Iran's acquisition of a nuclear arsenal is more problematic for the United States than, say, North Korea's extant nuclear arsenal, not because the Iranians are more likely to use nuclear weapons or even because they are more likely to take greater and more frequent risks than the North
Koreans, but because there is the potential for Iranian actions to affect the price of oil, which in turn affects the U.S. economy and that of every other country on earth.

Second, economic considerations reinforce the importance of the first crises with Iran after it crosses the nuclear threshold because the oil traders will take their cues from those events. An Iran with nuclear weapons will mean the introduction of a significant unknown into the calculus of the international oil market. At least initially, that market is likely to react (or overreact) to any development related to Iran that might affect oil flows. The outcome of those early events will become important in conditioning the market's behavior over time. If the oil market sees the United States intervene in crises with a nuclear Iran, sees those crises resolved without any impact on actual oil flows, and sees those crises as having diminished Iran's ability or willingness to cause problems in the future, over time the market will adjust. Future crises will cause less of a price spike and overall, the oil risk premium will decline.

The opposite is also true: if oil traders do not see the United States defusing crises and preventing Iran from creating greater problems, if there are disruptions of the oil supply, and if the crises end with Iran emboldened and other countries fearful—even destabilized—let alone if the crises lead to wars, the oil markets will become more volatile. Traders will fear that every next crisis will be worse than the last, leading to more frequent and much higher price spikes. An oscillating oil market would be terrible for the U.S. and global economies.

Prudence would counsel that the United States, the GCC states, and other major oil consumers take actions now to diminish the impact of a potential nuclear Iran on oil prices. As any number of astute analysts have pointed out, even if we do not want to contain a nuclear Iran, there is a high risk that we still will have to do so anyway.
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And there are a number of things that we could do. Several respected oil experts, including Gal Luft of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security and Robert McNally of the Rapidan Group, have argued for expanding the capacity to move oil by pipeline across the Arabian Peninsula (and so
avoid the Strait of Hormuz).
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McNally has advocated a number of other smart, sensible steps, including increasing the size of strategic petroleum reserves held by governments; increasing commercial stockpiles of oil, especially outside of the Gulf countries themselves; and creating a crisis coordinating entity that would include both China and the United States and could develop strategy to handle any such disruptions.
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Indeed, because China shares our interest in the stability of Persian Gulf oil exports, making Beijing a partner on this matter could prove invaluable should such a crisis ever occur.
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Another problem with nuclear weapons is that they have no expiration date. Countries that develop nuclear weapons tend to hang on to them. The situation is not hopeless: four countries have given up nuclear weapons after they acquired them. Given that there are only nine countries today believed to have nuclear weapons, that's not a terrible ratio. However, all four of the countries that did give up a nuclear arsenal (South Africa, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan) did so only after a revolutionary change in the nature of their governments.

If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it is likely to have them for some time, at least until the fall of the regime. That should give us an added incentive to try to speed the end of the regime if it does acquire nuclear weapons, but it gives us a lot to think about, and worry over, until then.

SUCCESSION.
If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it will likely possess them under Khamene'i's successor as Supreme Leader and the de facto autocrat of Iran. We have no clue who might succeed Khamene'i, and in truth the Iranians don't, either. There are many possible candidates. Some of them are partisans of one camp or another, others grand old men of the revolution or noncontroversial nonentities. Although perhaps unlikely, it is not impossible that the Iranians might even decide
not to decide and instead appoint a council to wield the powers of the Rahbar.

The recent spectacle of former president Ahmadinejad brawling with the Larijani brothers (who head the judiciary and legislature) makes for jaw-dropping political theater, and may have been every bit as ferocious (perhaps even more so because it
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personal) as the battles in the days when Khatami's reformists squared off against the regime establishment. These deep rifts within the hardline ranks could produce a stalemate and the decision to go with a noncontroversial arrangement that would not threaten any of the hardline factions.

Such a successor would still probably lean hardline, and would be influenced by the Revolutionary Guard and other powerful hardline-controlled institutions, like the Guardian Council. However, chances are they would behave like Khamene'i, especially Khamene'i early in his career, and would work to preserve the status quo, avoid making big decisions, and eschew dramatic moves for smaller, safer, incremental changes. If Khamene'i died before Iran acquired a nuclear weapon or even decided to go ahead and weaponize, there is a reasonable chance that such a successor would stick with the status quo and would sit on a breakout capability rather than taking the dramatic step to deploy an arsenal. If Iran already possessed an arsenal, or Khamene'i had taken the fateful step of ordering weaponization before his death, such successors would still probably behave in a prudent, cautious manner and would try to avoid moments of high drama.

Although it may seem less likely, it is not impossible that a partisan from one camp or another will win out and take power after Khamene'i. At this moment in history, it seems highly likely that if one of Iran's competing factions were to win outright and pick one of its favorite sons for the Supreme Leader's position, it is likely to be Iran's hardliners—or more specifically, one of the hardline factions. If that is the case, we could get a very aggressive Iranian leader who would order full speed ahead for weaponization, if Khamene'i has not crossed that Rubicon, and who might order greatly stepped-up support for subversion, terrorism, and unconventional
warfare if he has. Such a leader might be more likely to take risks, like Khrushchev if not like Saddam, and these risks could produce more and worse crises.
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In that less likely but far from impossible scenario, there would still be steps the United States could take to influence Iranian behavior, but not a whole lot. In particular, the United States and its allies would have to find ways to try to educate this new kind of Iranian leader regarding the dangers of aggressive behavior in the nuclear world. We would need to find ways to communicate with him, perhaps in moments less fraught than the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Kargil War. We would also have to find ways to make clear to him our determination to defend our allies in the region and vouchsafe our red lines, perhaps by deploying some additional conventional forces to the Gulf or signing new defense pacts. It is not impossible: Khrushchev himself learned from his mistakes, although the Politburo still decided to remove him because of his foolish risk-taking. In Iran, we may not be so lucky, and if that is the case, we may have few other options than to prepare for the inevitable crises as best we can, do everything we can to ensure that those crises turn out as we hope, and push for regime change as best we are able. This too is one of the risks of containment.

WHEN THE DOG CATCHES THE CAR.
What happens when the Islamic Republic does fall? Fall it will, someday, and hopefully soon. We may desire it to happen, but we may not be ready for it when it does.

The structural flaws of the Islamic Republic are deep and pronounced, and while the regime could continue to creak along for several more decades like Cuba and North Korea, it could also collapse within the next few years. As a result of 2009, both the internal purges within the ranks of the regime and the open splits that have now emerged between the regime and large chunks of the Iranian populace, the Islamic Republic has been delegitimized and is starting to hollow out.

If the Islamic Republic possesses a nuclear arsenal at the time of its demise, things could get ugly. Ideally, the end of the regime would come
at the hands of a new, popular government and would take place with minimal violence, like the “color” revolutions of Eastern Europe. It's worth pointing out that there are lots of cases of nasty autocracies being replaced by more liberal (even democratic) successors without much violence—from Milosevic to Ceauşescu to Pinochet, from post-Franco Spain to post-Machel Mozambique to post–Chun Doo-Hwan South Korea. We can now add Ben Ali and Mubarak to the long list of autocrats who stepped down after limited bloodshed. That a smooth, peaceful transition to a new government is quite possible, perhaps even probable, should be a cause for optimism. As noted above, a number of new governments have given up nuclear arsenals acquired by their autocratic predecessors. Moreover, there is every reason to expect that a new Iranian government would want a better relationship with the United States, the West, and the international community—and would be willing to compromise on its nuclear program to get it.

Nevertheless, there is no guarantee that Iran would undergo such a smooth transition. It could go terribly wrong. The regime could collapse without an obvious successor. Various ethnic groups and parts of the country might declare independence or make bids for power. Different political leaders might try to mobilize support for themselves, which could turn into street battles. Indeed, there is some potential for the country to dissolve into anarchy and chaos altogether, like contemporary Somalia, or Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Iran does have a strong political culture, important institutions of civil society, and a nationalist tradition stretching back millennia, all of which will provide some security against outright collapse, but the worst case is still possible.

In that event, what will become of Iran's nuclear weapons?
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Will they be used by the dying embers of the regime in a last-ditch effort to stave off defeat? If so, would they be launched at internal foes or external ones—like Israel—in a desperate bid to rally the populace around a common, external enemy? Will they find their way into the hands of terrorists, perhaps even transferred by the shreds of the Revolutionary Guard in the hope that they can at least gain some revenge against the Israelis,
the Americans, the Saudis, or whoever else they might blame for the fall of their regime? Will they be captured by various internal factions and warring militias to be used in an internal struggle for control of Iran?

It all may sound far-fetched, and it probably is very low probability. But when the regime falls, these scenarios will become significant concerns. And there won't be a whole lot that the United States can do about it. We have the exact same fears about the demise of Pakistan and North Korea. Pakistan is already something of a failing state, gripped by terrorism and factionalism. Many worry that it could fall soon, and with al-Qa'ida, Lashkar-e Taiba, the Taliban, and a potpourri of other vicious terrorist groups already infesting the country, there is real reason to fear that its fall will spread nuclear weapons to the worst groups imaginable.
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The U.S. military reportedly has plans to descend on Pakistan as it collapses and whisk away its nukes, but no one is confident that such an operation would work, and certainly not that it would get every one of Pakistan's purported one hundred nuclear weapons.
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North Korea is surreal, a starving “hermit kingdom” with numberless artillery tubes and a nuclear arsenal. It could implode tomorrow or last forever and no one would ever be able to say why, and this uncertainty also must make us wonder what would happen to their nuclear weapons when the end comes. Would we even know when it is falling, to be able to try to go in and secure its nukes? Could we be sure that the regime would not launch them as its final act, for reasons that none of us could fathom? Thus, Iran might be in good company, but it is a bad lot. And that too is a risk of containment.