Cordesman/Wilner, Iran & The Gulf Military Balance
AHC 6/3/12
100
Each such step will give Iran more potential leverage, but will do more to provoke a response in kind from the US and Iran’s neighbors, and accelerate the ongoing nuclear arms race with Israel. Each step will produce new US, Arab, European and Turkish diplomatic reactions and probably sanctions – as well as new reactions from other states. Each step will increase tension throughout the region, the risks of unplanned escalation, and the risk of US or Israeli preventive attacks. The Transition Stage: Launch on Warning? Launch Under Attack? It should be stressed that Iran can shape the pace with which it acts, and rush forwards, back off for a period of years, limit its activity to dispersed efforts that more it forward without being a nuclear weapons program per se, or carry out a slow and systematic program while using its past tactics of denial and negotiation. No one can calculate the level of Iranian risk-taking if Iran does take each of the major steps left in acquiring and deploying nuclear-armed forces and go on to create a nuclear-armed force – although the past actions of Iran’s leaders have been far more cautious than their most extreme rhetoric. Iran’s leaders have to realize that it is one thing to threaten and intimidate and seek political leverage, and quite another to move towards an exchange that could involve the vastly superior nuclear forces of the US, push neighbors into creating their own nuclear retaliatory forces, or lead to nuclear strikes on Iran by Israel. If Iran does create nuclear forces, they will only benefit Iran if they are never actually used. It is possible, however, that Iran’s actions might push it to be most risk prone during the time between the point where it actually has at least few nuclear weapons and the time it creates a force that cannot be preempted and is large enough to deter conventional or nuclear attack because it could survive and retaliate. Given the fact that Iran’s strike aircraft and bombers have aged considerably – and are nearly obsolescent in comparison with their US, Israeli, and Gulf equivalents – Iran would probably select another means for delivering a nuclear weapon, including nuclear-tipped ballistic or cruise missiles. Such assets would, however, be detectable and partly targetable by US radar and satellite systems, and could provoke a retaliatory strike. Long before Iran had anything approaching a survivable second strike capability, it could seek to deter by creating a force designed to be used through launch on warning (LOW) or launch under attack (LUA) after Iran received the first strike. This is a high-risk posture compared to waiting out the risk or reality of an enemy first strike, characterizing the result, and acting cautiously and in proportion to a known event. It also, however, is a posture one that almost all emerging nuclear powers have had to consider or take at some point in deploying a nuclear force since the first US use of nuclear weapons in World War II. It is also possible that Iran would consider delivering a nuclear weapon covertly if it felt it faced an almost inevitable attack from the outside, using any one of its regional proxies or its Al Qods Force. Using a covert means of nuclear delivery, Iran would possess a degree of deniability, and minimize the chances of US nuclear retaliation. In one worst-case scenario, might smuggle in a nuclear device or detonate it in the water off of a city like Haifa or Tel Aviv, or a key city or petroleum export facility in the Southern Gulf. The public focus on nuclear weapons ignores the fact that Iran has previously been a declared 100