HPeter Huessy
The five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany have now met with representatives of the Iranian government in Geneva, hopefully to determine the nature of the latter country’s nuclear facilities and technology development. Is this finally the end game, at which we find the answer to a 20-year-old puzzle – are the mullahs in Tehran developing nuclear weapons? And is it sufficient to find out the answers to only this one puzzle? Or is it something very different?
Before we can answer that question, and before we analyze the agreements that flowed from the meeting, it would be useful to, in the words of former Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, “review the bidding.” First, what do we know? Second, what are reasonable inferences from what we know? Third, when combined with the historical record, how should we see what we know? And fourth, with this in mind, what then are our realistic choices going forward especially in light of the “deal” reached in Geneva?
What Do We Know?
First, what do we know? The Iranians are accelerating their production and development of ballistic missiles. The USAF specifically in a report in April says this includes long range intercontinental ballistic missiles. An analyst at MIT concurs. Uzi Rubin, the former director of ballistic missile defenses at the Israeli Ministry of Defense says the Iranian current rocket capability approaches 3,000 kilometers and can reasonably reach over 4,000 kilometers in the near future, which would put all of Europe under the shadow of Tehran’s missiles. The longer-range rockets are now of the solid-fuel and multi-stage variety, which means they can be launched quickly and without the fueling process that has previously allowed us to discover potential launches through satellite observation.
We also know something about international assistance to Iran for their rocket programs. Bill Gertz, writing in the Washington Times, reveals that documents, the content of which were provided to him by an analyst at MIT, which in turn apparently were spirited out from some Iranian state-run industries, show widespread cooperation between Russia, China, North Korea and Iran in BOTH the development of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. Other recent reports detail the purchase of nuclear trigger technology by Iran. British intelligence says that Iran is building nuclear warheads and re-started such work in the past few years.
Now what about the state of our defenses? In 2006, the Bush administration and Congress agreed to emphasize the protection of Europe from Iranian short and medium range rockets as well as develop additional deployments to protect against what were seen as emerging longer-range rocket threats. Now, as of 2009, the current capability of U.S. ballistic missile defenses for the defense of Europe can intercept rockets with roughly a 2,000 kilometer range. Much beyond that and we have to develop a better system. We hope to have available by 2015 the capability to have a Navy-based Standard Missile with a speed of 4.5 kilometers per second, (k/sec) compared to its current capability just above 3 k/sec. The faster speed would enable ship-based interceptors based on Aegis cruisers in the Baltic, Mediterranean and the Black Sea to protect portions of Europe from Iranian missile threats.
Such a sea-based capability was being pursued by the previous administration and in fact has been a long supported development by very strong missile defense supporters, including working groups led by the Heritage Foundation, the Center for Security Policy, the Marshall Institute, High Frontier, the Claremont Institute and the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, and at least as far back as 1995. Other ground-based capabilities such as the PAC-3 and THAAD missile defense systems can protect smaller areas against shorter range rockets, and are currently being planned for deployment not only with U.S. military forces overseas but also hosted by Turkey, Germany, Poland and Denmark, to name but a few. As for long-range rockets from Iran, the U.S. is in part protected by our deployment of interceptors in California and Alaska, but more capability is urgently required.
Logical Inferences
Any reasonable person would conclude the Iranian are building an arsenal of ballistic missiles, some of which are designed to carry nuclear weapons, to further their murderous aims against Israel, NATO, the United States and our allies in the region. Why else build rockets that now reach at least to Warsaw and probably beyond? We also know that there is a consortium of criminal cartels – from the oligarchs in Russia, to the ruling families in China, to the criminal regimes in Syria, North Korea and elsewhere, helping Iran with these military capabilities.
Michael Ledeen recently wrote of this organized opposition to the U.S. and its allies. This consists of a collective of regimes seeking monopoly control over resources, especially energy, free rein to build their empires, and the use of terror proxies combined with criminal cartels in pursuit of their aims. As part of this effort, they are using the tools of globalization to cross state lines, diminish the sovereignty of some governments, and escape both law and ethics. It is not altogether unreasonable to look at Iranian behavior in this light. So if Russia, China, North Korea and Syria are the very partners in Iranian “criminal” behavior, it would seem one very big stretch to see these same countries as seriously willing to “give us a hand” in reining in the terrorist ways of one of their “partner” states such as Iran.
Historical Lessons
How do these inferences stand up in light of the historical record? We know that the U.S. and its allies have been talking and negotiating with Iran for 30 years, the record of which was recently eloquently explained by Michael Ledeen in the Wall Street Journal. We also know that Iran has used these negotiations to hide their current nuclear technology facilities, design bureaus, and enrichment plants. We know the Mullahs have repeatedly lied and excel at the art of duplicity and concealment.
We also know Iran’s constitution calls on the country to export its brand of murderous Islam, and this consists in part of supplying weapons, sanctuary and financing to terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah who are in turn making war against Lebanon and Israel. And we know many of these weapons are supplied originally by Russia, as well as by China and North Korea.
We also know from U.S. military commanders and their testimony before the U.S. Congress that Iran is providing weapons, training and financing to terrorists killing Americans and their allies in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
We further know Iran has a long track record of murder – from the Marine barracks in Beirut to our Embassy in Lebanon, to the Israeli facilities in Argentina, and to the destruction of the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie. We also know the Iranian regime has repeatedly attempted to conduct terrorist attacks against Morocco, Egypt and some of the Persian Gulf states. In this light, how realistic is that Iran will trade its revolutionary goals because it might be fearful of being “isolated?”
Now why is Iran terrorism’s #1 practitioner? The notion remains firmly fixed in some quarters that much of this is due to the U.S. acting as some kind of “hyper-power,” as once described by former French President Chirac, himself hip-deep in the Iraq food-for-palaces swindle and long time protector of Saddam Hussein. Some even go back to the 1950s and the U.S. support of a “coup” that stopped a communist stooge from taking power in Iran as justification for the continued “hostility” of the Iranian regime toward the U.S.
We have been told repeatedly: If the U.S. would simply stop acting “unilaterally,” things would change. The “international community,” upon seeing the “softer approach” of a new American administration, would finally conclude the U.S. “deserved” to be helped in its efforts to eliminate the Iranian nuclear weapons program and subsequently with that of North Korea as well.
The central assumption that animated this world view comes straight out of the “blame America first” crowd first identified by the late Jean J. Kirkpatrick, our Ambassador to the UN. It comes down to seeing America as a “bad actor” in the world. It was quite simply that our allies would not help us deal with Iran because of the perceived political problem of being associated with our fighting in Iraq, enforcing the Patriot Act provisions, waterboarding terror subjects or maintaining the prison in Guantanamo Bay.
An additional complaint is that there has been “two decades” of neglect with respect to “arms control” and reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles. The Moscow Treaty of 2002 was viewed as “not real arms control” even though United States and Russian deployed weapons were actually reduced by over 60 percent, the largest percent reductions in strategic nuclear weapons ever. The treaty was submitted to the Senate and became the law of the land. The U.S. and Russia actually trusted each other to keep their declared number of deployed nuclear weapons within the boundaries of the treaty. The START I agreement verification measures, still in effect, could provide some of the “verify” in President Reagan’s famous dictum: “Trust, but verify.”
It is true the Moscow Treaty of 2002 didn’t contain the elaborate rules of the START or SALT treaties. It did not constrain the U.S., or the Russians for that matter, from deploying their respective nuclear forces consistent with their own view of their security and deterrent needs. It did, however, eliminate some 4,000 deployed strategic nuclear weapons as well as incidentally thousands of stockpiled weapons as well.
This flexibility in the treaty and the associated assumption that the treaty wasn’t really the old fashioned “arms control” led to never-ending complaints that the U.S. lacked sufficient stature or moral credibility to insist that one NPT signatory – Iran – had to get rid of its nuclear weapons program or at the very least fully comply with the terms of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty when it, the United States, was “neglecting” arms control. The U.S. failure to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty during the Clinton administration also may have played a role in this view, but this was a common and pervasive complaint.
This was all viewed in the larger context of our bad polling numbers in Europe. President Bush was simply not liked. The U.S., in some polls, was viewed as a greater threat to world peace than either North Korea or Iran. This view was no doubt fueled by the cacophony of hatred and invective hurled at our 43rd President by his domestic political enemies. But it nonetheless gave many in Europe and elsewhere, we were told, a ready “excuse” not to help with our non-proliferation goals. And so while our European allies met repeatedly with Iran, little if any progress was achieved.
Similarly, at similar meetings designed to push forward the goals of the NPT, third world countries sided with Iran and refused to put counter proliferation high on the agenda as opposed to the responsibility of the permanent five to “rid the world of nuclear weapons” and “eliminate weapons in space.” And in the absence of progress with Iran, many of our European allies, as well as China, Russia and Japan, expanded their trade and investment ties with the Tehran Mullahs, all the while preaching to the U.S. that we lacked sufficient morale stature to call down this element of the “evil empire.”
So now the assumption seems to be we have regained our “moral stature.” Former Secretary of State Albright is very pleased that our polling numbers are way up in Europe. She says “it is nice to be liked.” It apparently had little effect when the administration asked earlier this year for a greater military commitment to the Afghanistan Theater from our NATO allies where supposedly the U.S. is so much more admired. Some nations sent a few more troops but they were withdrawn immediately after the recent elections.
But now there apparently is the belief that our arguments with Iran will have such moral power that the Mullahs will be bewildered and cave in to our demands. Our allies will finally will take our side and make some hard choices. Russia and China will insist on Iranian compliance with UN resolutions and the terms of the NPT. And once we all threaten to implement “severe sanctions,” Iran will fold. Stay tuned.
In Part Two, we will examine the “deal” reached in Geneva and the way forward for the US and its allies.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense consulting company in Potomac, Maryland.
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