Deterring Iran

The BBC reports Hillary Clinton's answer to a question about a hypothetical nuclear attack by Iran on Israel:

As the candidates appeared on the US talk show circuit on Tuesday morning, a row erupted when Mrs Clinton was asked how she would respond if Iran launched a nuclear attack on Israel.

She replied that: "If I'm the president, we will attack Iran... we would be able to totally obliterate them.

"That's a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that, because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic," she told TV channel ABC.

In response, Mr Obama said: "Using words like 'obliterate' - it doesn't actually produce good results, and so I'm not interested in sabre-rattling." He said only that Iran should know he would respond "forcefully" to an attack on any US ally.

It does of course sound a terrible thing to say. But Senator Clinton is right and Obama wrong. For nuclear deterrence to hold, it is essential that Iran - a regime that is autocratic but aware of costs - understand the consequences of nuclear brinkmanship. To say Iran would meet a "forceful" response in the event of a nuclear strike is a feeble comment that would not effectively deter. The only response to a nuclear strike that could prevent military victory by an aggressor is a countervailing nuclear strike. Leaving open the possibility, even implicitly, of a purely conventional or even a diplomatic response is to soften deterrence.

We have been here before. The closest the world has yet come to a nuclear exchange was the Cuba missile crisis in 1962. Several factors combined to resolve that standoff. We now know that the Kennedy administration reached a covert understanding whereby the US would withdraw Jupiter and Thor missiles from Turkey. But it was also crucial, early in the crisis, that Kennedy made clear the consequences of a nuclear strike from Cuban soil on any US ally. "It shall be," declared JFK, "the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union."

Khrushchev was an impetuous leader but not a suicidal one. He understood in his gut the potential cost of persisting with missile deployment. (He was also scared witless by the urging of Castro to launch a nuclear first strike on the American mainland in the event of an invasion of Cuba.) Whatever else you might say about the candidature of Senator Clinton, it is to her credit that she understands that precedent. Iran must know exactly what would happen in the event of a nuclear strike on Israel or any other American ally. This would apply both to an attack by Iran directly and to an attack by a proxy terrorist group armed with a rudimentary "dirty bomb".

Comments

[Anthony]

'This would apply both to an attack by Iran directly and to an attack by a proxy terrorist group armed with a rudimentary "dirty bomb".'

I agreed with you up to this part of the piece, at which point my coffee spayed across the computer monitor. You seriously think that launching a full scale nuclear strike in response to a terrorist radiological attack (of course, there are dirty bombs and dirty bombs) is going to be a workable policy? I can't see it (and on that basis don't really see the deterrent utility of the threat). Or am I getting the wrong end of the stick?

[peter]

Such nuclear deterrence works if your opponent is rational and self-interested. I do not know whether or not that is the case for the current leadership of Iran. One country where a good argument can be made that the leadership is not rational is thye DPRK (North Korea). A leadership willing to put a bomb on a plane carrying half its neighbour's Cabinet Ministers strikes me as a leadership unable to act in its self-interest, or perhaps even to calculate that interest.

[arnoldo]

It would be surely be very difficult to demonstrate the provenance of a dirty bomb, but even if it were possible your suggested retaliation would be massively disproportionate.

[Alcuin]

I think it is very silly to answer such a question is such a direct way. Kennedy was fortunately cautious - had he followed the military advice he had been given and attacked Cuba, WW3 could have started. Unknown to his military, Cuba's missiles were operational.

Any attack by Iran would have special conditions that may affect any response. Iran's economy is fragile. Take out their oil refineries and the public reaction could bring down the Mullahs. Blockade its oil ports and its financial system would freeze - it has no other exports. Go nuclear, and you could weld the Middle East Muslim world together. The result of that is incalculable.

[Chris]

Are you sure you don't mean suitcase nuke instead of dirty bomb? But I agree, there's no virtue in a proportionate response.

[Tom Owen]

I agree with Peter's point. It seems to me that the two main participants during the cold war nuclear stand-off were rational actors. This was true of the USSR in terms of nuclear strategy, however despicable we found them in other terms.

It might be pretty hard to characterise those who think that 'martyrdom' is a pathway to the ministrations of fifty virgins, or somesuch, as 'rational actors'.

[Gavin]

Tom, I'm tempted to agree with Peter's views as well, except that I think it's worth remembering that Iran does have a constituency of more rational actors alongside the headbangers of the Revolutionary Guards et al. It may well be worth confronting them with the possible ultimate consequences of the hardliners fully indulging themselves.

[Putzi]

The point about Iran is purely hypothetical, because they still do not have nuclear weapons (do they??)

Anyway, I think there is a certain moral problem in "obliterating" the entire people of Iran - women, children, old, and etc. How many of them actually are to blame for the actions of the rulers?

Maybe you think that is naive?

Okay, let's try a new purely hypothetical question: what does America do if Israel makes the first nuclear strike on Iran?

Do we then want to see the entire Jewish people and their culture obliterated too?
(If we are consistent, the answer would be "yes".)

[PhilR]

The chances of Israel nuking Iran first are not just minimal but non existent, The chances of Iran nuking Israel considerably higher, Hypotheticals can be a useful tool in debate but not fantasys.

Its not about the fetishistic pursuit of 'consistency', Its about Western national interest not intellectual parlour games .

As for the moral problem i do not see it, nations must pay the price of their leaders decisions, the Japanese, Germans and the world are all better off because we did not shrink from the use of violence on a massive scale, disproportionate response is the only humane response because when its over its over.

[Putzi]

"The chances of Israel nuking Iran first are not just minimal but non existent, The chances of Iran nuking Israel considerably higher"

No. Both chances are equally unlikely.

It's not complicated. Iran never would attack Israel with nuclear weapons because of the fear of destruction from America (and Israel.)

If you don't have moral problems with "violence on a massive scale" against civilians, okay, that's your opinion. (Maybe you see this differently if you are chanced to be born in Iran, hmm?)

But one thing is sure: you don't ever complain if the other guys also use "massive violence" in retaliation for a (hypothetical) first strike, do you?

[PJD]

What would Hillary do if Israel launched a nuclear attack on Iran? Would she "totally obliterate them"?