When we think of Iran having a nuclear ability most of assume the pose in Munch's The Scream. But what to do about it? Can the US afford to let Israel bomb Iran, should Obama order the American military to do the job, or is there another alternative? Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, argues in an editorial he wrote for the Financial Times that we can live with a nuclear Iran by using deterrence.
One alternative to a military strike would be to live with an Iranian programme. Deterrence would define such a policy. Iran would need to know that any use of nuclear weapons would meet a devastating response. It should know, too, that handing over nuclear materials to any terrorist group, such as Hamas or Hizbollah, would be discovered (given the growing expertise in nuclear forensics) and deemed no different than an Iranian use of the material. Intelligence that Iran had put its nuclear forces on alert would be met with a pre-emptive attack on those forces.Haass makes a good argument that if Iran is attacked it immediately strengthens the hold of The Revolutionary Guard on the country. A US or Israeli attack could backfire, as Haass argues, and keep the "thugocracy" in place for years to come.
One point that Haass doesn't take up is how difficult bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities would be. Intelligence reports estimate that some of Iran's nuclear sites would require a massive aerial assault, and it would likely include the bunker busting bomb called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) the Pentagon began developing in 2007. It is a 30,000-pound bomb designed to hit targets buried 200 feet below ground and the Pentagon is building four of them. It seems unlikely that Obama will order a strike on Iran, but the Pentagon still has to be prepared for any and all eventualities.
Whatever happens in the next three months, Israel is rumored to be readying to bomb Iran in December, Iran is not going away any time soon.
