[Peace-discuss] An attack on Iran?

[Morton K. Brussel]

FYI. The claim is that bombing Iran to prevent them going nuclear  
will do no good--however that is defined. --mkb

> PROLIFERATION NEWS
> Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
>
> Carnegie Issue Brief __20 January 2006
> Vol. 8, No. Vol. 9, No. 1
>
> No Military Options
>
> By Joseph Cirincione
>
> Iran is moving to restart its suspended uranium enrichment program.  
> Negotiations with the European Union have collapsed and the crisis  
> is escalating. Does the United States -- or Israel -- have a  
> military option?
>
> The same neoconservative pundits who campaigned for the invasion of  
> Iraq are now beating the drums on Iran. Urging us this week to keep  
> military options open, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol said  
> Iran’s “nuclear program could well be getting close to the point of  
> no return.” Writing from the same talking points, Washington Post  
> columnist Charles Krauthammer said, “Instead of being years away  
> from the point of no return for an Iranian bomb
>
Iran is probably just months away.”

>
> Do they reflect the thinking of senior officials closely aligned  
> with these political currents? No official has indicated that they  
> do. But just one year ago, Vice President Cheney seemed to be  
> thinking along exactly these lines when he told radio host Don Imus  
> on Inauguration Day, "Iran is right at the top of the list." Cheney  
> came close to endorsing military action, noting that "the Israelis  
> might well decide to act first and let the rest of the world worry  
> about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards."
>
> There is no need for military strikes against Iran. The country is  
> five to ten years away from the ability to enrich uranium for fuel  
> or bombs. Even that estimate, shared by the Defense Intelligence  
> Agency and experts at IISS, ISIS, and University of Maryland,  
> assumes Iran goes full-speed ahead and does not encounter any of  
> the technical problems that typically plague such programs.
>
> This is not a nuclear bomb crisis, it is a nuclear regime crisis.  
> US Ambassador John Bolton has correctly pointed out that this is a  
> key test for the Security Council. If Iran is not stopped the  
> entire nonproliferation regime will be weakened, and with it the UN  
> system.
>
> But it will have to be diplomats, not F-15s that stop the mullahs.  
> An air strike against a soft target, such as the uranium conversion  
> facility at Isfahan (which this author visited in 2005) would  
> inflame Muslim anger, rally the Iranian public around an otherwise  
> unpopular government and jeopardize further the US position in  
> Iraq. Finally, the strike would not, as is often said, delay the  
> Iranian program. It would almost certainly speed it up. That is  
> what happened when the Israelis struck at the Iraq program in 1981.
>
>
> The Failure of the Osirak Raid
>
> A bit of history: Back in June of 1991, then-Defense Secretary  
> Cheney gave a photograph of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak to  
> the man who had commanded the Israeli air force during the raid on  
> the site in 1981. "With thanks and appreciation for the outstanding  
> job he did on the Iraqi Nuclear Program in 1981," Cheney wrote,  
> "which made our job much easier in Desert Storm." Cheney may have  
> forgotten that the Reagan administration condemned the raid when it  
> took place, as did most nations. And he may not be aware that the  
> Israeli raid, far from crippling Iraq's nuclear program, actually  
> accelerated it. The raid was a tactical success but a strategic  
> failure.
>
> After Israel bombed the Iraqi reactor on June 7, 1981, using U.S.- 
> supplied F-16s and F-15s, the Reagan administration said, "The  
> United States government condemns the reported Israeli air strike  
> on the Iraqi nuclear facility, the unprecedented character of which  
> cannot but seriously add to the already tense situation in the  
> area." Most other nations joined in denouncing the action.
>
> Israel defended the raid by saying that the Osirak reactor "was  
> intended, despite statements to the contrary, for the production of  
> atomic bombs. The goal of these bombs was Israel." The Israelis  
> were right, at least about Saddam Hussein's plan to use the reactor  
> to make bomb fuel. He intended to use the research reactor Iraq had  
> purchased from France in 1979 to irradiate uranium, producing  
> plutonium that could be extracted for the core of a bomb. The 40- 
> megawatt reactor was near completion at the time of the raid, but  
> it had not yet been fueled with uranium rods.
>
> The raid was hotly debated in the government of Israeli Prime  
> Minister Menachem Begin. Many, such as Yehoshua Saguy, the head of  
> the intelligence division of the Israeli Defense Forces, argued  
> that Israel should continue to try to find a nonmilitary solution  
> to the threat, as it would take Iraq five to 10 years to produce  
> the material needed for a bomb. In the end, Begin went with the  
> worst-case estimate of a bomb within one to two years and ordered  
> the attack.
>
> The raid, however, speeded up the Iraqi program. According to  
> former Iraqi nuclear official Khadir Hamza, "Israel made a  
> mistake." Hussein had planned to slowly divert plutonium from the  
> reactor, which was under International Atomic Energy Agency  
> safeguards. His diversion plan might have escaped detection, but  
> with what we now know, it also probably would have taken much  
> longer than even the 10 years Saguy and others estimated at the  
> time. The program was proceeding slowly and had run into numerous  
> technical problems, while Iraq's intense war with Iran was  
> diverting resources from the project. The raid, however, energized  
> Saddam Hussein. He launched a new effort to secretly construct gas  
> centrifuges and other devices (particularly electromagnetic isotope  
> separation units) to produce weapons-grade uranium. The program  
> went underground and mushroomed. "At the beginning we had  
> approximately 500 people working, which increased to 7,000 working  
> after the Israeli bombing," Hamza explained to a Washington  
> audience in November 2000, "The secret program became a much larger  
> and ambitious program."
>
>
> Lesson of the Raid
>
> Israel had pulled off a remarkable military raid, striking targets  
> with great precision over long distances. But the bombing set back  
> Israel more than Iraq. It further harmed Israel's international  
> reputation, later worsened by the ill-fated 1982 invasion of  
> Lebanon, while making Iraq appear a victim of Israeli aggression.  
> Officials heralded the "Begin doctrine" of preemptive strikes, but  
> the attack made Israel complacent. In the words of Israeli-born  
> scholar Avner Cohen, author of Israel and the Bomb,"The operational  
> success proved to be profoundly and strategically deceptive," as  
> Israel remained unaware of Iraq's new efforts throughout most of  
> the 1980s. Internally, Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions went from  
> a side project to an obsession. Ten years later, in 1991, he was  
> closer to producing a nuclear bomb with uranium than he might ever  
> have been pursuing a plutonium path through Osirak.
>
> The raid had not, despite Cheney's praise, made "our job much  
> easier" but had complicated an already difficult problem. Hussein  
> dispersed and hardened his secret new facilities and protected them  
> with air defenses. In the 1991 war, 43 days of coalition bombing  
> failed to destroy the program, which ended only when U.N.  
> disarmament teams methodically destroyed the equipment on the ground.
>
> Today, with Iran, many of my colleagues would like to keep this  
> option open -if only as a bluff- believing that we need the threat  
> of military action to force Iran into compromise. They may feel the  
> need to prove their “toughness” to the current administration. But  
> it is a dangerous stick to wave, particularly when you do not have  
> any real control over it. The true lessons of the Osirak raid are  
> worth remembering as optimistic plans for "solving" Iran now come  
> flying out of neoconservative circles.
>
> Joseph Cirincione is the Director for Nonproliferation at the  
> Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. For the latest  
> proliferation news and resources, visit the Carnegie Proliferation  
> News website, www.ProliferationNews.org.
>
> (This article adapts substantial parts of the author’s previous  
> article “Bombs Won’t Solve Iran,” published in The Washington Post,  
> May 11, 2005.)
>
>
>
> Related Links:
>
> Chapter on Iran, Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical  
> Threats, Joseph Cirincione, Jon B. Wolfsthal, and Miriam Rajkumar,  
> Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, July 2005
>
> "Iran 'Years From Nuclear Bomb,'" BBC News 12 January 2006, article  
> on International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Iran report
>
> "Iran's Next Steps: Final Tests and the Construction of a Uranium  
> Enrichment Plant," David Albright and Corey Hinderstein, Institute  
> for Science and International Security, 12 January 2006
>
> "Iran & the Bomb 1: How Close is Iran?" Jeffrey Lewis,  
> ArmsControlWonk, 19 January 2006
>
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