THE IRAN THREAT TO ISRAEL TEN YEARS AGO….LOUIS RENE BERES
http://www.gamla.org.il/english/article/2000/nov/ber1.htm
Iran’s Growing Threat to Israel: Sketches For A Strategic Dialectic
Louis Rene Beres – Professor of International Law
Department of Political Science – Purdue University
beres@polsci.purdue.edu
Date: November 1, 2000
Let us consider, systematically, Iran’s growing military threat to Israel. To do this properly, we should begin with a look at the sort of models used by strategic analysts in general. Thereafter, we may move from the general to the particular, from abstract theorizing to concrete considerations of Iran and Israel.
In examining threats to national security, strategists traditionally distinguish between capabilities and intentions. These components of threat are never entirely separate. Indeed, they are often not only interpenetrating and interdependent, but also interactive. This means: (1) capabilities affect intentions and vice-versa; and (2) the combined effects of capabilities and intentions may be synergistic, producing policy outcomes that are greatly accelerated and/or are more than the simple sum of these effects. Understood in terms of Iran’s growing threat to Israel, these relationships between capabiltiies and intentions now warrant particularly close consideration.
For the moment, those who would still downplay the Iranian threat argue that Teheran’s unconventional capabilities remain problematic and/or that its willingness to attack Israel is assuredly very low. Yet, over the next several years, that country’s ongoing development of chemical/biological/nuclear weapons will be substantial, creating conditions wherein a first-strike against Israel might be regarded as altogether rational. Even if it could be assumed that Iran’s leaders will always be rational, a questionable assumption, to be sure, this would say nothing about the accuracy of information used in making rational calculations. Rationality refers only to the intention of maximizing specified values. It says nothing about whether the information used is correct or incorrect. Hence, perfectly rational Iranian leaders could make errors in calculation that lead their state to war with Israel.
Whether correct or incorrect in its calculations, an Iranian leadership that believes it can strike Israel with impunity or near- impunity could be strongly motivated to undertake such a strike. Such motivation, of course, would be heightened to the extent that Iran remained uncertain about Jerusalem’s own preemption plans. Here, Iranian capabilities would affect, possibly even determine, Iranian intentions.
For its part, Jerusalem will fashion its preemption plans upon a number of critical factors, including, but not limited to: (a) expected probability of Iranian first-strikes; (b) expected harms of Iranian first- strikes (itself dependent upon the nature of Iranian weaponry, projected Iranian targeting doctrine, and multiplication/dispersion/hardening of Israeli nuclear forces); (c) expected schedule of Iranian unconventional weapons deployment; (d) expected efficiency of Iranian active defenses over time (anti-tactical ballistic missile system developments); (e) expected efficiency of Israeli active defenses over time; (f) expected efficiency of Israeli hard-target counterforce operations over time; (g) expected reactions of other regional enemies (e.g., Syria; Iraq); and (h) expected world community reactions to Israeli preemptions.
The Iranian threat to Israel might, on the other hand, originate from another direction. In this scenario, Iran’s intentions toward the Jewish State, hostile and perhaps even authentically genocidal, could animate Teheran’s development of unconventional military capabilities. Here, representing genuiunely far-reaching international hatreds rather than mere bluster, Iranian diatribes against Israel would ensure the production/deployment of extraordinarily destructive forces, weapons and postures. What I have now described, therefore, are circumstances where Iranian intentions could affect, possibly even determine, Iranian capabilities.
But what if Iran’s intentions toward Israel were not hostile or genocidal? What if its public bombast were not an expression of genuinely belligerent motivations, but a position designed entirely for political consumption? The short and obvious answer to these questions is that such shallow and contrived intentions would not impact Iranian capabilities vis-a-vis Israel. Yet, upon reflection, it is altogether likely that even inauthentic expressions of intent could, over time, become authentic, that repeated again and again over many years, such expressions could become self-fulfilling.
The most complex relationships between Iranian capabilities and intentions, and potentially the most consequential to Israeli security and survival, concern synergy. Here the issue is not whether, or to what extent, one threat component affects the other, but instead how certain of their various combinations might (a) produce an ongoing series of interactions that moves relentlessly, through its own dialectical momentum, toward war; or (b) produce a wholly new effect, an effect of which either capability or intention is individually incapable. An example of (a) would be an Iranian “bolt-from-the-blue” attack against Israel that is launched only because of the particular way in which capabilities and intentions feed upon each other. An example of (b) would be any Iranian attack against Israel – bolt-from-the-blue or product of escalation, conventional or unconventional – that would not otherwise have taken place. This example is plausible to the extent that one believes Iran would never strike first against Israel, irrespective of Iran’s singular intentions and capabilities, unless these two threat components were judged mutually reinforcing.
Now, let us move to even more concrete and immediate concerns. How might the Israel-PLO agreements affect Iranian posture toward the Jewish State? Conventional wisdom has been quick to suggest that the Oslo agreements, by codifying and demonstrating Israel’s commitment to peaceful settlement of disputes, diminish the Iranian threat. After all, wouldn’t world public opinion uniformly condemn Iran for any act of aggression directed against Israel? And wouldn’t, therefore, Iranian aggressive intentions be reduced or even removed, a change that could slow down Teheran’s pertinent militarization and consequently the overall danger to Israel from that country?
Perhaps. But the conventional wisdom may be wrong, or merely partial. It is also plausible that because of Oslo, Israel’s inclination to preempt Iranian agression, an inclination that would express the principle of anticipatory self-defense under international law, has been diminished. Wouldn’t the entire global community frown upon such preemption in the midst of an ongoing, albeit stalled, “peace process” in the region? Moreover, if Iran should recognize these effective inhibitions on Israeli action that stem from the Israel-PLO agreements, that country could calculate as follows: As our (Iranian) militarization will be less threatened by Israeli preemptive attack after Oslo, we (Iran) should increase our capabilities – especially our unconventional weapons capabilities – as quickly as practicable. Such a calculation, as we now know, could enlarge Iranian intentions to attack Israel and might even make cost-effective hostile actions by Iran that would not otherwise have been considered or even have been possible.
What about the effect of Israel-PLO agreements in bringing about a Palestinian state? Here, it is altogether probable that Israel’s substantial loss of strategic depth would be recognized by Iran as a significant military liability for Jerusalem. Such recognition, in turn, could heat up Iranian intentions against Israel, occasioning an accelerated search for capabilities and consequently a heightened risk of war initiated from Teheran.
Israel, of course, might forsee such Iranian calculations and seek to compensate for the loss of territories in a number of different ways. Jerusalem, for example, could decide to take its bomb out of the “basement” (as a deterrence-enhancing measure) and/or it could accept a heightened willingness to launch preemptive strikes against enemy (including Iran) hard targets. Made aware of such Israeli intentions, Iran could respond in a more or less parallel fashion, preparing more openly for nuclearization and/or first-strike attacks against the Jewish State.
It is conceivable, on the other hand, that Iran would react to Israel’s greater vulnerability – a vulnerability stemming from the creation of Palestine – by winding down its militarization, including its specifically nuclear militarization. But such a reaction would be entirely contingent upon the view from Teheran that Israeli intentions had become benign and/or that a Jewish State in the Middle East was no longer a malignancy. At the moment, deciphering Iranian descriptions of an Israeli “menace” and continuing calls for jihad, this view seems implausible.
Taken by itself, a Palestinian State would affect the capabilities and intentions of both Israel and Iran. But if such a state were created at the same time that Israel reduced or abandoned its nuclear capabilities, the impact could be even more substantial and consequential. This scenario should not be dismissed out of hand. Depending upon Israel’s decisions in the future, it could become altogether real.
In spite of its extraordinary failure in the case of Iraq, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty continues to be widely favored as a promising means to reduce the growing risk of nuclear war in the Middle East. From the standpoint of Israeli security, this legalistic preference harbors considerable danger. Left to the protections of diplomatic agreements, rather than to more pragmatic forms of self-reliance, the Jewish State might effectively surrender its opportunities to endure. Such surrender would be all the more likely to the extent that it would involve any limitations on Israel’s nuclear deterrent and on essential control of vital territories.
What would happen if Jerusalem were to relinquish or limit its nuclear option and were forced to accept a new State of Palestine? Significantly, Israel under such circumstances would not only be vastly more vulnerable to Iranian first-strikes, it would also have been deprived of its essential preemption option. This is the case because Israeli counterretaliatory deterrence would be immobilized by reduction or removal of its nuclear weapons potential and because Israeli preemptions could not possibly be 100% effective against Iranian unconventional forces. Of course, a less than 100% level of effectiveness could be tolerable if Jerusalem had a truly viable anti-tactical ballistic missile capability, but such a capability is still enormously uncertain.
The prospect of an Israeli preemption against Iran would be affected, inter alia, by that Islamic state’s willingness and capacity to create an infrastructure to safely manage its unconventiuonal weapons. Inadequate Iranian investment in nuclear weapons survivability, for example, could generate substantial Iranian incentives to preempt against Israel. After all, fearing that it might not possess a second-strike capability – a capability to retaliate against Israel after absorbing an Israeli attack – Iran could calculate a military advantage to striking first.
Recognizing this probable calculation, Israel would confront an overwhelming incentive to strike first itself. Even in the best case scenario, wherein Israel would receive credible assurances from Teheran concerning Iranian rejection of first-strike options, Jerusalem would understand that such assurances could become meaningless in the wake of Iranian political upheaval. Faced with an enemy state characterized by weak and authoritarian political institutions, fragile civil-military relations and/or competing factions representing several ethnic and religious groupings, Jerusalem could find itself compelled to seize upon the preemption imperative.
How would Iran respond to Israel’s weakened capabilities and correspondingly diminished preemptive intentions? Under such conditions, an informed observer might expect Iran to move even more purposefully and ambitiously toward full-fledged nuclear status, a move that would likely encourage first-strike intentions against the Jewish State.
Before concluding, we must raise the prospect of an Israeli nuclear preemption. It is, of course, exceedingly unlikely that Israel would ever decide to launch a preemptive nuclear strike. Although circumstances could arise wherein such a strike would be perfectly rational, it is implausible that Israel would allow itself to reach these circumstances. Moreover, unless the nuclear weapons involved were used in a fashion consistent with the authoritative expectations of the laws of war, this form of preemption would represent a serious violation of international law.
Even if such consistency were possible, the psychological/political impact on the world community would be negative and far-reaching. It follows that an Israeli nuclear preemption could be expected only: (a) where Israel’s enemies in Iran had acquired nuclear and/or other unconventional weapons judged capable of destroying the Third Temple Commonwealth; (b) where these enemies had made clear that their intentions paralleled their capabilities; (c) where these enemies were believed ready to begin a “countdown to launch;” and (d) where Jerusalem believed that Israeli non- nuclear preemptions could not achieve the needed minimum levels of damage- limitation, i.e., levels consistent with preservation of the Jewish State.
Assessments of the Iranian threat to Israel must take careful account of both country’s capabilities and intentions, the components of these threat dimensions, their sources, their amenability to change and – most important of all – their very complex relationships and forseeable interactions. Rather than be understood as separate and disconnected components of threat, these capabilities and intentions must be approached as continually affecting each other, both intranationally and internationally. With such an approach, scholars who would seek to improve Israeli security from Iranian attack, especially from an attack involving chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, could begin to move in more promising directions, accepting a strategic dialectic that is now necessary.
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LOUIS RENE BERES was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is a long-time expert in international law. The author of fourteen books dealing with international law, he has co-authored scholarly articles in Israel and the United States with former Ambassador Zalman Shoval and COL. (IDF/RES.) Yoash Tsiddon-Chatto. Other international law articles by Dr. Beres have been published in Israel in NATIV; BTZEDEK; HAARETZ; THE JERUSALEM POST; THE JERUSALEM LETTER; BULLETIN OF THE JERUSALEM INSTITUTE FOR WESTERN DEFENCE; and the Policy Paper Series of the Ariel Center. Professor Beres is Strategic and Military Affairs Analyst for THE JEWISH PRESS in New York City.
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