RUTHFULLY YOURS

IRAN’S NUCLEAR CLOCK IS NOW TICKING FASTER:PROFESSOR LOUIS RENE BERES

Posted By Ruth King on August 16th, 2010

Louis René Beres (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971)

Professor of Political Science and International Law

Purdue University

West Lafayette, IN 47907

USA

————- For both Israel and the United States, the Iranian nuclear “clock” is now ticking faster. On August 21, beginning a process that will last about a month, uranium fuel shipped by Russia will be loaded into the Bushehr reactor. Once completed, this start-up of an Iranian nuclear plant will allegedly be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure critical security of all spent reactor fuel. Used fuel will contain plutonium, which could be used to make nuclear weapons.

What strategic options will then remain available to Jerusalem and Washington? Soon, Israel will begin to deploy Iron Dome, a unique and promising system designed to deal effectively with short-range rocket dangers from primarily Gaza and Lebanon. But what can now be done about the longer-range and much higher-consequence threats looming from Iran?

The core of Israel’s active defense plan for Iran remains the phased Arrow anti-ballistic missile program. Designed to intercept medium and short-range ballistic missiles, the various forms of Arrow (“Hetz” in Hebrew) are expected to deal especially with Iran’s surface-to-surface missile threat. Basically a high stratospheric system, Arrow is also capable of low-altitude and multi-tactical ballistic missile interceptions.

From the technical side, as with Iron Dome, everything seems to be looking good. Test results for the Arrow, as for Iron Dome, continue to be strongly positive.

Yet, there are also some important and underlying conceptual problems. Facing the prospect of a fully nuclear Iran, Israel must consider whether it can rely entirely upon a suitable combination of deterrence and active defense, or whether it must still prepare for preemption.

Can Israel live with a nuclear Iran? This is the critical question today. The answer will have genuinely life or death consequences for the Jewish State.

In principle, Israel’s preemption option may now appear less urgent. Many strategic planners and scientists believe that the Arrow’s repeated success in testing confirms that Israel is prepared to deal satisfactorily with any and all conceivable Iranian nuclear missile attack scenarios. Indeed, the Israel Air Force has even tested the Arrow against a missile precisely resembling Iran’s Shihab-3.

It would appear that if Arrow were suitably efficient in its expected reliability of interception, even an irrational Iranian adversary armed with nuclear and/or biological weapons could already be dealt with effectively. Even if Israel’s nuclear deterrent were somehow made irrelevant by Iran or another enemy state willing to risk almost certain and massive “counter-value” Israeli reprisal, that aggressor’s ensuing first-strike could still presumably be blocked by Arrow. Why, then, should Israel still consider preemption against Iran?

The answer lies in certain untenable assumptions about any system of ballistic missile defense. Israel’s defense problem is a generic one. No system of ballistic missile defense, anywhere, can be correctly appraised as simply “reliable” or “unreliable.”

Operational reliability of intercept is a “soft” concept, and any missile defense system – however successful in its test results – will have “leakage.” Whether or not such leakage would fall within acceptable levels must ultimately depend largely upon the kinds of warheads fitted upon an enemy’s missiles. The Arrow’s commendable test successes might not be reproducible against faster and more advanced Iranian missiles.

Should Israel now bet its national life on a defensive capacity to fully anticipate and nullify offensive enemy missile capabilities?

In evaluating its rapidly-disappearing preemption option vis-à-vis Iran, Israeli planners will need to consider the expected leakage rate of the Arrow. A tiny number of enemy missiles penetrating Arrow defenses might still be “acceptable” if their warheads contained “only” conventional high explosive, or even chemical high explosive. But if the incoming warheads were nuclear and/or biological, even an extremely low rate of leakage would be intolerable.

A fully zero leakage-rate would be necessary to adequately protect Israel against any nuclear and/or biological warheads, and such a zero leakage-rate is unattainable. This means that Israel can never depend entirely upon its anti-ballistic missiles to defend against any future WMD attack from Iran, and that even a thoroughly capable Arrow system cannot entirely obviate Israel’s preemption option. Even if Israel could somehow expect a 100% reliability of interception for Arrow – a technically inconceivable expectation – this would do nothing to blunt the unconventional threat from terrorist surrogates opting to use much shorter-range missiles, and/or delivery systems from ships, trucks or automobiles. Special points of vulnerability for Israel, Iron Dome notwithstanding, would be in Lebanon, with Hezbollah proxies acting for Iran, and also Gaza, where Iran-supported Hamas is currently developing dangerous new ties with al-Qaeda.

Israel must immediately strengthen its nuclear deterrence posture. To be deterred, a rational adversary will need to calculate that Israel’s second-strike forces are plainly invulnerable to any first-strike aggressions. Facing the Arrow, this adversary will now require increasing numbers of missiles to achieve an assuredly destructive first-strike against Israel. The Arrow, therefore, will compel any rational adversary, including Iran, to at least delay any intended first-strike attack against Israel.

With any non-rational adversary, however, all Israeli bets on successful deterrence would be off. A non-rational adversary would be one that does not value its own continued survival more highly than all other preferences or combinations of preferences.

In Iran, Israel still faces a state enemy whose undisguised preparations for attacking the Jewish State are literally and legally genocidal, and which may not always remain rational. Aware of this, Israel is not obligated to sit back passively, and respond only after a nuclear and/or biological attack has already been absorbed.

International law is not a suicide pact. Israel has the same right granted to all states to act preemptively when facing an existential assault. Known as anticipatory self-defense, this general right is strongly affirmed in customary international law, and also in “the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations.” It is supported, as well, by the 1996 Advisory Opinion issued by the International Court of Justice.

Israel must continue to develop, test and implement an Arrow-based interception capability to match the growing threat dictated by all enemy ballistic missiles. It must also continue to prepare for certain possible preemptions, and to enhance the credibility of its nuclear deterrent. Regarding such enhanced credibility, Israel must appropriately operationalize a recognizable second-strike nuclear force, one that is hardened and dispersed, and that is ready to inflict an unacceptable retaliatory salvo against identifiable enemy cities.

Israel must make it clear to any would-be nuclear aggressor that Arrow defenses would always operate simultaneously with decisive Israeli nuclear retaliations. In no way, Iran must understand, does Arrow deployment preclude, or even render less probable, an Israeli nuclear reprisal.

Arrow is necessary for Israeli security, but it is not sufficient. Israel will also have to undertake appropriate and coordinated preparations for both deterrence and preemption. Moreover, ballistic missile defense will do nothing to thwart certain terrorist surrogates of Iran who could someday utilize ordinary modes of travel and transport as nuclear delivery vehicles.

Together with the U.S, Israel exists in the cross-hairs of a far-reaching Jihad that that will likely not conform to any of the settled international rules of diplomacy and negotiation. Under no circumstances, can Israel and the U.S afford to allow a seventh-century view of the world to be combined with twenty-first century weapons of mass destruction. Left unimpeded in its relentless plan to nuclearize for war (so-called “economic sanctions” are plainly not an impediment), Iran, in the future, could share certain of its atomic munitions with anti-American proxies in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The Arrow-based ballistic missile defense is indispensable for Israel. But it is now critical for both Jerusalem and Washington to remember that it is also not enough. Although, after Bushehr, it is already very late, Israel and the United States, singly, or in collaboration, may yet have to preemptively destroy certain of Iran’s pertinent nuclear infrastructures, whatever the anticipated consequences. In the end, of course, this fateful decision will depend upon the currently-perceived possibilities of “living with a nuclear Iran.”

———————-

LOUIS RENÉ BERES (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971), is Professor of Political Science and International Law at Purdue. Born in Zürich, Switzerland, on August 31, 1945, he is the author of many books and articles on nuclear strategy and nuclear war, and has lectured widely on these subjects in Israel, Europe and the United States. In Israel, he was Chair of Project Daniel.

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