Iranian Nuclear Weapons Development and the International Community

Iran is currently improving its nuclear technology, but it says that it is only for peaceful purposes. However, many in the international community are apprehensive because the same technology that makes nuclear power possible—for example, uranium enrichment—also makes it possible to build nuclear weapons. Iran’s belligerent stance toward the West and Israel, in particular, makes many believe that its nuclear development program is anything but peaceful and that Iran’s true intent is to develop its own nuclear arsenal.

A major component of this international concern is Iran’s unrelenting hostility toward pretty much the entire rest of the world, but with a special hatred for the United States and its allies, due to events in recent history. Israel, in particular, is a target of Iranian hatred; a constant theme in Iranian political rhetoric is its stated goal of the annihilation of Israel. Coupled with these stated threats is the unmistakable impression (either accurate or deliberately fostered) that Iran’s leaders are crazy. In particular, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian President from 2005-2013, has often seemed unbalanced and irrational, particularly in his diatribes against the West; for instance, he has repeatedly denied that the Holocaust ever happened. The Ayatollahs who have been Iran’s supreme leaders have also often sounded crazy as well. While the Iranians seem to be fond of exaggerated rhetoric, the international community cannot dismiss Iran’s government as simply a bunch of lunatics; they are dangerous. The fact of the matter is that trusting the Iranian government to be building nuclear power facilities rather than nuclear weapons could prove to be a horribly costly mistake.

The threat that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose is grave. While the country doesn’t have orbital launch capability and thus, it could directly threaten only its neighbors with a nuclear attack, nuclear weapons are small enough that they could be delivered to their targets in any one of a number of unconventional ways. Iran has shown willingness to sponsor and foster terrorism against the West and the United States in particular; Iran has armed and financed anti-U.S. insurgents in Iraq since 2003, for example. (This could also be due to an ambition on the part of the ayatollahs to conquer Iraq once U.S. forces depart.) Israel would, in particular, be vulnerable, as it is within easy reach of medium-range missiles, a capability that Iran already has. This is why Israel’s leaders have vowed not to allow Iran to develop its nuclear capability, by whatever means such prevention will require, including military attack.

Iran has recently shifted its stance to one of more openness and less hostility. A slight regime change has allowed it to show a less hostile face to the West, and it has recently said it would allow inspection of its nuclear facilities. While this rapprochement has been welcomed by the world community, no one really trusts Iran, nor should they. For Israel, such trust could be quite literally a fatal mistake, and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has openly scoffed at the idea that Iran can be trusted. The United States runs a similar risk in that Iran could either directly attack the U.S. with nuclear weapons or, perhaps more likely, give those weapons to a terrorist group such as Al-Qaida. It is very unlikely that it will be possible to confirm that Iran does not have nuclear weapons capability (whether it, in fact, does or does not have that capability); thus, the danger will remain. What can the U.S. and the international community do about this?

The short answer, unfortunately, is “nothing.” The most violent approach, that of an invasion and conquest of the country, is not feasible for a number of reasons, including the massive unpopularity of a third Asian war in two decades for the American people. The U.S. and Israel have collaborated and will collaborate with intelligence efforts and the preparation for military action such as airstrikes, but Iran is a large country and there can be no assurance that it contains weapons development facilities that cannot be detected. Also, as noted above, nuclear power generation can be changed to weapons development in a very short time. Scott Sagan (2006) criticized the idea that it is in the long run, impossible to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons: “As nuclear proliferation comes to been seen as inevitable, wishful thinking can make its consequences less severe, and if faith in deterrence grows, incentives to combat proliferation diminish” (Sagan 45). Yet, it is hard to imagine any way other than brute force to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons technology, which after all, has been around for several decades now; the process for making a nuclear weapon is quite well known.

When trying to get anyone to do or not do anything, whether that is a person, a group, or a nation, there are basically two approaches: persuasion and force, aka the carrot and the stick. Only the U.S. and possibly Israel have usable sticks, and only Israel is politically able to use its stick (the Israeli public has been strongly supportive of Israel’s preventive attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities). Therefore, the U.S. must look around for possible carrots. It is fashionable to speak of the “international community” when discussing such efforts but in actuality, it will be the U.S. that bears the burden of such pacification efforts; other nations may serve as buffers or intermediaries but the U.S. will do the heavy lifting. One carrot that has been used in the past and still continues in limited form is trade sanctions, the carrot being that Iran will have access to trade goods that have been denied it as the result of various embargoes. These embargoes, however, have indeed hurt the Iranian people but haven’t caused any hardship to the Iranian government. The Iranian government recently showed just how much it cared about its people when it slaughtered thousands of demonstrators and dissidents during the protests of 2011-2012. Therefore, though sanctions have been effective to some degree, the lifting of them probably won’t be a tasty enough carrot.

Of course, the situation may deteriorate to the extent that direct military intervention is indeed the only option. If Iran’s leaders are indeed crazy enough to initiate a nuclear attack on either the U.S. or Israel, then U.S. and world opinion would probably support an invasion. Of course, this would happen after a horrific event in which hundreds of thousands of Americans or Israelis would die, so Matthew Kroenig sees military intervention before such an event occurs as preferable to allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons capability: “Proponents of a strike have argued that the only thing worse than military action against Iran would be an Iran armed with nuclear weapons” (Kroenig 76). This may indeed be true, but there is a political element: the Iraq war has soured the American public on the idea of preemptive warfare, especially since it has been widely touted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, the existence of which was the reason given for the launching of the war (it has never been proved one way or the other whether Iraq had such weapons). Initiating a costly and bloody invasion of Iran because they probably had nuclear weapons couldn’t be sold to an American public tired of war.

The unfeasibility (despite possible advisability) of the stick and the ineffectiveness of the carrot leave the world community with few options. There is yet another consideration, which may be hard for the U.S. and Israel in particular to accept. While Iran has shaken its fist at the rest of the world and isolated itself from the world community with its bellicose rhetoric and bad behavior, it is still a sovereign nation. It does have actual enemies (though it may have made those enemies by its actions). It is widely accepted worldwide that a nation has the right to defend itself. It also has the right to technology. As Gawdat Baghat notes, “The forces that shape the country's nuclear policy…include perception of security threats from Pakistan, Iraq, Israel, and the United States; domestic economic and political dynamics; and national pride” (Baghat 307). In other words, having nukes would mean Iran could play with the big boys. Also, as the saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. Iran’s problems with the rest of the world may be self-created, but every nation has the right to arm itself as it sees fit, against threats both real and imaginary. Also, as Iran’s leaders have said with some justification, it is somewhat hypocritical for a country possessing tens of thousands of nuclear weapons (the U.S.) to tell another country that it can’t have them. Iran is, in fact, a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but Iran ratified the treaty a decade before the revolutionary regime change that resulted in the present theocracy. Iran’s leaders have repeatedly implied that they do not feel obligated to honor the commitments of the previous government.

It appears, therefore, that there are precious few options available to the world community in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons: there are very few effective persuasive methods that could be employed and even fewer coercive ones. The only viable option open to the West is to maintain intense intelligence monitoring of Iran’s capabilities. Also, the U.S. should be prepared to use Israel as the “attack dog on a leash” should it be deemed necessary to intensify airstrikes against Iran; Israel’s relations with Iran could hardly be worse, so no real harm would be done to diplomatic efforts. And of course, those diplomatic efforts should be and no doubt will be intensified, in the very faint hope of thawing out international relations and giving Iran less incentive to attack the U.S., at least, but that effort will probably be futile. Iran is basically a mad dog, a “rogue nation” in the same mold as North Korea, and with a mad dog, you try to calm it down but you have to be prepared to shoot it. The only question is whether when that is finally done, it will be too late.

Works Cited

Bahgat, Gawdat. "Nuclear Proliferation: The Islamic Republic of Iran." Iranian Studies 39.3 (2006): 307-327.

Kroenig, Matthew. "Time to Attack Iran: Why a Strike is the Least Bad Option." Foreign Aff. 91 (2012): 76.

Sagan, Scott D. "How to keep the bomb from Iran." Foreign Aff. 85 (2006): 45.