The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) has released a brief report emphasizing that Iran continues to move toward nuclear weapons capability and the international community must halt further progress. ISIS’s latest concern centers around Iranian lawmaker Mansour Haqiqatpour’s October 2 comment that Iran could enrich uranium to 60 percent [...]]]>
The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) has released a brief report emphasizing that Iran continues to move toward nuclear weapons capability and the international community must halt further progress. ISIS’s latest concern centers around Iranian lawmaker Mansour Haqiqatpour’s October 2 comment that Iran could enrich uranium to 60 percent if diplomatic talks fail. From Reuters:
“In case our talks with the (six powers) fail to pay off, Iranian youth will master (the technology for) enrichment up to 60 percent to fuel submarines and ocean-going ships,” Haqiqatpour said.
The powers should know that “if these talks continue into next year, Iran cannot guarantee it would keep its enrichment limited to 20 percent. This enrichment is likely to increase to 40 or 50 percent,” he said.
The US and international community should prepare for an official Iranian announcement of such high-grade enrichment, warns ISIS, adding that Iran has “no need to produce highly enriched uranium at all, even if it wanted nuclear fuel for a reactor powering nuclear submarines or other naval vessels, or for a research reactor”. The move would also “significantly shortens Iran’s dash time to reaching weapon grade uranium,” the report said.
ISIS’s conclusion:
Taken in this context, any official Iranian announcement to make highly enriched uranium should be seen as unacceptable. Many will view such a decision as equivalent to initiating a breakout to acquire nuclear weapons, reducing any chance for negotiations to work and potentially increasing the chances for military strikes and war. Before Iran announces official plans to make highly enriched uranium, the United States and the other members of the P5+1 should quietly but clearly state to Iran what it risks by producing highly enriched uranium under any pretext.
No details are provided as to what exactly needs to be done to make Iran understand that such a move would be “unacceptable”, but we are informed that Iranian enrichment of high-grade uranium would increase the chances for military conflict.
The fact that Iran is still years aways from being able to test a device, and according to US and international official assessments has still not made the decision to do so, is also absent from ISIS’s report. Indeed, according to the bipartisan Iran Project report on the benefits and costs of military action on Iran (emphasis mine):
]]>After deciding to “dash” for a bomb, Iran would need from one to four months to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear device. Additional time—up to two years, according to conservative estimates—would be required for Iran to build a nuclear warhead that would be reliably deliverable by a missile. Given extensive monitoring and surveillance of Iranian activities, signs of an Iranian decision to build a nuclear weapon would likely be detected, and the U.S. would have at least a month to implement a course of action.
Extended military strikes by the United States alone or conducted with Israel could destroy or damage Iran’s most important nuclear sites, but will only temporarily set back Iran’s nuclear program for up to four years, according to a detailed assessment of the costs and benefits of attacking Iran.
Ensuring that [...]]]>
Extended military strikes by the United States alone or conducted with Israel could destroy or damage Iran’s most important nuclear sites, but will only temporarily set back Iran’s nuclear program for up to four years, according to a detailed assessment of the costs and benefits of attacking Iran.
Ensuring that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon would require an “expanded air and sea war over a prolonged period of time, likely several years,” argues the report, which has been authored, signed and endorsed by a bipartisan group of high-profile senior national security advisers, experts and diplomats. Unilateral action by Israel is unlikely to substantially set back Iran’s nuclear program or destroy all of Iran’s nuclear sites, states the paper, which is based on a “wide range of expert opinion”.
If Iran decided to build a nuclear weapon (something which it has yet to do according to all reputable official assessments), it would require up to two years to produce a reliable, deliverable device and would almost certainly be detected before that time:
After deciding to “dash” for a bomb, Iran would need from one to four months to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear device. Additional time—up to two years, according to conservative estimates—would be required for Iran to build a nuclear warhead that would be reliably deliverable by a missile. Given extensive monitoring and surveillance of Iranian activities, signs of an Iranian decision to build a nuclear weapon would likely be detected, and the U.S. would have at least a month to implement a course of action
A benefit of militarily striking Iran’s nuclear sites would be a disruption of Iranian government control, but the reports authors doubt that regime change, collapse or capitulation would result from lone military action. Seeking these “ambitious” results would require a greater commitment than what the US has given to Iraq and Afghanistan over the past years combined and would include the occupation of all or part of the country, the report said.
The reports’ authors note that military operations seldom led to regime change without ground forces used to occupy the country. The case of Libya suggests that “even with local rebel forces active on the ground, air strikes would need to be sustained for an extended period and supplemented by on the ground support from other nations’ professional militaries in order to produce a change in leadership,” according to the paper.
Would military action against Iran increase or undermine support for the regime among Iran’s population? The former seems more likely, judging by the strong support showed by the Iranian public for their leaders after the Iraqi attack in 1982 and throughout the grueling, eight-year war that followed.
Even if regime collapse could be produced by a prolonged campaign of air attacks combined with covert and cyber attacks, and drone activity (an outcome that we view as unlikely), it is not necessarily the case that Iran or the region would be more stable as a result.
The cost of Iranian retaliation would be “felt over the longer term” by the US and could result in a regional war:
In addition to the financial costs of conducting military attacks against Iran, which would be significant (particularly if the U.S. had to carry out thousands of sorties and if it had to return to the use of force periodically for years to come), there would likely be near-term costs associated with Iranian retaliation, through both direct and surrogate asymmetrical attacks. Serious costs to U.S. interests would also be felt over the longer term, we believe, with problematic consequences for global and regional stability, including economic stability. A dynamic of escalation, action, and counteraction could produce serious unintended consequences that would significantly increase all of these costs and lead, potentially, to all-out regional war.
The paper offers no final conclusions or recommendations. Instead it seeks to supplement the “lack of consensus and clarity in Washington about what the U.S. should aim to achieve through any military action against Iran” by offering an objective assessment of the costs and benefits of attacking Iran and evaluating the capacity of the US to achieve certain objectives and plan an exit strategy.
Despite the absence of recommendations, the paper’s list of the costs of military action against Iran outnumber the benefits; the benefits are listed in two and a half pages while the costs take up over 9 pages. Indeed, the suggestion that the “initiation of preventive military action against Iran, even with limited objectives, could be the beginning of a war entailing all of the uncertainties and unanticipated consequences so familiar to those who have experienced or studied military conflicts,” seems to be a fundamental assessment of the report.
Lobe Log was provided an advance copy of this paper which was drafted by Columbia University’s Austin Long and William Luers, Director of the nonpartisan Iran Project and advised by by Colin Kahl of Georgetown University and contributed to by Thomas R. Pickering, Jim Walsh of MIT, and Stephen Heintz of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. We will post it in full when it is officially released later today.
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