On Oct. 19, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board argued that Iran may be closer to a nuclear weapon than even Israeli estimates and that it could be producing a “crude “gun-type” bomb of the sort that leveled Hiroshima”. From “Tick-Tock Tehran“:
A report earlier this month from the Washington, [...]]]>
On Oct. 19, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board argued that Iran may be closer to a nuclear weapon than even Israeli estimates and that it could be producing a “crude “gun-type” bomb of the sort that leveled Hiroshima”. From “Tick-Tock Tehran“:
A report earlier this month from the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) warns that Tehran may be closer than even the Israelis think to enriching uranium to about 90%, the grade needed for a nuclear weapon. According to the ISIS study, the Iranians could combine their stockpiles of civilian- and medium-grade uranium to produce a bomb’s worth of 90% uranium in about two to four months.
That doesn’t put Iran within sight of a bomb, at least not yet. “Iran would need many additional months to manufacture a nuclear device suitable for underground testing,” the report says, “and even longer to make a reliable warhead for a ballistic missile.”
But this judgment assumes that Iran seeks to have a sophisticated nuclear weapon from the get-go, rather than a crude “gun-type” bomb of the sort that leveled Hiroshima, and which would be much simpler to produce. The judgment also assumes that Iran has no more enriched uranium than what the International Atomic Energy Agency reports it has. Yet Tehran has a record of nuclear deceit. Intelligence analysts shouldn’t assume that absence of evidence means evidence of absence.
In other words, be afraid, dear reader, be very afraid, because an Islamic Republic is intent on destroying you while everyone is looking the other way. Of course, this assessment has little to with facts. (It’s no secret, by the way, that the WSJ’s editorial board is hawkish on Iran and practically every other issue pertaining to US foreign policy. We’ve highlighted some examples here, here and here.) Indeed, so outrageous was the WSJ’s spin that ISIS, an anti-weapons proliferation institution with no reputation for being soft on Iran, was moved to respond:
The Wall Street Journal published an editorial on October 19, 2012 titled “Tick-Tock Tehran,” which referenced our recent ISIS report, Iran’s Evolving Breakout Potential. We would like to point out a central conclusion of our report, namely that the chance Iran will “break out” and build a nuclear weapon in the next year remains low. A straightforward method to help keep this probability low is to increase the frequency of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections of Iran’s main uranium enrichment plants. In addition, while we did not explicitly discuss this subject in our report, Iran is unlikely to build a gun-type nuclear weapon like the type that destroyed Hiroshima. If Iran decided to build a nuclear weapon, it would not be able to build a gun-type significantly faster than the other type of crude fission weapon, an implosion type that was used to destroy Nagasaki and has already been pursued by Iran, according to evidence assembled by the IAEA.
Iran can “currently break out in as little as 2-4 months”, note report authors David Albright, Christina Walrond, William Witt, and Houston Wood, but that could only occur if Iran made the decision to do so. While that likelihood remains low, an Iranian decision to breakout would be quickly detected:
Our estimates provide the length of time that Iran would need to produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon, if Iran decided to do so. At this time, it is widely accepted that Iran has not made a decision to actually build a nuclear weapon, although it appears to be furthering its capability to make them.
Our estimate that Iran can currently break out in as little as 2-4 months provides adequate time for the United States to both detect and respond to the breakout before Iran accumulates enough weapon-grade uranium for one nuclear weapon. Because Iran fears a military response, it is unlikely to breakout. We assessed in our study that breakout times could reduce to about one month during the next year. But in all the scenarios we considered, the breakout would remain detectable to provide time for U.S. action. As a result, during at least the next year, our estimates support that the likelihood of an Iranian breakout will also be low.
And getting a weapon doesn’t mean you’ll be able to use it right away. ISIS states that Iran would need “many additional months” to produce a nuclear device suitable for testing and “even longer to make a reliable warhead for a ballistic missile.”
What did the WSJ base its WWII bomb-style assessment on? Clearly not expertise. ISIS’s response:
…The WSJ editorial offers a crude gun-type bomb of the type that destroyed Hiroshima as a way for Iran to save time in building the nuclear weapon, compared to building the conceptually more difficult implosion-type design. However, we assess that gun-type nuclear weapons are an unlikely choice for Iran and in any case will not save it a significant amount of time in fielding a nuclear device for an underground test aimed at establishing a nuclear weapon status or a deliverable nuclear weapon able to fit on a ballistic missile.
The biggest weakness of choosing a gun-type design is that Iran would need double the amount of weapon-grade uranium compared to that needed for an implosion-type design, increasing the time to breakout and accumulating sufficient weapon-grade uranium for one weapon from at least 2-4 months to at least 4-8 months.
But who needs facts when you sit on the editorial board of one of the most widely read newspapers in the world, right? Apparently from all the way up there, it’s easy to ignore telling recent history and the tragic consequences of a war that the US waged on false pretenses.
]]>The neoconservative hawk and deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens, has once again figured it all out. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with the United States since 1979, and no US president since then, including Ronald Reagan and George [...]]]>
The neoconservative hawk and deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens, has once again figured it all out. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with the United States since 1979, and no US president since then, including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, has done anything but appease that evil regime for reasons that befuddle us all.
Hence, it is now of paramount importance to halt the current president’s “outreach” to Iran because all previous attempts motivated by Washington’s “excess of decency” have allowed “33 years of Iranian outrages” to go “unavenged” and “undeterred”.
Stephens, a former editor of the Jerusalem Post, was an avid supporter of the US invasion of Iraq and a fierce critic of the planned 2011 troop withdrawal, arguing that the US should have maintained a “serious tripwire force in Iraq as a hedge against Iran and other bad forces in the region” instead.
Now, again, he is amplifying his call to arms with fear mongering and a line that fellow neoconservative pundit Michael Ledeen has been using for years – Iran and the US are already at war, so the US should start acting like it:
Maybe the president thinks decency obliges him to give diplomacy another chance. But it is from an excess of decency that 33 years of Iranian outrages have gone unavenged, and Iran now proceeds undeterred. Sensible policy on Iran begins not with the question of how to avoid a war—that war was foisted on U.S. in 1979—but how to win it. Anything less invites further terror and dishonors the memory of Iran’s many American victims.
Following this line of reasoning requires diverting the conversation from how best to effectively engage with Iran in order to stop its nuclear program, to how to wage a successful war against an intractable and wicked enemy. Stephens’ conclusion is based on a litany of Iranian offenses (some of which remain questionable, let alone unproven) from the hostage crisis to bombings and kidnappings in Lebanon in the 1980s, the Khobar Tower bombing in Saudi Arabia, “thousands of U.S. troops killed by IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan” and the curious case of Mansour Arbabsiar, the Iranian-American who recently pleaded guilty to attempting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US in collusion with Iranian counterparts. This, according to our militarist pundit, has been the Iranian record against the United States.
And what of the US record against Iran? Why, an “excess of decency” of course! For reasons that Stephens doesn’t have time to get into or simply cannot explain, the US leadership from Reagan to Obama has repeatedly chosen the soft line with Iran. Perhaps the inherently peaceful character of the US has led to its impressive military hardware being reserved for only special occasions, which, in the case of the Middle East, Stephens forgets to mention, has somehow been deployed since the first 1991 Gulf War with no hiatus in between.
With this in mind, there really is no reason to waste time over the nuclear issue. Stephens wants a war to “avenge” the Islamic Republic’s 33-year long record of crimes and does not shy away from declaring his unhappiness regarding the direction of the Iran conversation in the US. The idea that sanctions are working unsettles him because it suggests that there is still time for serious and public diplomatic engagement with Iran to resolve the nuclear issue once and for all. (And no, I am not talking about a Reaganesque mission to secretly dispatch a national security adviser with a cake and bible to Tehran.) Even attempting peaceful conflict resolution is difficult for Stephens to accept because it “dishonors the memory of Iran’s many American victims.” For Stephens and many of his neocon colleagues, the real issue goes beyond the nuclear impasse; what we should really be concerned about is Iran’s history of “dishonoring” America since its Revolution.
Interestingly, this argument echoes talking points made by Iranian neoconservatives (which we often refer to as hardliners). Just read any column by Hossein Shariatmadari, the intractable editor of Kayhan Daily, and you will understand what I mean.
What are the similarities? First there is the victim mentality. Nothing the US or Iran has done can outdo the “bad” things that are done to them. From Shariatmadari’s point of view, the Islamic Republic has always been on the receiving end of Western “savagery” (a term also recently used by Leader Ali Khamenei to describe US conduct vis-à-vis Iran) because of its values, principles, and its daring resistance against US “arrogance.” From Stephens’ point of view, nothing the US has done – like siding with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war and at a minimum engaging in a collusion of silence over Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Iran’s military and civilians, or shooting down, even if accidentally, an Iranian civilian airliner and then promoting the naval commander responsible for it – is even worth mentioning. Iranian conduct always occurs in a vacuum and is only worth noting in terms of the harm that is imposed.
From the neoconservative point of view — in the U.S. and Iran — correct values, “decency,” and the desire to be a beacon of goodwill, is the only mark of their respective countries. And the violent and disdainful conduct of the other side is the only conduct that needs to be noted. I am sure that, in the minds of folks like Shariatmadari and Stephens, that is indeed the only conduct noted.
This is why Stephens refers to the “crippling” sanctions that Governor Romney and President Obama referenced in Monday night’s debate as more of a “campaign prop than policy tool.” The notion that “unprecedented” sanctions that target the financial core of another country — not to mention killing nuclear scientists and sabotaging nuclear facilities — could also be considered an act of war is incomprehensible for Stephens.
Beyond feigned or actual feelings of victimhood, there is also a similarity in their avoidance of responsibility for the outcome of their proposed solutions. Neoconservatives in both Iran and the United States have had their chances at influencing their respective countries’ foreign and security policies. George W. Bush’s “muscular foreign policy” promoted by the likes of Stephens brought the US the debacle that has been Iraq — which, if anything, has actually strengthened Iran — and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s “aggressive foreign policy,” pushed by folks like Shariatmadari, has brought Iran crippling sanctions.
Do they take responsibility for any of their disasters? Absolutely not! Stephens’ push for another war in the Middle East is clear evidence that he does not see himself or his cohorts as responsible for the fiasco in Iraq. In fact, he has said so plainly. The war was not the “original sin,” he wrote in 2007. In fact, it was no sin at all. Things went wrong because of mistakes that occurred after the neoconservatives lost their influence in the Bush administration when Condoleezza Rice became Secretary of State (this being, by the way, the reason Stephens vehemently opposed Rice becoming Romney’s running mate).
A similar argument is now being parlayed by Iranian neoconservatives. Things always begin to go wrong when the Iranian government indicates a willingness to talk with the United States, they say. It exhibits weakness, and it is only through a show of strength and “will”– a favorite mantra of neoconservatives everywhere — that “bullies” like the US can be deterred.
Let me end by pointing out that despite the uncanny similarities of their worldviews, there is at least one critical difference between Iranian and US neoconservatives. This difference does not exist in their self-satisfied and belligerent poses; it relates to the location of their respective countries in the geopolitical and economic order.
It is the United States and its allies that are trying to strangle Iran economically, not the other way around. And of course it is the United States that will be engaging in yet another version of “shock and awe” if folks like Bret Stephens have their way, not the other way around.
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Lobe Log publishes Hawks on Iran every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.
Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post: The neoconservative pundit attacks the Obama administration for not aligning its “red line” [...]]]>
Lobe Log publishes Hawks on Iran every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.
Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post: The neoconservative pundit attacks the Obama administration for not aligning its “red line” on Iran (a nuclear weapon), with Israel’s red line (nuclear weapon-making capability) and not adhering to Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand for a deadline:
The Obama policy is in shambles. Which is why Cordesman argues that the only way to prevent a nuclear Iran without war is to establish a credible military threat to make Iran recalculate and reconsider. That means U.S. red lines: deadlines beyond which Washington will not allow itself to be strung, as well as benchmark actions that would trigger a response, such as the further hardening of Iran’s nuclear facilities to the point of invulnerability and, therefore, irreversibility.
Which made all the more shocking Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s dismissal last Sunday of the very notion of any U.S. red lines. No deadlines. No bright-line action beyond which Iran must not go. The sleeping giant continues to slumber. And to wait — as the administration likes to put it, “for Iran to live up to its international obligations.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal: The board shares Krauthammer’s analysis:
Most of all, Iran continues its march toward a nuclear weapon despite the President’s vow that it is “unacceptable.” The U.S. says it has isolated Iran, but only last month the U.N. Secretary-General defied a U.S. plea and attended a non-aligned summit in Tehran. The Administration has issued wholesale exemptions to Congressional sanctions, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared on the weekend that the U.S. is “not setting deadlines” for Iran as it sprints to a bomb.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has engaged in repeated public arguments with Israel, supposedly its best ally in the region. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, recently declared that he doesn’t want to be “complicit” in any Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites. The White House failed to contradict him. A nation that appears so reluctant to stand by its friends won’t be respected or feared by its enemies.
Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post: The neoconservative pundit laments the fact that Israel’s Prime Minister must resort to “heckling” the US president to get what he wants and quotes a staffer from the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies to further her position on the Israel vs. Iran debate:
Such is the state of the U.S.-Israel relationship. The tussle over who requested what begs the question as to why the leaders aren’t meeting in New York. If the relationship is as close as Obama insists, there would be every reason to meet, make a show of solidarity and make a joint statement regarding Iran. So Netanyahu resorts to heckling Obama in public over “red lines.”
Schanzer said, “ The real problem here is the lack of transparency on the part of President Obama. When was the last time he delivered an official presidential statements on the Iranian nuclear crisis? He has not given the American people or the Israelis a glimpse of how he plans to tackle what has become the most pressing foreign policy issue of our time. This is what is driving Bibi to his wits end. “
So how is that leading from behind, timidity in the face of jihadists, meekness toward Iran and heavy defense cut policy working out? Are we more safe or are events spinning out of control? Are we most respected or less? The answer: Romney is being unfair pointing all this out.
Danielle Pletka, the New York Times: Explictly hawkish views and recommendation stated here by the vice president for foreign and defense policy at the neoconservative-dominated American Enterprise Institute:
America cannot prevent every tragedy, nor can we assure ourselves of the affection of every Middle Eastern citizen. But we can have a policy in Iraq that fights Iranian influence, a policy in Egypt that incentivizes liberalism among elected leaders, a policy in Syria that hastens the fall of Assad and promotes the rise of moderates, a policy that punishes attacks on our embassies that take place unimpeded by the local government (see Egypt), and a policy that rewards the values we cherish and punishes extremism. And yes, those policies can go hand in hand with a military strategy that attacks our enemies where they live. We may not always win the fight of western liberalism against Islamist extremism, but we could try much harder.
David Makovsky, the New Yorker: Ali Gharib points out why an argument made by David Makovsky of the AIPAC-created Washington Institute — that Israel’s bombing of Syria’s nuclear program should be factored into calculations about attacking Iran’s program — doesn’t stand up to an important test.
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