On Iran

I think it would be worth a try to finance insurrection by Iran's powerful non-Persian minorities, though I doubt it would work. Our real options, I suspect, are an air war with a minor dilatory effect on their nuke program or a ground war that dismantles it (and perhaps installs a proper regime)--to make things simple we should also break up the country on ethnic lines, to achieve stability and an American exit, and to weaken post-war Iran. The other road is to appease our way into a nuclear arms race among the Middle Eastern nations. 

The CIA Factbook says there are 15 million Azeris, 8 million Kurds, and 5 million other non-Persians in Iran. The total population is 78 million. Without the Kurds and Azeris it would be 55 million. If the Kurds in Iran, Iraq and Syria united, the new Kurdistan would contain about 15 million, a respectable force, especially given their substantial oil resources. There are 15 million more Kurds in Turkey, who might also break away in future. New Kurdistan's main weakness is a lack of access to the ocean if the new state's borders are set according to current population distributions. And the new Azerbaijan would have 24 million, also with oil. Both of these new nations ought to be sustainable and would weaken Iran and Iraq. The Turks derive no benefit beyond pride from controlling part of Kurdistan. They would be spared the expense of borders with Iran and Iraq, and the expense of fighting the endless Kurdish insurgency. Unfortunately, on this plan, the Iranians would not lose any significant part of their oil and gas reserves.

Iran, Israel, America: A Lovers' Quarrel

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/opinion/18morris.html

This is a fairly plausible take on the situation as far as I can tell (lacking all the information on Iranian and Israeli capabilities). The qualification that occurs to me is that even Israeli nuclear strikes might fail to stop the Iranian program, unless the Israelis have adequate intelligence to work with on the key locations of the program. Perhaps the gravest threat posed by Iran’s strategy of nuclear escalation is the first strike incentive each side will perceive once the Iranians go nuclear.

Mossad clearly has the "advantage" of operating under a pressure of necessity that our intelligence services do not experience. They have long known, not just in an abstract sense, but in an absolutely visceral sense with whom they have to deal. I willingly grant that Mossad is more intelligent, superior technologially, more experienced, and, when required, just as ruthless as their foes--hell, they're ruthless enough to spy on us. But, Mossad also played a low-profile, and not particularly commendable, role in the intelligence gathering and analysis that led to the Iraq war. Their intel was wrong: Saddam bluffed the Israelis along with the rest of the world. Yet now they are expected not only to know the status of the Iranian nuclear program, but also to have precise information on its multiple locations, the defensive precautions at each location, the key operatives of the program, etc? This much I do not believe. Nor do I deem it inconceivable that they may find themselves in the position of knowing so little of the program as to render an attack counterproductive. Short of a major nuclear strike, I think the Israelis could delay the program for a few years at best. Given this, perhaps the most probable scenario is an Israeli strike (of limited efficacy) followed by Iranian counterstrikes that would enable the U.S. to sell, for purposes of international PR, its immediate intervention as a defensive measure provoked by Iran. This would give us some diplomatic cover, while ensuring that the Iranian program suffers a more serious setback than the Israelis could inflict themselves. To achieve more than a setback would necessitate regime change at a minimum, possibly a full-blown, old-school occupation (see WWII, multi-year occupations of Germany and Japan).

The Nuclear Santa

It's reassuring to know that Mr. Khan sits comfortably in Pakistan under a sufficiently luxurious "house arrest" while we spend great sums and risk many lives seeking to find a much less dangerous man: Osama bin Laden. Khan is a national hero in Pakistan, which is amazingly stupid of the Pakistanis given that he helped nuclearize one of Pakistan's natural enemies, Iran. But this ring of Khan illustrates the multiplication of proliferation risks engendered when primitive nations acquire WMD knowledge. Once such knowledge begins to spread among the primitives of the world it develops an internal logic which necessarily causes it to infect ever more nations (the domino theory of proliferation). By internal logic I mean that proliferation provides more sources from which to acquire atomic knowledge and thus a greater probability of successful acquisition. Also, the anarchical nature of international relations deters states from settling for an inadequate defense capability: when their neighbors go nuclear they are constrained to follow if possible. Thus, acquisition of the knowledge becomes easier and the incentive to avail oneself of it increases at the same time. Stacking the odds against oneself is the wrong way to gamble.  

 

But, even without Khan it was only a matter of time before the more ambitious nations found a path to this capability. Maybe they would have purchased it from a corrupt scientist or, for the more advanced states, at much greater expense of time and resources, they may have developed it internally with their own scientists and engineers. Despite all this, what should make the nuke threat manageable in the long run is that an effective nuclear strike force cannot be assembled in silence--the snoops will find you out before it's ready to use. Result: deterrence. This is not true of bioweapons. They can be created in secrecy and disseminated in such fashion as to obscure the culpable party. In other words, in the worst case scenario, their development cannot be stopped and their use cannot be deterred. Knowing what is likely to follow, I am content to see the nuclear age, with all its perils and stupidities, drag itself out as long as it likes.

The Pakistani Way

http://economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10424283

 

The book reviewed revisits the Pakistan-nuclear proliferation nexus managed by Mr. Khan. This is one of America's great foreign policy failures in recent times. If the book's interpretation is accurate, it begets some wonder concerning what other activities our political and intelligence leaders may have decided to let pass as they let Khan's network pass for all those years. Presumably we remain vigilant at least with respect to our rivals--but have we allowed other supposed allies to proceed with WMD programs under cover of our willful ignorance? And doesn't such a policy stance severely diminish our moral standing on counter-proliferation issues? Is this a certain reward now on offer for any nation that allies itself with us--however temporarily? It is difficult to conceive of a more foolishly short-term approach. Also, why did we let Khan run unfettered through the 90's? Pakistan was then less important strategically.

But, of course, the book may be wrong; maybe we just didn't know about Khan--wouldn't that be a relief? Then, our only problem would be somehow to correct our monumentally wasteful and incompetent intelligence services.