News from the world of global diplomacy has rightly been swamped with coverage of goings-on in Syria of late, which this past month has seen the resolution of the burgeoning crisis between Damascus and Washington over the use of chemical arms in that country’s civil war. With an American aircraft carrier now leaving the region and the deal struck between the United States, Russia and Syria on chemical weapons disarmament apparently being stuck to, it would seem that another war in the Middle East has, mercifully, been avoided.
What’s more, since the surprise election of Iranian moderate Hassan Rouhani as president of that country this past June, something of a détente between a war-weary United States and an Iran hurt by crippling economic sanctions has broken out. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, for instance, met privately with his Iranian counterpart during ongoing U.N.-sponsored negotiations between the West and Iran this past September.
Those talks, in turn, have apparently led to some progress this month, with Western diplomats reporting that their Iranian counterparts have presented much more “serious” proposals in their recent discussions. Indeed, it has now been reported that Iran has announced it will cease enriching uranium to the 20 percent level, an important step along the way to enriching uranium to bomb-grade material. All to the good, then – it seems that ‘jaw, jaw’ has, for the time being, replaced ‘war, war’ in this most conflict-prone of regions.
Incredulous
Before one starts belting out a mean rendition of Kumbaya and stringing sweet-smelling flowers through soldiers’ hair, it should be understood that not all are pleased by the recent turn of events in U.S.-Iranian relations. In particular, longtime U.S. allies Israel and Saudi Arabia are deeply skeptical of Iranian intentions and have voiced their ire publically at what they see as President Obama’s gullibility. Iran’s peace feelers, they maintain, are but a gambit designed to stave off U.S. military intervention in Syria and buy further time for Tehran to develop a nuclear weapon.
A gambit this could very well be. Indeed, a recent report put out by the Institute for Science and International Security – a nuclear watchdog group headed by the former U.N. Weapons Inspector and Bush Administration critic David Albright – argues that, under a worst-case scenario, Iran has enough fissile material to build a nuclear device, though likely not a deliverable weapon, within one month. While the Israeli press has been quick to play up the ‘one-month’ estimate, a wider reading of the report suggests that it is more likely Iran would have enough fissile material to build a device, though again not a deliverable weapon, in anywhere from six to nine months.
Such is Israeli concern over Iran’s nuclear ambitions that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently stated to Kerry that “no deal is better than a bad deal.” Iran, he said, “must not have nuclear weapons capability.” Israeli officials, who considers an Iranian nuclear weapon an ‘existential’ threat, has indicated that only a very strong disarmament agreement that requires full Iranian disclosure, the elimination of its accumulated fissile material stockpile and the scrapping of its underground nuclear facilities would fully satisfy Israeli demands. If met, it should be noted, any remaining Iranian program would be laid completely bare to a military strike by either the U.S. or Israel, both of which themselves possess nuclear weapons.
What a strike on Iran would look like
So, despite the progress, it remains to be seen whether Iran will convince the West that its intentions are peaceful, that its program is no threat to them or Iran’s neighbors and that a credible deal can be struck. However, assuming that a deal can be struck between the U.S. and Iran, the question remains whether Washington’s allies in Riyadh and Jerusalem will go along with it. Indeed, in many respects either ally could play the spoiler – Saudi Arabia by dramatically upping the pressure it is exerting on Iran in Syria or Israel by directly striking at Iran’s nuclear facilities on its own.
This latter possibility is by far the most serious, as Israel has in the past shown itself quite capable of acting on its own to destroy nuclear developments in what it considers an enemy state. In 1981, for instance, the Israeli Air Force carried out an attack on Saddam Hussein’s nascent nuclear program at the Osirak reactor complex to the southeast of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. Later, in 2007, the IAF once again carried out an anti-nuclear preemptive strike when it destroyed a Syrian nuclear facility that both Western and Israeli intelligence indicated was being used for military purposes.
Hitting Iran’s facilities, however, would be a much more difficult affair. Tehran has located its nuclear facilities as far away from Israeli airspace as possible and further dispersed the various components of its program to different locations, many of which are underground. Even assuming all of Iran’s nuclear sites have been located and targeted by Israeli war planners, the sheer distance involved and the scope and scale of Iran’s dispersed program means an Israeli strike would be no one-off thing conducted in a single day. It would rather likely require strikes over the course of many days, encompassing the full range of Israel’s long-distance strike capabilities.
This, in turn, would put the United States in a difficult position. Would Washington allow its ally to carry out several days of air strikes on Iran as the world watched on TV? Furthermore, would Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia allow Israel to fly through their airspace to hit Iranian targets not just once, but multiple times over a series of days? Iraq and Syria most certainly would not, while Turkey, which has had a frosty relationship with Israel of late, might also not allow Israeli warplanes safe passage.
Saudi Arabia, however, is an open question, and while there is no doubt that the destruction of the Iranian program is top on the list of Riyadh’s priorities, open collusion with Israel might still be a bridge too far for Saudi leaders. Still, given the fact that the Saudis did not condemn Israel’s 2007 strike on Syria and the recent announcement of a growing rift in U.S.-Saudi ties over President Obama’s Mideast policies, greater coordination between Israel and Saudi Arabia to stem what they see as overweening Iranian ambitions cannot be ruled out if both countries perceive Washington is not acting in their interest.
Peace? Don’t bet on it.
And that, as they say, is the rub. The United States and Iran may very well be able to work out an acceptable nuclear deal, but to keep its allies on the proverbial reservation Washington may be forced to strike Iran anyway simply to forestall action by either of its putative Mideast allies that would show up the United States as weak and ineffectual. Washington may very well calculate that it is therefore better to hit Iran, even if a diplomatic solution is possible, than be forced to watch both Israel and Saudi Arabia flout its leadership. Such a demonstration would have dramatic consequences, not least of which for U.S. energy prices – which already have risen as a result of the Saudi decision to potentially shift its friendship away from the U.S. and toward someone else as a consequence of U.S. policy on Syria and Iran.
Who might that someone be? The most obvious candidate would be China, of course. China, after all, doesn’t complain about human-rights abuses, and its growing economy is thirsting for oil even as U.S. demand for foreign crude is on the decline. Throw in China’s growing military ambitions and the benefits of a Riyadh-Beijing axis don’t look so bad at all. Better to pair up with the country that will run the future, the Saudis might reason, than be stuck with an ailing, geriatric Uncle Sam whose hegemonic days are numbered.
Since U.S. policy in the Middle East has above all been about monopolizing what strategic analysts have called the ‘greatest prize on Earth,” since the very beginning, allowing Saudi Arabia to slip out of the U.S. orbit over a few paltry airstrikes seems untenable. If Saudi Arabia and Israel can credibly threaten to strike Iran on their own or, in the case of the Saudis, to credibly turn to a country like China to ensure its security, Washington’s hands will all but be forced, with airstrikes and potentially a larger regional war to follow.
So, sing Kumbaya friends – but let’s not think we’re out of the woods yet. There’s a whole lot of daylight left and way too much oil in the ground for us to be thinking that, yet.