Escalation

By way of Norm I’ve come across this article by Gershom Goremberg in which he argues against the use of force against Iran to stop it from acquiring nuclear weapons.  The piece is structured around five questions one of which is,

Can Israel destroy the Iranian nuclear program?

He suggests that the answer is ‘no’ and he’s probably right about that. The Israelis don’t have the resources for the sustained bombing campaign that this would require. However, it’s difficult to imagine that they don’t have the resources and ingenuity to cause it significant damage and raise the subsequent costs of continuing with it for the Iranians.

He then says,

The United States has much greater airpower. However, Hebrew University political scientist Yehezkel Dror, a strategic expert of the realpolitik school, wrote this week in the daily Yediot Aharonot that the “probability is very low” that either a U.S. or Israeli operation would force Iran to abandon its nuclear program.

This is quite right but it’s a different question.  Short of conquering and and permanently garrisoning Iran there’s no way the United States or anyone else can make it abandon its nuclear programme. What the United States most certainly has is the resources to  mount a sustained bombing campaign that would put Iran’s programme years and years behind schedule.

The main argument against attacking Iran are, therefore, not related to its feasability but to its likely reaction to such an attack and, though Goremeberg mentions some of them in the article, it’s in this blog post that he gets to one of the key ones; that a conventional attack by Israel might lead to an escalation which would end with Jerusalem launching a nuclear strike on Iran, something that might lead to the deaths of millions.

The question also arises as to whether allowing a regime like Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, and without the use of force acquire them they will, isn’t also a racing certainty to lead to their use. It’s often argued that India, Pakistan and Israel have nuclear weapons and nothing too terrible has happened as a result. The difference in this case is that none of the countries mentioned above have repeatedly threatened to wipe any of their neighbours off the face of the earth.