JIHADIST END OF THE WORLD IMAGININGS
PROLOGUE TO NUCLEAR WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST?
26 January 2010
Louis René Beres
Professor of International Law
Department of Political Science
Purdue University
West Lafayette IN 47907
USA
TEL 765/494-4189
FAX 765/494-0833
E MAIL lberes@purdue.edu
C’est beau, n’est-ce pas, la fin du monde? (“It is beautiful, isn’t it, the end of the world?”)
Jean Giraudoux, Sodome et Gomorrhe
There is a widely unrecognized but still-meaningful irony in the continuing saga of Iranian nuclearization. From the standpoint of President Ahmadinejad and his clerical masters in Tehran , any prospect of hastening the Shiite apocalypse should naturally be welcomed. In the United States and Israel , on the other hand, any conscious encouragement of a Final Battle between "Good" and "Evil" must be strenuously rejected.
Whatever Scriptural expectations of End Times may be found embedded in Judaism and Christianity, and however seriously they may be accepted among particular American and Israeli populations, these expressly apocalyptic visions are always rejected as plausible policy options.
This is as it should be. There exists, among all the major national players in the Iran nuclear drama, a more or less acceptable element of eschatology. But this potentially tragic drama is fashioned out of starkly polar opposites. The all-consuming apocalyptic violence that could seem altogether positive and purifying in Tehran , would appear plainly negative and even grievously defiling in both Washington and Jerusalem .
To avoid further acquiescence in the “fate” planned for them in Tehran (economic sanctions clearly and predictably have had no remedial effect on President Ahmadinejad’s nuclear decisional calculus), Israel and/or the United States may ultimately have to take some form of appropriate military action. It is, however, already very late for any effective preemption against relevant Iranian nuclear assets and infrastructures. It is also very unlikely (perhaps even inconceivable) that now Nobel Peace laureate, U.S. President Barack Obama, would display the extraordinary will needed to undertake such a problematic and controversial (albeit, possibly law-enforcing and life-saving) operation.
President Obama does hint oddly and obliquely at a regrettable military remedy, reprisal, but it is one that could only be ex post. Retaliation, unlike preemption, can come only after the fact. It cannot prevent nuclear aggression; it can merely promise (more or less persuasively) some forms of punishment.
In the case of Ahmadinejad’s Iran , preemption represents a threat that could be disregarded entirely in deference to far more deeply felt religious obligations. Here, acting as the individual suicide bomber in macrocosm, Iran would offer itself as an eager national Shahada, ready and willing to accept a collective Death for Allah. As expressed in the epigraph by the dramatist Jean Giraudoux, the imagined end of the world, for some, can be “terribly beautiful.”
Sometimes an oxymoron may have a proper place, even in cold and hard matters of military strategy. In this connection, few Iran watchers have paid any serious attention to an utterly critical point: Nuclear deterrence can exist only between fully rational adversaries – that is, between enemies who share an overriding commitment to collective self-preservation. For Israel and/or the United States , any standoff with an already nuclear Iran could thus be very different from what once obtained between America and the Soviet Union . This would not be your father’s Cold War.
Who should conduct a preemptive attack against selected Iranian hard targets if all else fails? Naturally, the political and operational difficulties for Israel would be much greater than for the United States. Yet, for Israel to do nothing substantial to defend itself from an openly existential assault – to allow a potentially apocalyptic Islamic regime to “go nuclear” – could be suicidal.
Echoing the seventeenth-century English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, no state, wrote Thomas Jefferson, ever has the right of national suicide. Rather, every state’s first obligation is always the assurance of protection. Innocent life must be preserved. When Iranian leaders openly proclaim belief in the Shiite apocalypse, a series of final battles presumed indispensable for transforming the profane “world of war” into the sacred “world of Islam,” very far-reaching and possibly problematic measures of self-defense must immediately be considered.
Might “justice” have another face in this particular strategic matter? Some would argue indignantly against any American and/or Israeli preemption on the grounds of a presumed need for nuclear “equity.” Israel already has nuclear weapons, goes this disingenuous argument.
Why, then, should Iran be treated differently? International law speaks repeatedly of “sovereign equality.” Isn’t there an evident lack of “fairness” in denying to Iran what has tacitly been allowed to Israel ?
Consider this: Israel 's nuclear forces remain deliberately ambiguous and undeclared. Certainly, they have never been brandished in a threatening fashion by Israel 's civilian or military leaders. Nor does Israel ever call for wiping any other state “off the map.”
Israel 's nuclear weapons exist only to protect the Jewish state from extraordinary forms of aggression. Understandably, this includes the prevention of another Jewish genocide and related crimes against humanity.
Israel 's nuclear deterrent force would never be used except in defensive reprisal for massive enemy first strikes. In practice, this now means essentially Iranian attacks involving nuclear and/or certain biological weapons. For the time being, none of Israel 's enemies is nuclear, but – naturally - this could change.
If it should actually have to face nuclear enemies one day, a not-improbable scenario, Israel could choose to rely upon its own nuclear weapons to reduce the risks of unconventional war. But such reliance would make strategic sense only insofar as the newly-nuclear enemy state(s) would (1) remain rational; and (2) remain convinced that Israel would retaliate with nuclear weapons if attacked with nuclear and/or devastating biological weapons.
For Israel and its also imperiled U.S. ally (let’s not forget that American military power is now extremely stretched and limited), there would be very complex problems to solve if an enemy state such as Iran were ultimately permitted to "go nuclear." These problems would undermine the conceptually neat but decidedly unrealistic notion of any balanced nuclear deterrence in the region, a notion now gaining increasing popularity in both Washington and Jerusalem . The Middle East could not sustain the comforting equilibrium that had once characterized U.S.-Soviet relations. Whether for reasons of miscalculation, accident, unauthorized capacity to fire, outright irrationality or the presumed imperatives of "Jihad," an enemy state in this fevered neighborhood could conceivably opt to launch a nuclear first-strike against Israel in spite of Israel ’s own obvious and forseeably secure nuclear capability. In short, a Cold War type of “Mutual Assured Destruction” (a so-called “balance of terror”) could not exist in the present Middle East .
After absorbing any enemy nuclear aggression, Israel would certainly respond with a nuclear retaliatory strike. Although nothing is publicly known about Israel 's precise targeting doctrine, such a reprisal would likely be launched against the aggressor's capital city and/or against similarly high-value urban targets. There would be absolutely no assurances, in response to this sort of aggression, that Israel would limit itself to striking back against exclusively military targets. This point should not be lost on the authoritative decision makers in Tehran .
What if enemy first strikes were to involve "only" chemical and/or "minor" biological weapons? In this case, Israel might still launch a presumptively proportionate nuclear reprisal, but this would depend largely upon Israel 's calculated expectations of follow-on aggression, and on its associated determinations of comparative damage-limitation. Should Israel absorb a massive conventional first-strike, a nuclear retaliation could not necessarily be ruled out. This is plausible if: (1) the aggressor were perceived to hold nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction in reserve; and/or (2) Israel's leaders were to believe that non-nuclear retaliations could not prevent national annihilation. Recognizing Israel 's exceptionally small size, the calculated threshold of existential harms would be determinably lower than Israel ’s total physical devastation.
Facing imminent existential attacks, Israel, even if it had delayed too long, could still decide to preempt enemy aggression with conventional forces. The targeted state's response would then determine Israel 's subsequent moves. If this response were in any way nuclear, Israel would undertake nuclear counter-retaliation.
If this enemy retaliation were to involve chemical and/or biological weapons, Israel might also plan to take a quantum escalatory initiative. This sort of initiative is known in military parlance as "escalation dominance.” It could be necessary (even indispensable) to Israel ’s preservation of intra-war deterrence. Here we need to bear in mind that deterrence does not necessarily cease functioning immediately upon the commencement of hostilities. It can continue to play a different but still more or less productive role during the ensuing conflict.
If an enemy state's response to an Israeli preemption were limited to hard-target conventional strikes, it is improbable that Israel would resort to nuclear counter-retaliation. But if the enemy state's conventional retaliation were an all-out strike directed toward Israel 's civilian populations as well as to Israeli military targets, an Israeli nuclear counter-retaliation could not be excluded. Such a counter-retaliation could be ruled out only if the enemy state's conventional retaliations were entirely proportionate to Israel 's preemption; confined entirely to Israeli military targets; circumscribed by the legal limits of "military necessity"; and accompanied by explicit and verifiable assurances of no further escalation.
It is almost inconceivable that Israel would ever decide to preempt any enemy state aggression with a nuclear defensive strike. While particular circumstances could arise where such a defensive strike would be completely rational, and also be entirely lawful according to the 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (which refused to prohibit certain residual resorts to nuclear weapons that are deemed essential to national survival), it is unreasonable that Israel would ever permit itself to reach such all-or-nothing circumstances. Also worth mentioning is that Israel remains pledged to the “purity of arms” (Tohar HaNeshek), and to incomparably strict compliance with humanitarian international law, especially the minimization of collateral (non-combatant) harms.
An Israeli nuclear preemption is highly improbable, and could conceivably be expected only if: (1) Israel’s enemy or enemies had unexpectedly acquired nuclear or other unconventional weapons presumed capable of destroying the Jewish State; (2) this enemy state had been forthright that its genocidal intentions paralleled its capabilities; (3) this state was reliably believed ready to begin a final countdown-to-launch; and (4) Israel believed that non-nuclear preemptions could not possibly achieve levels of damage-limitation consistent with its own national survival. To reject altogether this particular argument on Israeli nuclear preemption as impossible or implausible, however, would require an antecedent assumption that national self-preservation is not Israel ’s highest priority. This assumption would be incorrect.
The primary point of Israel's nuclear forces must always be deterrence ex ante, not preemption or reprisal ex post. If, however, nuclear weapons should ever be introduced into a conflict between Israel and one or more of the several states that still wish to destroy it, some form of nuclear war fighting could ensue. This would be the case so long as: (a) enemy state first-strikes against Israel would not destroy the Jewish State's second-strike nuclear capability; (b) enemy state retaliations for Israeli conventional preemption would not destroy Israel's nuclear counter-retaliatory capability; (c) Israeli preemptive strikes involving nuclear weapons would not destroy enemy state second-strike nuclear capabilities; and (d) Israeli retaliation for enemy state conventional first-strikes would not destroy enemy state nuclear counter-retaliatory capability.
From the standpoint of protecting its security and survival, this means that Israel should now take prompt and immediate steps to ensure the likelihood of (a) and (b) above, and the unlikelihood of (c) and (d). As was clarified by Project Daniel’s final report, Israel’s Strategic Future, it is always in Israel’s interest to avoid nuclear war fighting wherever possible.
For Israel , both nuclear and non-nuclear preemptions of enemy unconventional aggressions could lead to nuclear exchanges. This would depend, in part, upon the effectiveness and breadth of Israeli targeting, the surviving number of enemy nuclear weapons, and the willingness of enemy leaders to risk Israeli nuclear counter-retaliations. Significantly, the likelihood of nuclear exchanges would be greatest where potential state aggressors were allowed to deploy ever-larger numbers of certain unconventional weapons without eliciting appropriate and effective Israeli preemptions. This point is frequently overlooked by all those who would oppose any pertinent forms of anticipatory self-defense by Israel .
Should any enemy nuclear deployments be allowed, Israel could then forfeit the non-nuclear preemption option. Its only remaining alternatives to nuclear preemption would then be: (1) a no-longer viable conventional preemption; or (2) a decision to do nothing, thereby relying for security on the increasingly doubtful logic of nuclear deterrence, and the always inherently limited protections of ballistic missile defense. This means that the risks of an Israeli nuclear preemption, of nuclear exchanges with an enemy state, and of enemy nuclear first strikes could all still be reduced by certain Israeli non-nuclear preemptions.
While still completely unrecognized in Washington, there is no greater power in world politics than the power over death. In this connection, the idea of an apocalypse figures scripturally in both Judaism and Christianity, but it very likely appeared for the very first time among the Zoroastrians in ancient Persia . This is basically the same region as modern day Iran .
For President Ahmadinejad, still deeply concerned with power over death, there would be recognizably great beauty in transforming the “World of War” into the “World of Islam.” Indeed, this observation is incontestable. For this Iranian president, and more importantly, for his clerical masters, any “end of the world” struggle spawned by such transformation could enticingly open the way, for believers, to a life everlasting. It should come as no surprise, then, that these Iranian decision-makers might still uncover a terrible beauty in their end-of-the-world imaginings.
LOUIS RENÉ BERES was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971), and is the author of many major books and articles dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war, including recent contributions to International Security (Harvard); NATIV (Israel/Hebrew); Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs (Israel/English); Parameters (The Journal of the US Army War College); The Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law and International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. Some of his earlier writings on both strategic and jurisprudential matters appeared in such journals as World Politics (Princeton); Strategic Review; Special Warfare (DoD); Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; Israel Affairs; Counterterrorism and Security International; Policy Sciences and Armed Forces and Society. Professor Beres was Chair of Project Daniel, which submitted its then-confidential final report on ISRAEL'S STRATEGIC FUTURE to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on January 16, 2003 .
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