Iran Undeterred
Stanley Kurtz
The Corner
The West’s internal debate on Iran continues to evolve. Despite reports about our plans to bomb Iran, Bill Kristol and Gerard Baker point to important signs that an attack is not about to happen. Meanwhile, liberal hawk Peter Beinart, while not dismissing the idea of an attack, says that hawks have not yet persuasively argued that conventional deterrence will fail with Iran.
Over at Commentary Magazine, Edward Luttwak gives us “Three Reasons Not To Bomb Iran–Yet.” Luttwak speaks to the deterrence question by saying it’s “illogical” to believe “that a regime that feels free to attack American interests in spite of its present military inferiority would somehow become more restrained if it could rely on the protective shield of nuclear weapons.” But I think two of Luttwak’s reasons for not bombing Iran (yet) inadvertently provide an even stronger argument against mere containment. Luttwak paints a powerful picture of the Iranian regime’s weakness. The regime has deeply alienated so many of its own people that it’s worth waiting until the last possible minute to attack, says Luttwak, in case the public overthrows the mullahs first. In fact, Luttwak claims that folks like Ahmadinejad actually want the United States to attack. According to Luttwak, Iran’s wild rhetoric is a desperate attempt provoke an American (or Israeli) strike that will solidify the regime’s position with the Iranian people.
I agree that Ahmadinejad’s continued provocations are hard to make sense of except as a positive invitation to an attack. For Luttwak, the fact that a shaky Iranian regime actually wants an American or Israeli strike is a reason for holding back. But think about what it means that Iran’s defiance is actually intended to provoke an attack.
What if the Islamic revolutionary state gets the bomb, but is not overthrown by the Iranian public?
Then we’ve got a nuclear regime which is chronically shaky, and therefore still desperate to use international adventures to solidify its legitimacy with the public. There may be an internal political logic to the regime’s current plan to provoke an American strike, but that path is also incredibly reckless. The very thing that makes America hold back is the possibility that a seemingly discrete bombing attack on Iran could balloon, against our own desires and intentions, into a full-scale war. Yet Ahmadinejad and the Iranians are willing to play with that kind of fire. That sort of recklessness tells us that Iran is already acting in a way inconsistent with traditional deterrence. Iran is already engaging in the sort of brinksmanship that brought us close to nuclear disaster during the Cold War. Think about it. Iran could quietly seek the bomb, sugar-coating it’s aggressive plans with soothing words designed to play into the West’s already strong desire for appeasement. Instead Iran daily pours oil on the fire, essentially inviting us to attack. Is this the behavior of a responsible future nuclear power? True, Khrushchev pounded his shoe at the U.N. and said “We will bury you.” But he already had the bomb, and so could threaten with impunity. Besides Khrushchev is the guy who almost pushed us over the nuclear brink in Cuba.
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