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Iran's nuke potential bedevils
Israel
By Erich Marquardt
In
the Middle East, Israel is the only state that has
developed and acquired nuclear weapons. Israel's nuclear
program dates back to 1952 with the creation of the
Israeli Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC). With the
assistance of France, Israeli and French technicians
secretly created a 24-megawatt reactor at Dimona, in
southern Israel, in the Negev desert.
Israel was
finally prodded by France to make this nuclear plant
public, which it did under the guise of creating
peaceful nuclear energy. When US weapons inspectors
visited the Dimona reactor in the 1960s, they were
unable to detect whether Israel was clandestinely
developing nuclear weapons. According to the Federation
of American Scientists, this was largely due to the
massive secrecy employed by the Israelis, such as
installing "false control room panels and [placing]
brick over elevators and hallways that accessed certain
areas of the facility".
The primary reason for
Israel's nuclear weapons program was to protect the
small state's survival from more powerful Middle Eastern
states. Ernst David Bergmann, the first chairman of the
IAEC, argued that Israel needed to become nuclear-armed
in order to ensure "that we shall never again be led as
lambs to the slaughter". Indeed, during the 1967 Six Day
War, when it is believed Israel had two nuclear bombs,
the Federation of American Scientists mentions that
Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol ordered the country's
two nuclear weapons to be armed in case an offensive
nuclear attack became necessary. Furthermore, and most
revealing as to why Israel sought nuclear weapons, in
the Yom Kippur War in 1973, when Egypt and Syria
attacked Israeli positions in the Sinai and the Golan
Heights, the Federation of American Scientists claims
that the Israeli leadership assembled 13 20-kiloton
atomic bombs for use in case the country came close to
defeat.
As seen from the examples of the 1967
and 1973 wars, Israel's nuclear-weapons program was
designed as a last-recourse military option. If Israel
were to face defeat from surrounding states, it could
lash out with its nuclear arsenal and turn the tide of a
war in its favor. This survival tactic is why Israel has
been adamant about preventing its regional rivals from
also becoming nuclear-armed. If Israel faced a war with
a nuclear-armed state, and found itself losing the
conflict, it would be far too risky to launch a nuclear
attack against a nuclear-armed rival; for if Israel were
to launch a nuclear attack against another nuclear-armed
state, it would certainly face massive nuclear
retaliation. Massive nuclear retaliation against a state
as small as Israel could result in enormous casualties
too intense for the state to handle or, quite simply,
eradication.
Yet since the 1973 war, Israel has
found itself growing in power while its enemies have
become weaker. The major conflict between Iran and Iraq
in the 1980s helped to diminish those two states' power,
which indirectly acted in the interests of Israel.
Therefore, in recent years, rather than being a
last-recourse military option, Israel's nuclear
capability has given it foreign-policy leverage to take
drastic military action against its neighbors. The most
serious such incident took place on June 6, 1982, when
Israeli troops invaded Lebanon in an attempt to destroy
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) military
strongholds in addition to bringing the thriving capital
city Beirut under siege. Neighboring states were unable
to compete with Israel's military strength at the time,
and also could not use nuclear blackmail to try to
curtail Israel's foreign-policy objectives.
Because of Israel's nuclear superiority, Middle
Eastern rival states have attempted to negate Israel's
nuclear leverage by developing nuclear weapons of their
own. The most memorable such attempt was followed by the
Ba'ath Party in Iraq, in which Baghdad began to acquire
nuclear technology in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1981, when
Baghdad was close to completing a nuclear reactor at
Osirak, Israel decided to launch a military strike to
destroy this reactor. While Israel was aware that even
if Baghdad were to acquire nuclear weapons they would
most likely not be used against Israel, the leadership
in Jerusalem did not want to lose their nuclear
superiority and thus lose some of their foreign-policy
leverage in the region. Israel also wanted to prevent a
future scenario in which Israel and Iraq were engaged in
a conflict and Israel could not exercise its
last-recourse military option: launching a nuclear
attack on Iraq to turn the tide of the war in its favor.
After Israel attacked the Osirak reactor,
Baghdad recognized its own insecurity. The leadership in
Baghdad understood that they needed a powerful
nuclear-weapons program in order to deter future Israeli
attempts to limit Iraq's power. Comprehending this
reality, Baghdad began to escalate its nuclear-weapons
program in the hopes of quickly being able to develop a
nuclear deterrent to prevent future Israeli attacks.
However, after Iraq invaded Kuwait and
demonstrated the growing power of the Iraqi state, the
United States feared that Iraq could cause instability
in the Middle East - both politically and economically.
The administration of president George H W Bush at the
time feared that it had a small window of opportunity to
weaken the Iraqi government before Baghdad was able to
acquire a nuclear deterrent. The first Bush
administration translated its worry into the Gulf War,
which successfully weakened the government of Iraqi
president Saddam Hussein. In addition, by engineering
some of the toughest sanctions ever implemented, the
first Bush administration and its successor, that of
president Bill Clinton, were able to use the United
Nations to keep Iraq weak and vulnerable. Indeed, all
evidence as of now reveals that Baghdad never was able
truly to rejuvenate its nuclear-weapons program.
Operation Desert Storm and the subsequent
Operation Iraqi Freedom worked in Israel's favor as both
military campaigns diminished the power of a rival
Middle Eastern state. With Iraq now weak and standing no
threat to Israeli foreign policy, the next powerful and
potential rival to Israel's supremacy in the Middle East
is Iran. Tehran is well aware of Iraq's failure to
prevent both Israel and the United States from
attacking, and therefore will attempt to build up its
military-defense capabilities to a point where it is
able to deter attack from both Israel and the US. This
can be clearly seen in Iran's recent moves toward
developing peaceful nuclear energy, which is a guise for
future development of nuclear arms in the same way it
was for Israel in the 1960s.
While Israel is
aware of this threat, it does not have the same military
options available in Iran as it had in Iraq. For one,
Israel learned from its Osirak attack that a simple
air-power mission cannot destroy a country's
nuclear-weapons program. The attack on the Osirak
reactor failed to destroy Iraq's other nuclear
facilities; most important, the attack only hastened the
pace of Baghdad's attempt to develop nuclear arms. The
Iranians have dispersed their nuclear-development
facilities throughout the country, making it difficult
for Israel to deal a devastating blow to the Iranian
nuclear program. Also, Iran's physical relation to
Israel is important. While Iraq lies close to Israel's
borders, Iran is situated on Iraq's eastern border, far
from the state of Israel. A military strike by Israel
similar to the one launched against the Osirak reactor
would involve greater risks because of the distance to
and size of Iran and would also have a lower success
ratio.
Because of these facts, Israel has been
pushing to get the international community involved in
inspecting Iran's nuclear facilities. While Iran has
been compliant with inspections thus far, Israel wants
continued pressure on the Islamic Republic to decrease
its possibility of developing nuclear arms. This
strategy may not be altogether successful. Tehran can
continue to work with the international community while
also increasing its knowledge and potential of
developing and creating nuclear arms. It is unlikely
that the international community will take strong action
against Iran even if it suspects the country is
developing nuclear weapons. It would take interference
and pressure by the United States for this to occur.
With this in mind, Israel has also been lobbying
its ideological allies in the current US administration
of President George W Bush, such as Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. It is Israel's hope that the
United States will put pressure on Iran similar to the
way the US put pressure on Iraq. In fact, if a "regime
change" were to occur in Iran and the country would
become as weak as Iraq now is, it would also serve in
Israel's interests.
Unfortunately for the
leadership in Jerusalem, foreign-policy hawks in the
Bush administration linked with Israeli hawks have lost
clout in recent weeks because of the aftermath of the
war in Iraq. In addition to being incorrect thus far
regarding its accusations of Iraq's WMD (weapons of mass
destruction) program, the Bush administration also
failed to prepare for the reconstruction efforts in
Iraq. An unexpected number of US military casualties,
the failure to bring order and control to the country,
and the inability to provide basic services to the Iraqi
people such as electricity and water have all acted as a
public relations disaster for the Bush administration.
These mistakes have led to a weakening of support for
the administration at home, making it more difficult for
it to push through its more radical foreign-policy
objectives, such as "reshaping" the Middle East. In
addition, with the failure to provide stability in Iraq,
Washington is well aware that if it repeats the Baghdad
model in Tehran, it could result in the same kind of
instability seen in Iraq and thus deal a devastating
blow to Middle Eastern oil output.
Therefore,
Israel finds itself in a difficult position. While it is
more comfortable now that Saddam Hussein is out of Iraq
and the country is under US occupation, it is now
concerned with the potentially powerful state of Iran.
Unable to rely on the international community to further
Israel's security needs, and possibly unable to rely on
the United States, Israeli leaders will have to decide
what actions to take in order to eliminate all major
threats to their regional military and nuclear
superiority. If Israel finds itself in a desperate
situation - for example, in mid-2004 before the main
Iranian reactor at Bushehr becomes operational and the
environmental risk of an attack would become too great -
it may decide to risk the political and military hazards
of launching another preventive strike on a potential
rival Middle Eastern power.
Published with
permission of the Power and Interest News Report,
an analysis-based publication that seeks to provide
insight into various conflicts, regions and points of
interest around the globe. All comments should be
directed to content@pinr.comReport.
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