WASHINGTON - The Barack Obama administration's declaration in its Nuclear
Posture Review (NPR) that it is reserving the right to use nuclear weapons
against Iran represents a new element in a strategy of persuading Tehran that
an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites is a serious possibility if Iran
does not bow to the demand that it cease uranium enrichment.
Although administration officials have carefully refrained from drawing any
direct connection between the new nuclear option and the Israeli threat, the
NPR broadens the range of
contingencies in which nuclear weapons might play a role so as to include an
Iranian military response to an Israeli attack.
A war involving Iran that begins with an Israeli attack is the only plausible
scenario that would fit the category of contingencies in the document.
The NPT describes the role of US nuclear weapons in those contingencies as a
"deterrent". A strategy of exploiting the Israeli threat to attack Iran would
seek to deter an Iranian response to such an attack and thus make it more
plausible.
The new nuclear option on Iran has emerged after a series of public statements
over the past year by senior officials, including Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden, suggesting the administration would
tolerate an Israeli option.
Both the Bill Clinton and George W Bush administrations had said the United
States "reserves the right" to respond with nuclear weapons to the use of
chemical and biological weapons (CBWs) in an attack on US forces or its
"friends" or "allies".
A contingency plan called CONPLAN 8022-02, adopted in November 2003, aimed at
destroying an adversary's nuclear weapons or nuclear facilities. It included
the option of using earth-penetrating nuclear weapons to destroy deeply buried
facilities.
But the new NPR refers to "a narrow range of contingencies in which US nuclear
weapons may still play a role in deterring a conventional or CBW attack against
the US or its allies or partners".
That language appears to suggest that the nuclear option would deter an Iranian
conventional retaliation against Israel or US military targets in the region in
the event of an Israeli air attack on Iran.
Both Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates made statements implicitly
linking the new nuclear declaration to the broader problem of trying to force
Iran to bow international demands on the nuclear issue.
Interviewed by CBS News on April 1, Obama was asked what made him think
sanctions would work this time. After referring to Iran's isolation, which he
said would eventually "have an effect on their economy", Obama made an obvious
allusion to military options. "Now, you know, I have said before that we don't
take any options off the table," said Obama, "and we're gonna continue to
ratchet up the pressure and examine how they respond".
In the past, references to options being on or off the table were used to refer
to the option of a conventional US air attack. In this case, however, Obama was
clearly referring to the announcement of the nuclear option in the NPR that he
knew was coming on April 6 as a way to "ratchet up the pressure" on Iran.
Asked in an interview with the New York Times on April 5 whether he believed
Israel would decide to attack Iran if it "stays on the current course", Obama
refused to "speculate on Israeli decision-making".
But he said,"[W]e want to send a very strong message both through sanctions,
through the articulation of the Nuclear Posture Review, through the nuclear
summit that I'm going to be hosting, and through the NPT review conference
that's going to be coming up, that the international community is serious about
Iran facing consequences if it doesn't change its behavior."
Gates was even more pointed in highlighting what he called the "message for
Iran" in his April 6 news briefing on the NPR, saying that "all options are on
the table in terms of how we deal with you".
It was not the intention of the original drafters of the NPR within the State
Department to issue a new threat to Iran, according to a source who was briefed
on the NPR earlier this month. But the official involved in the drafting
acknowledged that Gates and Obama had seized on the language to suggest that
the United States now had a stronger hand in dealing with Iran, according to
the source.
The White House Coordinator for weapons of mass destruction, counter-terrorism
and arms control is Gary Samore, who had had publicly discussed the need to
exploit Iranian fear of an Israeli attack to gain diplomatic leverage over
Tehran before joining the Obama administration.
At a forum at Harvard's Kennedy Institute in September 2008, Samore had said
that the next administration would not want to "act in a way that precludes" an
Israeli attack on Iran, "because we're using the threat as a political
instrument".
Samore was asked during the question and answer session after a speech at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington last Wednesday whether
he expected Iran to believe that the US would use nuclear weapons against Iran
if it retaliated with conventional weapons against an Israeli attack on Iran.
Samore ignored the question in answering.
As part of an apparent effort to make Iran uncertain about an Israeli attack, a
series of public statements by US senior officials over the past year suggested
that the US would do nothing to prevent such an Israeli attack. However, the
Obama administration has conveyed to the Israeli government privately that it
strongly opposes any Israeli attack on Iran, according to reports in the
Israeli press.
A former senior US intelligence officer on Iran believes the nuclear option is
likely to cause Iran to go farther in the direction of nuclear weapons rather
than to give in. In an e-mail to Inter Press Service, Paul Pillar, who was the
national intelligence officer for Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005,
said Iranian officials probably saw the new nuclear option as "another
manifestation of US hostility toward Iran".
The perception of a US threat to Iran "provides one of the principal incentives
for Iranians to develop their own nuclear weapons", said Pillar.
Pillar said Iranians "may also see the doctrine as providing cover for an
Israeli strike by serving as a deterrent against Iranian retaliation for such a
strike".
Other political-military analysts cast doubt on the credibility of the
announced nuclear option against Iran.
Morton Halperin, who was director of Policy Planning in the State Department in
the Clinton administration, told IPS, "I don't think it's credible at all. I
don't think the administration thinks it's credible. But I think as a political
matter, to have taken it off the table would have been politically untenable."
Jim Walsh of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Security Studies
Program, who has had many contacts with Iranian leaders and national security
officials in recent years, told IPS the US "is not going to use nuclear weapons
against Iran" and that it is "foolish" to suggest that "all options are on the
table".
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing
in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book,
Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was
published in 2006.
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