The Iran Conundrum

As the American war in Iraq has steadily deteriorated and sectarian violence has worsened, the Bush administration has struggled incoherently with the pressing question of how to deal with Iran and its assumed secret policy of developing a nuclear-weapons capability. Until recently the prevailing analysis promoted by Vice President Dick Cheney, neoconservative ideologues, and pro-Israeli lobbying groups in Washington was that regime change in Tehran was necessary and the destruction of nuclear infrastructure in Iran imperative. Neoconservatives, arguing that the United States is involved in a worldwide struggle with Islamists, assert that before leaving office the Bush administration needs to deal with Iran's nuclear program. The Israelis, who have been subjected to extremist threats from Tehran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have supported both overt and covert action to influence the American leadership to deal vigorously with Iran, with the use of a major bombing campaign if necessary. Israel has a vital interest in trying to block an Iranian nuclear-weapons capability, although such a program would not be an existential threat to an Israel that has overwhelming nuclear-weapons capability itself. This is likely to be the case far into the future even if Iran were ultimately successful in acquiring nuclear-weapons technology and a missile capability to deliver the bombs. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has said that in a nuclear exchange in the region Israel could be vulnerable to an Iranian strike, but so would any Iranian or Arab attacker, at least through the year 2020. Iran, indeed, would be at a major disadvantage in any nuclear confrontation, because Israeli delivery systems are much more sophisticated and Iran has centered its military and political leadership in Tehran. But prominent figures who served in the Bush administration, such as the former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, have argued vociferously and often that Iran should be attacked before it develops nuclear weapons. Bolton's views are privately shared by some White House officials and broadly shared throughout the think tanks that are the safe havens of neoconservative ideology.

US military contingency planning has been prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff for an extensive bombing campaign against nuclear targets in Iran, although no command decision to initiate military action has been made by the president. But the military was instructed to be prepared in the event of a future command decision and events initiated by Iran in the Persian Gulf against US forces that would precipitate war. The plan calls for the initiation of hostilities within twelve hours of a presidential decision. Those plans reportedly assume some 150 or more separate targets in Iran that would be bombed by two carrier groups patrolling in the Persian Gulf. A third carrier would be available for a few weeks before relieving one of the groups. Intelligence collection has been accelerated to identify nuclear-related sites in Iran, and allied services were asked to share Iran-related intelligence information. American unilateral intelligence activities on the ground are underway to determine and confirm targeting sites in Iran. Despite all these efforts, there remains a dearth of specific targeting information on buried and hardened sites outside the main nuclear facilities of Natanz. Unfortunately, the US need for better intelligence has opened the door for biased information from countries and individuals that have an interest in promoting hostility with Iran. There has also been a flood of unreliable information from Iranian exiles and from well-known intelligence fabricators, such as the infamous Manucher Ghorbanifar. The latter, a figure resurrected from an infamous role during the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s and labeled a charlatan by the Central Intelligence Agency, is still purveying dubious information to the Bush administration through naïve intermediaries. The National Council of Resistance, based in Paris, has been a major source of information on Iran, some of which contained some elements of truth, but most of it unreliable and uncertain. The role of Iranian dissidents today appears analogous to the influence Iraqi oppositionists to Saddam Hussein exerted on the White House prior to the invasion of...