François Heisbourg is chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London and special advisor to the Fon-
dation pour la Recherche Stratégique. He is the author, most recently, of L’Iran: Le Choix des Armes? (Stock Paris, 2007).
Five Days in December
The Iran Crisis 25 Years Hence
François Heisbourg
This author is old enough to remember the
dread-laden days of the Cuban missile crisis
with all of the vividness of a fear-struck
13-year-old living just a few hundred yards
from the prospective ground-zero at 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue. As we guessed at the
time, and what we now know with even
more chilling retrospective clarity, is that
things could have turned out very nastily
indeed. There are such turning points in
history, where radically different long-term
outcomes of an earth-shaping (or shattering)
import are all entirely possible during a
highly compressed timeframe in which the
fate of mankind rests on the decisions of a
limited cast of players—and on chance.
Along with the Cuban missile crisis,
Britain’s positive choices at the end of May
1940 and Europe’s negative decisions in
July 1914 belong to this rare category.
Even decades after these moments of deci-
sion, historians have not ceased to dissect
the circumstances under which the fate of
humanity was sealed.
So it was to be for the historians of
2033, as they reconsidered the Iranian crisis
of a quarter of a century before, as new
archival material became available and as
aging witnesses decided to rid themselves
of the burden of long-held secrets before
meeting their maker. There reigned some-
thing of the atmosphere which prevailed at
© 2008 World Policy Institute
the end of the Cold War, when our under-
standing of the Cuban missile crisis was
sharpened by new knowledge. Indeed, it was
only in 1990, close to thirty years after the
events, that Americans received confirma-
tion that the Soviets had already deployed
operational battlefield nuclear weapons in
Cuba, held under the full authority of the
local Russian commander. In other words,
President John F. Kennedy and his senior
advisors had been seriously considering op-
tions—such as conventional bombing and
the invasion of Cuba, unaware that they had
the potential for provoking an immediate
atomic response, drawing Washington and
Moscow into a global nuclear war. The state
of American intelligence about a smallish is-
land lying 90 miles off the coast of Florida
appeared, in retrospect, to have been dismal-
ly insufficient.
A Close Look Back at 2008
There was much excitement in the world of
historians and political scientists when, in
2033, Iran indicated that it would release
hitherto classified material. This came along
with the announcement of the forthcoming
memoirs of several of the key actors of
2008–09: Barack Obama (born 1961), Sarah
Palin (born 1964), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
(born 1956), Benjamin Netanyahu (born
1949). All felt the urge to write-and-tell.
13
Historians were not disappointed. The new
material re-molded the pre-existing under-
standing of the momentous events 25 years
earlier. Nor were they surprised by the new-
ly visible degree of ignorance which had
characterized decision-making in 2008–09.
Iran, a country three times the size of Texas,
with twice the population of California and
a famously opaque and fractious decision-
making process, made 1962 Cuba and its
much-studied Soviet protector look like
models of transparency.
In the case of the Iran crisis, starkly dif-
ferent outcomes were possible in 2008–09:
political judgment (good or bad, tried or
untried), intelligence (sometimes good,
sometimes bad, but always patchy), personal
character of the decision-makers, and just
plain luck could have led to very different
alternative futures. In the most basic sense,
there are three forms of behavior in dealing
with a crisis: confrontation, cooperation, or
flight. It is around these that one can build
three illustrative scenarios, although we
know with the hindsight of 2033, the basic
reasons why two of these alternative futures
didn’t occur. But nothing was obvious in
December 2008.
In returning to these events, a few
caveats are in order. One is that behavior
can be a mix of attitudes: while Kennedy
confronted Khrushchev with the naval quar-
antine of Cuba, he accepted a behind-the-
scenes deal “offering” to dismantle obsolete
American intermediate-range missiles based
in Turkey as a face-saving device. Another
caveat is a great historical constant—the law
of unintended consequences. Apparent suc-
cess in military operations does not always
lead to the intended political and strategic
consequences, as the Baghdad-bound neo-
conservatives discovered after the fall of Sad-
dam Hussein. The three scenarios laid out
here should therefore be read bearing in
mind the inherently unpredictable nature of
the ex post facto, longer-term outcomes.
14
But that is a limitation which is no different
than that which attaches to the understand-
ing of historical events as well. People take
decisions at a given moment on the basis of
their knowledge at the time.
The Five Day Meeting
The world’s nuclear future was to be decided
at what is now, in 2033, generally known as
the “Five Days in December.”
The season’s first snowstorm hit Wash-
ington, DC, hard on Sunday, December 21,
2008. Twelve inches of heavy snow had
transformed the nation’s capital into a win-
ter wonderland of closed streets and closed
airports. A hard overnight frost completed
the disaster. On Monday morning, all “non-
essential” federal personnel had been urged
to stay home, while those deemed to be in-
dispensable spent most of the day clearing
their driveways and waiting for the snow-
plows to show up. However, a combination
of helicopters and four-wheel drives some-
how managed, at first light, to bring to-
gether the participants of a “principals
meeting” at the National Security Council’s
war-room in the West Wing of the White
House. There was only one item on the
agenda: how to deal with Iran’s nuclear
ambitions.
At the time, the general public was un-
aware of the crisis management marathon.
The outgoing and in-coming presidents and
other principals occasionally appeared on
television with their families, giving an im-
pression of upbeat Yuletide normality. In it-
self, covering up the meeting was quite an
accomplishment; these sorts of things are
not supposed to be possible in the YouTube
age.
Two specific, interconnected events had
prompted the session on the heels of the
Sunday blizzard. During the preceding
week, new and credible intelligence had
been obtained concerning Iran’s nuclear pro-
gram. A combination of Israeli and U.S.
WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2008
sources—electronic intercepts, in-place hu-
man intelligence, and the technical analysis
of radioactive isotopes—led to the conclu-
sion that Iran had begun in early September
to enrich uranium to the level required to
produce a nuclear weapon.
Given the amount of low-
enriched uranium then
known to be in possession of
Iran (several hundred kilos
and counting) and in view of
the number of centrifuges
then operating in Iran (some
7,000, of which fully half
were of the advanced IR-3
variety), it was estimated
that Iran could produce a
militarily significant quan-
tity of weapons-grade
uranium 235.
Despite the November
2007 National Intelligence
Estimate asserting that Iran
had ceased to work on the
weaponization of uranium in
2003, it was now clear that
Iran could rapidly transform
a stockpile of uranium 235
into a reasonably sophisticated working nu-
clear device. Indeed, the analysis in the
spring of 2008 of computer hard-drives be-
longing to the A. Q. Khan network showed
that efficient and workable weapons designs
had been made readily available to potential
proliferators. Unlike the American intelli-
gence community, the technical experts at
the Vienna-based International Atomic En-
ergy Agency were far from convinced that
conclusive proof existed concerning the end
of Iranian weaponization work. It was pru-
dent to assume that weaponization of the
initial uranium 235 stockpile would be a
matter of no more than a few months. As
early as mid-2009, Iran would be in a posi-
tion to test a nuclear device and, by the fall
of 2009, it could field its first nuclear war-
Five Days in December
heads on specially configured Shahab-3
missiles. With a range of some 1,500 kilo-
meters, these rockets could target most of
the Middle East as far as Cairo, putting in
range Israel and Saudi Arabia. And, lest we
forget, in November 2008,
the Iranians had demonstrat-
ed their progress in the field
of rocketry by lofting their
first, admittedly rather
small, artificial satellite.
The mid-December in-
telligence assessment had
been a closely held secret: no
media leaks had occurred at
the time of the Five Day
Meeting. But no one could
count on such an unusual
state of affairs lasting much
longer.
The Israeli Rationale
The other event was the se-
cure telephone dialogue
which incoming Prime Min-
ister Benjamin “Bibi” Ne-
tanyahu (Ehud Olmert hav-
ing recently resigned amid
scandal) conducted with the outgoing presi-
dent and the American president-elect. In
view of the newly available intelligence
gathered by Israel and the United States—
and in the spirit of Netanyahu’s vision of a
U.S.-Israeli strategic relationship built on
mutual trust—Bibi gave notice that Israel
would launch a military attack on its own
within a matter of days, unless Washington
was willing to take on the job itself, on a
solo or coalition basis.
The Israeli rationale for prompt action
was clear. A prompt operation would mini-
mize the risks of acting too late, since there
was no guarantee that Iran wouldn’t achieve
its weapons goal ahead of schedule. An early
strike would also reduce the risks that such
an attack would release significant quanti-
15
ties of radioactive material into the atmos-
phere. This had been a major consideration
in selecting the date of June 7, 1981, for the
Israeli bombing of the Osirak reactor near
Baghdad. Bomb earlier and you’d be de-
stroying an empty facility,
bomb later and you’d be run-
ning the risk of a 93 percent
enriched uranium cloud drift-
ing over several million in-
habitants. So the Israeli Air
Force had struck just before
the reactor was loaded with
its U-235 fuel. “Since time is
of the essence, would the
American incumbent and
would-be president please
come back to me by Christ-
mas?” was Bibi Netanyahu’s
request.
As the principals began
their proceedings on Monday,
December 22, Director of
National Intelligence Admi-
ral Mike McConnell gave a
general update on what for-
mer Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld used to call
“known unknowns”:
Were the Israelis bluffing? A consensus
emerged rapidly that this was not the case,
as the leaders of the Mapam and Kadima
political parties quietly confirmed their sup-
port of Netanyahu’s decision.
Was there a reasonable assurance that
the list of military targets covered all signif-
icant nuclear objectives, thus enabling the
long-term elimination of Iran’s nuclear capa-
bility? (Until the last day, this was a key
bone of contention and a potential show-
stopper.)
How would the Arab world respond?
Although nobody expected military opera-
tions against Iran to produce the minimal
reaction which followed Israel’s bombing of
a Syrian nuclear facility in September 2007,
16
there was a sharp division between those
who feared a firestorm of widespread and
lasting violence and those who foresaw
only a brief albeit intense episode of violent
rejection.
These and other ques-
tions served as a backdrop for
the consideration of the three
basic options put up for dis-
cussion by the incumbent
president with the approval
of the president-elect. Al-
though no two men could
have been more different
than George W. Bush and
the president-elect, before
the full meeting convened
they had been able to agree
on the definition of the main
courses of action to be dis-
cussed. Options A, B, and C,
as they were to pass into his-
tory, were initially described
as follows:
Option A: To conduct
as soon as possible a set of
air strikes against Iran, in
order to eliminate the short-
term ability of the Islamic Republic to ac-
quire nuclear weapons; the force planners
were charged with fleshing out proposed
timelines and target sets. Politically,
Option A was to be reviewed in several
modes: as a purely American operation,
with Israel being told to keep out, as during
the 1991 Gulf War; as a joint U.S.-Israeli
operation; or as a broader coalition enter-
prise with trusted partners, notably Britain
and France, whose contribution was valued
notably because of their status as permanent
members of the United Nations Security
Council.
Option B: To build up, ostentatiously,
American firepower close to Iran, with its
implied threat of military action, while
opening a window to vigorous diplomatic
WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2008
action, during which the United States
would attempt to transact a deal on the ba-
sis of the Iran’s May 2003 overture—which
Tehran’s then-reformist leadership had draft-
ed at a time when it was bending over back-
ward to avoid the fate which had just befall-
en Saddam Hussein. Option B had two ini-
tial variants. In one,
the United States re-
lied on covert back-
channel contacts; in
the other, the good of-
fices of allied coun-
tries having diplomat-
“ Bomb earlier and you’d destroy an
empty facility, bomb later and you’d
risk an enriched uranium cloud drift-
ic relations with Iran
were enlisted. Israel
was to be put on firm
ing over millions of people.
notice that during this diplomatic window,
any attack against Iran could lead to signifi-
cant American displeasure, materially affect-
ing the U.S.-Israeli relationship.
Option C: A decision not to launch a
military operation either now or after an un-
successful attempt at securing an honorable
diplomatic outcome. This was based on the
lack of confidence in the ability of America
or Israel to remove a crucial share of Iran’s
bomb-making capability. Conversely, it as-
sumed that a nuclear-armed Iran could be
contained, as could the consequences of the
regional power shifts entailed by the Iranian
bomb. Here, too, there were two variants:
one in which Israel was strongly urged not
to intervene; another in which the United
States chose to not pressure Israel one way
or the other.
We now know what decision eventually
emerged from the Five Day Meeting. And
we know enough today to be able to make
an educated assessment of the potential con-
sequences of the two alternative scenarios.
Option A: Bombs over Tehran
The decision to bomb promptly was the
product of an enormously contentious de-
bate, and it wasn’t until the late hours of
Five Days in December
Christmas Day that a combination of three
factors settled the issue.
First, America’s intelligence chiefs, un-
der intense grilling by George W. Bush and
the president-elect, stood by their assess-
ment that there was no significant unknown
nuclear facility in Iran. They reinforced
”
their credibility by providing hard intelli-
gence about nascent alternative Iran facili-
ties which would be a worry down the road:
tunneling works on a possible nuclear test
site; the breaking of ground for a reprocess-
ing facility next to the soon-to-be complet-
ed heavy-water reactor at Arak. These and
other indications allowed the director of
national intelligence and the heads of the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the
National Security Agency (NSA) to avoid the
charge that the “absence of evidence is not
the evidence of absence.” In this case, they
had substantial evidence about secret nu-
clear work, but none of it represented a
short-term threat and most of it was “ac-
tionable,” i.e., it could be made part of the
target set.
Second, President Bush chose to play
second fiddle to his soon-to-be successor.
The incumbent did not presume to tell the
president-elect what to do; nor did he osten-
sibly push for a military solution. He sim-
ply indicated that any decision with long-
term effects taken at the very end of his
term should be fully endorsed by the in-
coming commander-in-chief, who would
have to live with the consequences. The
17
president-elect was thrust into the hot seat.
Feeling somewhat like Harry S. Truman
when he was told about the atomic bomb
after FDR’s death, the new man knew that
he could not afford to create any perception
of unwarranted weakness in this baptism of
fire. Such a perceived weakness would im-
pair him during his entire term of office.
Third, the destruction of the Jewish
Community Centre in Munich on Christmas
Eve by a terrorist group claiming to be a
branch of Hezbollah prompted a pointed Is-
raeli reminder of its determination to act.
Although the loss of life had been limited to
the single digits, the location of the bomb-
ing and the Iranian backing of the claimed
perpetrators couldn’t have been more
provocative.
The decision was made at the White
House to strike without delay. Israel was
asked to stand back. Given Israel’s own de-
clared insistence on decisive action, Ne-
tanyahu and his war cabinet were in no po-
sition to reject America’s argument that a
coalition operation would take too much
time to put together.
American forces in and around the Per-
sian Gulf were put on DEFCON II—the high-
est level of readiness short of a state of war.
And, at 1AM on December 26, they were
told to expect an operations order to execute
a revised contingency plan for the bombing
of Iran. All day, the force planners at Cen-
tral Command Headquarters (CENTCOM HQ)
at Fort MacDill Air Force Base in Florida
and at Al Udeid Air Force Base in Qatar,
feverishly finalized an updated target list.
Although the immensely powerful Ameri-
can war machine is not known for its nim-
bleness, or for its ability to rapidly revise
detailed plans, the job was done within 24
hours. The plan had none of the complexi-
ties inherent in coalition operations; and be-
cause the bulk of the “shooters” and their
support assets were air-based, the opera-
tional “orchestration” was rather simpler to
18
organize than that of a massive air-ground-
sea operation. The “Boundless Fortitude”
strike was set for 11:30 PM Eastern Standard
Time, or 6 AM local time, on December 27,
before the crack of dawn in the Gulf region.
As has been so often the case in war for an
attacking power, pre-planned operations
were the easy part.
Notwithstanding the budget difficulties
encountered as a result of close to six years
of costly operations in Iraq, American air
power had made substantial strides since the
beginning of the decade. What particularly
struck the media was the substantial role in
the bombing attacks played by unmanned
combat air vehicles (UCAV) armed drones—
notably against the most heavily defended
targets. Losing a few unmanned “Predator”
drones was no big deal compared to the loss
of aircrews.
On the negative side of the ledger was
the failure of U.S. special operations. Com-
bined teams of American Special Operations
Command (SOC) forces and American-
trained Kurdish and Bakhtiari warriors were
promptly intercepted by the Iranian Revolu-
tionary Guard before being able to fulfill
their mission. As has been frequently the
case in American ventures of this kind, dur-
ing the last 60 years or so, the targeted na-
tion had thoroughly penetrated both the
émigré and the locally based counter-revolu-
tionary forces. Otherwise, it was pretty
much “déjà vu all over again” on the world’s
television screens for a period of three
weeks—cruise missiles soaring above the
ocean, F-15, F-16, and F-18 fighter jets
screaming in the air, flak arcing above the
enemy’s capital in an attempt to destroy
stealth aircraft.
America’s power was overwhelming and
Iran’s immediate military response was pre-
dictably pathetic. One Reagan-era American
commentator even talked about the whole
thing being a “cakewalk.” Iran had managed
to close tanker traffic through the Straits of
WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2008
Hormuz for about 48 hours, before the U.S.
Navy and the U.S. Air Force successfully
took out most of the Iranian rocket launch-
ers in the immediate area, while providing
effective protection to the convoys of tankers
(organized similarly to the “Tanker War” of
1987–88). At the same time, Iran launched
several dozen of its Shahab-3 missiles and a
large number of its shorter-range missiles
against key civilian
targets in Israel, oil
facilities in the Gulf
monarchies, and
United States mili-
tary facilities in the
region. Thanks to
“ The attack began at 6 AM local time
in the Gulf region...cruise missiles
soaring above the ocean, fighter jets
Global Positioning
System (GPS) guid-
ance, these were
screaming in the air above Tehran.
more effective than the Scuds launched by
Iraq during the first Gulf war. Hundreds
were killed and a number of oil terminals,
refineries, and processing plants were
torched. However, Iran ran out of missiles
fairly quickly, while Israel managed to de-
stroy a sizable number of Shahab-3s with
its Arrow and Patriot anti-ballistic missile
systems. As had been the case in previous
conflicts, oil facilities were repaired quite
rapidly. If pipes break easily, they can also
be replaced readily. In the interval however,
oil prices briefly jumped to $180 a barrel.
Immense fortunes were made and lost
overnight.
Iran’s non-military response was more
serious, but also more manageable than
many had expected. An uprising took place
in Bahrain. But with some help from Jor-
danian special forces troops, the revolt was
crushed within a few days. All across the
Middle East, American embassies were the
focus of rioting, and a number of Western
expatriates were killed as compounds in var-
ious Gulf monarchies were overrun. Ameri-
can troops in Iraq suffered casualties similar
to the levels that had prevailed from 2004
Five Days in December
to 2007. Hezbollah showered Northern
Israel with Fajr-missiles, and managed to
shoot a handful of medium-range Zelzal
rockets at Tel Aviv before the launchers
were neutralized. Worst of all, Hezbollah
operatives proceeded with a number of ter-
rorist attacks against American and Israeli
interests in Western countries. Hezbollah
was repeating on a larger scale its blows
against the American and the French in
Beirut that left 299 soldiers dead on
”
October 23, 1983, and against the Jewish
community in Buenos Aires that killed
115 people in the early 1990s. Germany
and Australia were particularly hard hit,
given the strength of local Hezbollah
networks.
However, by the time of the inaugura-
tion of the new American president on Jan-
uary 20, 2009, it was clear that in the short
run, the Americans had pulled off a signifi-
cant success at a limited cost. America’s al-
lies had generally expressed their “under-
standing and concern” with the emphasis
being placed on solidarity with Washing-
ton, while the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India,
and China) had either expressed the same
sentiments or kept their own counsel, as at
the time of the September 2007 bombing of
Syria. After two weeks of hand-wringing,
the Arab League managed to produce the
most lukewarm of public condemnations,
while most of its leaders, in private conver-
sation with their American counterparts,
stressed that this declaration should not be
taken in earnest. None of the Sunni regimes
19
had been toppled by the overrated “Arab
Street.” Only Iraq was worse off than before
the Iran attack, but this was not an unprece-
dented situation for Washington.
The Fallout
As we now know, it was a famously Pyrrhic
victory. The Iranian regime did not fall as a
result of the bombing. The world still badly
needed Iran’s oil and there was no question
of following through an apparently decisive
air campaign with a blockade of Iranian oil
exports. Proud Persia, the world’s oldest na-
tion (along with Egypt and China) was soon
to prepare its revenge. It required some
luck: the Americans had failed to locate and
destroy a facility in which the Iranians had
stockpiled components for some 3,000 new-
generation IR-3 centrifuges. The covert nu-
clear program came to fruition towards the
end of the following decade. In the absence
of military delivery vehicles, such as combat
aircraft or long-range missiles, Iran used an
unconventional delivery mode to exact its
nuclear revenge. On February 12, 2019, the
fortieth anniversary of the return of Ayatol-
lah Khomeini to Tehran, a 12 kiloton nu-
clear device loaded in the hold of a Liberian-
flagged liquid natural gas (LNG) carrier ex-
ploded in Boston harbor.
The combination of the nuclear detona-
tion with the fireball produced by thousands
of tons of pressurized natural gas killed
some 40,000 people all but instantaneously.
The subsequent fires and the radioactive
fallout—the giant explosion occurred on a
cold, sunny day with a brisk north-easterly
wind—snuffed out at least as many lives in
the following days.
Iran immediately claimed credit, indi-
cating that it had several more such
weapons in waiting. America responded
forcefully against this nuclear Pearl Harbor,
destroying the seats of power in and around
Tehran with both conventional and nuclear
weapons. Although a peace of sorts has pre-
20
vailed since then, the nuclear taboo, which
had so effectively prevailed since Japan’s sur-
render in August 1945, had been broken. It
is now only a question of time before anoth-
er nuclear war occurs.
Thus, the American president elected in
2024 called a conference of the world’s eight
nuclear powers—the five permanent mem-
bers of the Security Council, India, Israel,
and Pakistan—to agree to a timetable of ef-
fective and general nuclear disarmament
within the following 12 years. Pending such
an ambitious outcome, the only positive re-
sult of these horrific events has been the ab-
sence of further nuclear proliferation.
But historians are still wondering
whether that was an inevitable, or simply a
fortuitous, consequence of the decisions of
December 2008 and the subsequent war of
2019. They also express surprise at the ab-
sence of any political or diplomatic follow-
up with respect to Iran in the weeks that
followed Operation Boundless Fortitude.
While Israel had carefully prepared a politi-
cal approach towards Syria after its Septem-
ber 2007 bombing, nothing similar had
been prepared by Washington towards
Tehran. In retrospect, this may have been
the greatest mistake of all.
Option B: A Grand Bargain
Attempting to strike a grand bargain was
the one policy the United States had not ac-
tively explored since Iran’s nuclear ambition
became a matter of major international con-
cern in 2002. The only apparently serious
attempt had been made by the Iranian lead-
ership under reformist President Moham-
mad Khatami in May 2003. A memoran-
dum, which the Iranians had called a “road
map”—a deliberate reference to the Israeli-
Palestinian road map of the time—had been
drafted by Iran’s ambassador to France, who
was a member of the supreme religious
leader Ali Khamenei’s extended family. The
text had been approved by Iran’s political
WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2008
leadership; and although Khamenei himself
was not in full agreement with every detail,
the country’s spiritual leader had given the
green light to its transmission to the Ameri-
cans as a framework for negotiations. The
Swiss government, which represented Amer-
ican interests in Iran since diplomatic rela-
tions were broken off in 1979, handed over
the road map to the State Department in
early May 2003. No doubt intoxicated by
their easy victory against Saddam Hussein,
the Americans refused to discuss the docu-
ment. Indeed, until the Swiss and the
American media received irrefutable copies
of the memorandum, the State Department
refused even to acknowledge the existence of
the Iranian approach.
America’s refusal was a blunder. Along
with concessions in the nuclear arena, the
Iranians had declared their readiness to drop
their links to Hezbollah, condemn Hamas’s
acts of violence, acknowledge the Israeli-
Five Days in December
Palestinian road map (entailing the de facto
recognition of Israel) surrender Al Qaeda
operatives to the United States, and cooper-
ate in the post-war stability of Iraq and
Afghanistan. In exchange, the Iranians re-
quested the lifting of U.S. sanctions, re-
establishing diplomatic relations, neutraliz-
ing the Iranian People’s Mujahedin (an
armed rebel group based in Iraq), and
recognizing Iranian regional security
interests.
This simplified presentation of the Iran-
ian road map helps explain why authorities
in Tehran and Washington haven’t been par-
ticularly eager to explain themselves. Dis-
avowing Hezbollah and Hamas is not some-
thing the Iranian leadership wants to be re-
minded of; and the Americans don’t want to
have to explain why they didn’t even begin
to look at the Iranian document. There is, of
course, no guarantee that the Iranians would
have followed through on their declarations
21
of intent; and there was much that was
vague and open to interpretation in the
message. But the proof of the pudding is in
the eating, and America decided not to taste
it. This was in contrast to the 2003 deal
with Colonel Muammar
Qaddafi leading to the dis-
mantling of Libya’s
weapons of mass destruc-
tion (WMD) program. But
that overture had been care-
fully shepherded by the
British. Given the United
Kingdom’s status as Ameri-
ca’s only ally of significance
in the Iraqi adventure, it
was more difficult to brush
off the British than the
Swiss.
In 2008, the president-
elect had every reason to try
to revisit the “grand bar-
gain” option. An article by
several prominent authors
with deep knowledge of the
Iranian dossier had fleshed
out the option in March
2008. By the time the Five
Day Meeting opened, there was bad news
and not-so-bad news pending any attempt
to negotiate. On the one hand, the latest at-
tempt by the so-called G-6 (the five perma-
nent members of the Security Council, plus
Germany) to enter into substantive nuclear
discussions with Tehran had ended in abject
failure. Despite European foreign minister
Javier Solana’s proven ability to bend over
backwards, the Iranians had—yet again, for
this was but one in a series of embarrass-
ments—turned down even the so-called
“freeze for freeze” in which Iran would cease
deploying new centrifuges while the Securi-
ty Council would cease considering new
sanctions for a period of several weeks.
This refusal was not surprising. After
all, Iran’s leaders were awash in oil money,
22
which made them nearly “sanctions-proof,”
at least in the short run. The not-so-bad
news was that back-channel contacts, in
which former U.S. Ambassador Thomas
Pickering played a prominent role, were
opened after the American
presidential election in No-
vember. Apparently, signifi-
cant power centers in Iran
had shown a strong desire
to enter into a “grand bar-
gain” negotiation. These
talks carried the proviso
that this would be a true
compromise—not focusing
simply on the nuclear pro-
gram but encompassing the
whole range of issues—and
with the understanding
that the discussion would
be clearly U.S.-Iranian, thus
recognizing Iran’s status as
a great power.
The European minnows
would be invited to stay
home. This was to be the
equivalent of a Nixon-Mao
kind of process, along the
lines suggested by Henry Kissinger back in
2006. Notwithstanding the obvious caveats,
such as the polycentric nature of Iran’s gov-
ernance (totally unlike Mao’s monolithic
China) and the proven unreliability of previ-
ous back-channel endeavors (as in Reagan’s
infamous Iran-Contra scandal), it was con-
sidered good enough to at least make a de-
termined try.
America’s overtures were made on the
basis of a 40-day time table. Without a clear
and positive Iranian response in that time-
frame, the window would bang shut. Israel
had been convinced not to engage in any
unilateral action until that time had
expired.
So on December 27, 2008, Henry
Kissinger headed off on a secret mission to
WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2008
Tehran, as the emissary of the outgoing and
incoming presidents. He bore a three-part
message. America was reinforcing its mili-
tary capabilities in the Persian Gulf. For the
first time, the U.S. Air Force’s brand-new
F-22 Raptor fighter bombers were sent
overseas, based at Al Udeid air base in
Qatar. This deployment was of an “entirely
peaceful and
precautionary
nature.” In a
“spirit of co-
operation,”
Kissinger was
authorized to
“ The president bowed his head as he en-
tered Mossadegh’s home and final rest-
ing place, expressing his regret for the
state that the
United States
simply wished
CIA -planned coup half a century ago.
to signal its new reinforcements directly to
Iran—before they learned about their arrival
through the media. Secondly, the United
States provided an updated list of topics,
drawn from the 2003 road map, as a basis
for discussion. Thirdly, this offer was open
for 40 days, during which a basic framework
agreement would be crafted, including the
re-establishment of full diplomatic relations.
A full, fleshed-out agreement would then
be prepared that would be signed during an
official visit to Tehran by the new American
president, presumably after the Iranian pres-
idential elections of June 2009.
There were two unwritten sidebars to
this message, which Henry Kissinger was
authorized to dwell upon. First, and this
was immensely pleasing to the Iranian lead-
ership, the 40-day window was opened un-
conditionally, (i.e. Iran was not required to
immediately suspend its enrichment activi-
ty), thereby contradicting all existing UN
Security Council resolutions. The second
message to Iran was that if clear and meas-
urable progress had not occurred within 40
days—including the cessation of enrichment
during a subsequent negotiating period—all
hell would break loose. On December 27,
Five Days in December
George W. Bush and the president-elect en-
gaged in telephone conversations with the
rather nonplussed French, British, German,
Russian, and Chinese leaders. Their coopera-
tion was secured.
The rest is history. On August 4, 2009,
the new American president stood side by
side at the inauguration of his new Iranian
”
counterpart, General Mohammad Qalibaf,
former mayor of Tehran and hero of the
1980–88 war against Iraq. The American
commander-in-chief then captured the heart
of the Iranian people by going to the family
home of Mohammad Mossadegh, the Iranian
premier who had been overthrown in Au-
gust 1953 through the combined efforts of
the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence.
He bowed his head as he entered Mossa-
degh’s home at Ahmdabad, where the pre-
mier’s bones lay under the floor of the din-
ing room (the Shah had prevented their bur-
ial in an open cemetery to prevent public
demonstration of solidarity). In an impro-
vised speech given in front of an enormous
crowd, the president expressed his regrets
for the toppling of a democratic, secular
government more than half a century earlier.
Thus was laid the ground for the new
strategic American-Iranian partnership. This
caused enormous friction with the Sunni
regimes of the region, notably the king-
dom of Saudi Arabia. But they didn’t have
much choice in the matter. Washington
would still ensure that Iran’s regional hege-
mony would be restrained by continued
U.S. presence in Qatar and Bahrain. Better
23
that than a naked Iranian power monopoly,
based on Tehran’s overt status as a nuclear
weapons state. Under the agreement with
the United States, Iran chose to present its
new nuclear policy as being faithful to what
they termed the Japanese model—nuclear
power plants were built, enrichment facili-
ties under international supervision were
opened in order to fuel the new electricity-
producing reactors as part of an internation-
al consortium.
This story sounds too good to be true.
For the analysts and decision makers of De-
cember 2008, there was actually no good
reason to believe that Iran was ready to do
in 2009 what it had been ready to contem-
plate only in the very specific circumstances
after the fall of Saddam Hussein. With high
oil prices, a strategically neutered Iraq, a
successful Hezbollah in Lebanon, the situa-
tion seen from Tehran was vastly different in
2008 from what it had been in 2003, just
after America’s triumphant invasion of Iraq.
The December 2008 decision to open un-
conditional negotiations was a huge leap of
faith. One historian later described this feat
of American diplomacy as “bungee jumping
without an elastic cord.”
Option C: Trying Hard to Do Nothing
By Christmas Eve, the mood among the
principals in Washington was somber. There
was no reasonable basis to try a “grand bar-
gain” approach. The probability of an abject
failure was as high if not higher than during
Reagan’s presidency. Worse, this was not
some end-of-second-term situation, when
the president is already a lame duck. Presi-
dent Reagan could politically survive even
such a baroque episode as that of National
Security Advisor “Bud” McFarlane covertly
flying to Tehran bringing a chocolate cake
to Ayatollah Khomeini, graced with a sym-
bolic key representing the unlocking of
U.S.-Iranian relations. A massive failure of
this sort occurring at the time of the new
24
American president’s inauguration could
wreck his administration before it had be-
gun. President Kennedy’s predicament after
the Bay of Pigs would look like a picnic by
comparison.
The strike option didn’t look any better.
The heads of the intelligence agencies were
deeply divided among themselves on the as-
sessment of Iran’s clandestine capabilities.
And none of them offered anything along
the lines of former CIA Director George
Tenet’s notorious “slam-dunk” appraisal of
Iraq’s WMD capabilities. Indeed, the current
head of the CIA, Michael Hayden, went out
of his way to stress that the evidence on
Iran’s capabilities was too fragmentary to
allow any solidly grounded conclusion
whatsoever.
To complicate matters further, President
Bush started off by strongly pushing for a
strike. The incumbent was apparently
pulling rank as commander-in-chief. But
the incoming president was not a man to be
pushed around. He skillfully handled the
grilling of the intelligence chiefs, highlight-
ing the gaps of knowledge in the process.
He then promptly asked for a poll of the
Cabinet secretaries. Not one came out in fa-
vor of a strike. Only the outgoing vice pres-
ident, Dick Cheney, strongly defended the
bombing option. But this was not the sort
of support that was going to be of much
help under the circumstances. With the
ghosts of Iraq haunting the room, President
Bush eventually came to the view that
bombing was not in the cards. Indeed, on
this score, the Five Day Meeting ended on a
wholly consensual note between the outgo-
ing and the incoming commanders-in-chief.
The U.S. never does things by halves.
Having decided not to intervene, Washing-
ton was not going to make it easy for Israel
to embark on an operation for which the
United States would inevitably share the po-
litical blame and security consequences. Nor
was Washington going to allow itself to be
WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2008
sucked into the management of the conse-
quences of an inconclusive Israeli attack.
Tsahal, the Israeli Defense Force, was un-
doubtedly an extremely competent military
organization, but it had neither the where-
withal nor staying power to deal with the
full Iranian tar-
get set. If the Is-
raelis began the
job, the United
States would
probably have to
finish it. There-
“ On Feb. 12, 2009, the 40th anniversary
of Khomeini’s homecoming, Tehran
tested a nuclear bomb. And, as we all
fore, Israel now know, 2010 was the year when
should be told to
refrain from ac-
the non-proliferation treaty died.
tion. Such was
the view taken by the principals of the Five
Day Meeting, by then an exhausted group
of people who had convinced themselves to
do nothing and who therefore were not go-
ing to look kindly at others who would
want to prove that something could be
done.
Under strong American pressure and
after a heated War Cabinet meeting, Ne-
tanyahu called off Israeli preparations for a
strike. With the “yeas” and the “nays” even-
ly balanced in Israel, the prime minister, for
whom the preservation of Israel’s strategic
relationship with the United States was the
determining consideration, cast the deciding
anti-interventionist vote.
This decision remains deeply controver-
sial to this day. But if there ever had existed
a window of opportunity for a decisive de-
capitating strike, it quickly passed. By mid-
2009, Iran was producing highly enriched
uranium in weapons-scale quantities, draw-
ing on a stock of some 380 tons of uranium
hexafluoride—enough to produce eventually
up to 100 atomic bombs. President Ah-
madinejad was able to announce, before the
first round of the presidential elections in
June 2009, that Iran now had enough en-
riched fuel to ensure that no one could dare
Five Days in December
attack a country that had the material
means to deter any aggression. Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad handily won reelection in the
second round. In September 2009, Iran an-
nounced its withdrawal from the nuclear
non-proliferation treaty within the 90 days
”
provided for in the corresponding clause of
the NPT. On February 12, 2009 on the occa-
sion of the fortieth anniversary of Ayatollah
Khomeini’s homecoming, a nuclear device
with a 15 kiloton yield was detonated in an
underground tunnel dug into the mountains
abutting the Great Salt Desert, close to
“Desert One,” the scene of the failure of
President Jimmy Carter’s hostage liberation
attempt of April 1980.
As we all know, 2010 was the year in
which the international non-proliferation
regime broke down. At what turned out to
be the NPT’s last review conference, several
Arab and East Asian states reserved the
right to proceed with their withdrawal from
the treaty at their own discretion. Overtly
seeking the possession of nuclear weapons
ceased to be taboo for many of more than
60 states which possess at least one nuclear
research or power reactor. Saudi Arabia
became the world’s first “instant nuclear
power.” Pakistan transferred in a single
night the half-dozen atomic warheads that
had been produced for Saudi Arabia by
that government at the time when Riyadh
was funding the bulk of Islamabad’s nuclear
program. These bombs were then mated to
the old but sturdy 2,000-kilometer-range
25
CSS-2 rockets, which the Saudis had bought
from the Chinese back in 1986. Egypt,
Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and
Algeria were each also actively pursuing
military nuclear options through the
2010–20 decade. Nor did matters stop
there: South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan
moved out of their nuclear purdah, leading
to immense tension with the Chinese super-
power and neutralizing America’s freedom
of action in East Asia.
At the time of this writing in fall 2033,
nuclear war hasn’t happened yet. But in a
Middle East as fractious as ever, there is
little hope that reasonably stable, Cold
War (or India-Pakistan)-style deterrent rela-
tionships can be built. Most disputes in
the Arc of Crisis are not of a simple one-to-
one (or even a bloc-to-bloc) type. Fault
lines crisscross the region: Sunni versus
Shia, Persian versus Arab, Muslim versus
Jew and Christian. Furthermore, the
prospect of nuclear weapons falling into
the hands of non-state actors, which are
non-deterrable in the usual sense, has be-
come an overriding concern.
The civil war that broke out in 2029
in post-oil Saudi Arabia is a cause for par-
ticular alarm. As petroleum products are
being progressively replaced by other
forms of energy, the windfall prosperity
of oil-producing states is vanishing. The
small Gulf monarchies had built up enor-
mous cash reserves and diversified their
economies. But in the larger OPEC countries,
such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq, this had
not been the case. The disaffected Nedjdi
fundamentalists who took control of the
Saudi nuclear missile base in Al Suyail in
2029 are the children of Saudi Arabia’s oil
bust.
The New York Stock Exchange’s verdict
is clear. Construction companies with a
strong civil defense activity are doing very
well indeed. Building fallout shelters is not
simply the fashion that it briefly was in
26
some American backyards in October 1962.
It’s a real business now.
Three Possible Futures
The range of “possible futures” is of course
broader and more complex than the three
laid out here. At one end of the spectrum,
we could have unexpected regime change in
Iran, with a turn towards moderation and
openness—in which case there will be no
need for the sort of crisis decision-making
described here. At the other end, Israel
could strike entirely unilaterally.
One may also argue that the picture
painted is too negative in terms of the ef-
fects of a bombing operation: maybe, just
maybe, it could be decisive. One may also
note that the military option does not ex-
clude effective political and diplomatic fol-
low-through. Indeed, it could even provide
leverage for political initiatives, provided
the will, the skill, and the opportunities are
present. After all, the Israeli strike against
Syria in September 2007 did not occur in a
political vacuum. On the contrary, with the
good faith of Turkey, a political dialogue of
sorts has begun between Israel and Syria.
However, Israel and Syria share issues of
common concern by virtue of geographical
proximity—the Golan heights, the Shebaa
farms, Lake Tiberias. Such overlaps do not
exist with respect to Iran from either an
American or an Israeli vantage point. Nor is
it clear that the United States could impro-
vise in fairly short order an integrated mili-
tary and political strategy. However, we do
know that, 10 years after the 1991 bombing
of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, Saddam
Hussein was quite close to acquiring a nu-
clear weapons capability. The Gulf War of
1991 and, in its wake, the work of the
United Nations Special Commission were
needed to defang Saddam Hussein’s very real
nuclear program. So why assume that Iran, a
country with a very strong sense of national
pride and substantial human and material
WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2008
resources, would take a disarming strike
lying down?
One may also consider my description of
the regional consequences of an American
strike as being too benign. The “Arab
street” may rise up en masse, slaughtering
expats by the thousands; oil flows may be
massively and durably disrupted; hyper-ter-
rorism may claim uncounted lives. However,
the history of the Middle East during the
post-colonial era tends to confirm my less-
than-Wagnerian view of the region’s re-
sponse to a bombing campaign. The conse-
quences described are bad enough.
It is entirely legitimate to question my
judgment on the speed and the conse-
quences of nuclear proliferation if Iran cross-
es the nuclear threshold. The fact is that we
do not really know whether some form of
stable nuclear deterrence could yet take hold
in a multi-polar, multi-fractioned Middle
East. However, we do know quite a lot
Five Days in December
about some of the close shaves encountered
during the Cold War, not least during the
Cuban missile crisis—thanks to abundant
literature. That alone is more than enough
to shudder about retrospectively: nuclear de-
terrence worked, but just barely. And the
India-Pakistan nuclear relationship is also
hardly reassuring. It took a lot of American
diplomatic effort at the highest levels (and
some good luck) to defuse the several India-
Pakistan nuclear crises, the most frightening
of which occurred after a Pakistani-support-
ed group of Al Qaeda terrorists attempted
to seize the Indian parliament in New Delhi
in December 1981.
On the basis of all these bilateral prece-
dents, it would take an inordinate amount
of optimism to assume lasting and stable
mutual deterrence in a nuclearized Middle
East. And optimism, unlike oil and war, is
not recognized as a marketable commodity
in that part of the world.•
27