March 2012

Paper Series
Navigating a Nuclear Minefield: The United States, Europe, and Iran
by Nicholas Siegel
Iran and the Bomb Preventing the Islamic Republic of Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is one of the greatest foreign policy challenges currently facing the United States and Europe. It is an issue of such critical mutual importance that it has galvanized a degree of transatlantic cooperation and coordination seen in few other foreign policy areas in recent years. And yet despite best efforts among Western powers to form a united front in pressuring Iran to abandon its nuclear program, 2012 could very likely see this process come up short, and European and transatlantic unity disintegrate along the way. With recent statements from U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta that Iran could have nuclear weapons capacity within 12 months, and increasingly vocal Israeli threats to carry out military strikes against Iran this year, the number of tolerable outcomes to this crisis seems to diminish with every passing week. U.S. and European policymakers worry that a nuclear Iran would fundamentally change the strategic face of the Middle East and wider region. Iran would become the Middle Easts second nuclear weapons state after Israel and the seventh after Israel, France, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States to possess a nuclear deterrent capacity in the region. Some experts have warned that this could lead to a cascade of proliferation, with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey moving to develop their own nuclear weapons, or at least, as a hedge, the technical capacity to quickly produce the bomb. It could also lead to increased demands for Western security assurances for smaller states in the neighborhood including the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman. Finally, given Irans commitment to its nonstate allies Hezbollah and Hamas, the nuclear factor could have untold consequences in terms of the risk of miscalculation and escalation in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Irans nuclear program has been a major international concern since 2003, when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) revealed that Tehran had been in breach of its 1974 Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement for nearly two decades. French, German, and British foreign ministers, in cooperation with EU High Representative for Foreign Policy Javier Solana, took collective action as the EU3 to urge Iran to come clean on its activities. When in 2005 Tehran restarted uranium enrichment, the EU3, in

Summary: U.S. and European policymakers worry that a nuclear Iran would fundamentally change the strategic face of the Middle East and wider region. Since November 2011, the United States and Europe have led an international effort to introduce more sanctions on Iran. But the history of sanctions against Iran shows that, while effective at crippling the countrys economy, they have been far less successful in persuading Iranian leaders to relent on core policy issues.

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cooperation with the United States, China, and Russia (thus becoming the EU3+3), began to coordinate a sanctions-based strategy against the Islamic Republic. This took the form of a number of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions aimed at using sanctions to ratchet up pressure on Iran to comply with international obligations, the most recent being UNSC Resolution 1929 in 2010. The UN sanctions regime thus grew to include asset freezes and visa bans on individuals linked to Irans nuclear program or to the Revolutionary Guards, an arms embargo on heavy weapons, and penalties on Iranian banks and shipping lines associated with illicit activities. Then, in November 2011, the IAEA published a damning report that detailed mounting concerns over activities in Iran related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile. Two visits by IAEA teams to Iran in early 2012 further convinced IAEA director general Yukiya Amano that, contrary to Tehrans claims, the Iranian nuclear program has been anything but purely peaceful. Since November 2011, the United States and Europe have led an international effort to introduce yet more draconian sanctions on Iran. On December 31, 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which laid the groundwork for a policy banning any state from transactions with the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), thereby precluding long-term oil contracts. Then, on January 23, 2012, the EU said it would also freeze CBI assets, and stop buying Iranian oil by July unless Tehran agreed to accede to UN demands. Iran has subsequently preempted this to a degree, stopping oil exports to the United Kingdom and France, two of the European states less reliant on Iranian crude. However, a broader European oil ban, if it develops, would be much more painful for Spain, Italy, and Greece, the EU member states that rely most on affordable Iranian petroleum. Yet in demonstrating the remarkable extent to which EU states are united on the issue, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo recently said that his country would support the sanctions even if they cause serious damage to Spanish economic interests. Europe has paid a consistently higher price for such sanctions than has the United States, due to the limited direct U.S. economic relations with Tehran and, more recently, the relative strength of the dollar. The United States and Europe have also sought to persuade other powers to take similar punitive measures against Iran, though so far India and China, which are highly dependent on Iranian oil, and Russia, which is not,

have been reluctant to do so. The hope is that by reducing oil imports and punishing the CBI, these sanctions will cut heavily into Iranian oil revenues, which account for between 50-70 percent of the governments income. This will in turn put pressure on the Iranian economy, causing inflation and economic chaos, and give Tehran no alternative but to compromise on its nuclear program. But this may be wishful thinking. The history of sanctions against Iran shows that, while effective at crippling the countrys economy, they have been far less successful in persuading Iranian leaders to relent on core policy issues. It is entirely plausible that the regime will follow Saddam Husseins example of standing firm while international pressure exacts untold suffering on the greater population. Amid the rapid decline in the value of the Iranian rial, and reports of food shortages in the country, on February 22, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei proclaimed that pressures, sanctions, and assassinations will bear no fruit. No obstacles can stop Irans nuclear work.1 In the meantime, as Iranian oil has exited the market (concurrent with a fall of production in smaller exporters such as South Sudan, Yemen, and Syria), the international price of oil has already begun to rise, despite efforts on behalf of Saudi Arabia and others to make up for the drop in supply. This could have profound consequences for struggling Western economies. Further hardening Iranian attitudes has been the entire array of below the board activities aimed at more directly inhibiting Tehrans nuclear program. Iranian leaders have blamed Western intelligence services, Israels Mossad in particular, for the long list of suspected interventions in Iran over the past few years. Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman has described the likely operations as including: the bombing of two transformers at the Natanz nuclear facilities in 2006; the downing of three Revolutionary Guards airplanes between 2006 and 2007; two computer viruses that penetrated uranium enrichment infrastructures throughout the country, damaging numerous centrifuges; the asphyxiation of a nuclear scientists working at the Isfahan uranium plant in 2007; the death by bombing of a particle physicist in January 2010;
1 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240529702047786045772394326250 50286.html It should also be noted that in this same speech, Khamenei denied that Iran was developing nuclear weapons, saying that such a program would be sinful.

 the car-bombing of senior nuclear figures in November 2010; the shooting of a nuclear physicist and researcher for Irans Atomic Energy Organization in July 2011; the bombing of a Revolutionary Guards base close to Tehran, which killed the head of the Guards missiledevelopment division in November 2011; and the killing by a limpet mine of the 32-year-old deputy director of the Natanz facility as he drove to a laboratory in downtown Tehran in January 2012. There are also signs that Iran may no longer be willing to suffer injuries without attempting to retaliate. Suspected Iranian operations against Israeli targets in New Delhi, Tbilisi, Azerbaijan, and Thailand in recent months very likely represent a dangerous escalation. As was seen in the run-up to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, spy vs. spy games can quickly spiral out of control. Scenarios for 2012 The next 12 months will be critical in this crisis, and any number of scenarios might play out. A first possibility is that Iran will react to international pressure by implementing its own form of direct coercion, as it has at times threatened to do. Closing the Strait of Hormuz for a period with mines and anti-ship missiles as a sort of economic sanction on the global economy is not an impossibility. According to some estimates, given Irans investments over recent years in missiles rather than tanks, artillery, and infantry, Tehran could soon possess the ability to deny access to U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf for long enough to necessitate a major military operation to reopen the seaway. There is also the danger that Iran might engage in more bizarre activities along the lines of the allegedly Tehran-backed assassination attempt of the Saudi Ambassador to the United States last fall. A terror attack on U.S. soil resulting in significant casualties could inevitably force even a reluctant U.S. president into action. In the event that Iran initiates military action against the West or Western interests in the Gulf and further afield, and assuming that the U.S. response were proportional rather than overwhelming, transatlantic unity would likely remain strong. The United States and perhaps several European allies would take on the majority of any military burden. In a demonstration of Western solidarity, as well as increasingly visible AngloFrench military cooperation, on January 28 the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln passed through the Strait of Hormuz flanked by British and French warships. A British official said that the HMS Argyll and a French

vessel joined a U.S. carrier groupto underline the unwavering international commitment to maintaining rights of passage under international law. Less certain is what would happen were Israel to deliver the first blow. In a recent Washington Post article,2 columnist David Ignatius wrote Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June before Iran enters what Israelis described as a zone of immunity to commence building a nuclear bomb. Israeli leaders for their part seem eager to give the impression that a strike may soon occur. Defense Minister Ehud Barak believes that Irans nuclear program is about nine months away from being able to withstand an Israeli attack; America, with its superior firepower, has a time frame of 15 months.3 Amid growing international appeals not to engage in a preemptive strike, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said recently, with all due respect I have for the United States and Russia, its none of their business. The security of Israel and its residents, Israels future, is the responsibility of Israels government.4 The Israelis are also very aware that previous strikes on nuclear sites in Iraq (1981) and Syria (2007) by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were successful (though both were against single targets located above ground), and did not provoke a counterattack. Yet the extent to which Israel could realistically expect to disrupt Irans nuclear program via air strikes, which would involve jets traveling over 1,000 miles to bomb targets that are as diffuse as they are well protected, is questionable. The IDF believes it has the capacity to set Irans nuclear program back by three years. Rafi Eitan, a seasoned Mossad operative, has publicly declared that more likely, Israeli jets would manage to hit the [site] entrances, and theyll have them rebuilt in three months.5 The Obama administration has become increasingly clear that the United States has no wish to follow the Israelis directly into a conflict with Iran. Panetta said in an interview in January that should any shooting begin, the primary U.S. concern would be to protect our forces,
2 http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-israel-preparing-to-attackiran/2012/02/02/gIQANjfTkQ_story.html 3 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/magazine/will-israel-attack-iran.html?_ r=1&pagewanted=1&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Organizations/I/Islamic%20Revolutionary%20Guards%20Corps?ref=islamicrevolutionaryguardcorps 4 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-iran-nucleartre81k1zf20120221,0,5228040,full.story 5 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/magazine/will-israel-attack-iran. html?n=Top/Reference/Times Topics/Organizations/I/Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps?ref=islamicrevolutionaryguardcorps&pagewanted=all

and Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, has argued that an Israeli strike would be destabilizing and would not achieve their long-term objectives. If Irans response to an Israeli attack were carefully calculated and restricted to Israeli interests, as perhaps through proxy Hezbollah attacks against Israel proper, it might therefore be possible for the United States to refrain from engaging the Islamic Republic. But perhaps as relevant for the Israeli calculus of what to do in 2012 will be the looming U.S. presidential election. President Obamas ability to remain above any Israel-Iran fray would be strengthened were he to win a second presidential term. Leading U.S. Republican presidential candidates, on the other hand, have been consistently vocal in their support for a more bellicose Iran policy, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum in particular. He recently said, If we reach a point where I believe the only thing that will stop them fromhaving a nuclear weapon I will make a clear declaration to the Iranian government that you either open your facilities, you begin to dismantle this nuclear program, or we will dismantle it for you.6 The greatest challenge should any shooting begin will be to manage the conflict. The United States and Iran have had little official communication over the past 30 years, and as a result, leaders possess nothing on the order of the red telephone that linked the White House and Kremlin for much of the Cold War. Therefore with poor communications, and mutual suspicions at the highest possible level, keeping even a local conflict from spiraling out of control will need to be a top priority. The danger of a Guns of August scenario in which the United States is drawn into a potentially catastrophic conflict that could see the Strait of Hormuz blocked, Israeli cities under fire from Hezbollah, Iranian missiles raining down on U.S. military and civilian installations in the region, uproar across the Middle East and North Africa, terror attacks in the United States and Europe, and oil prices rising well above $150 a barrel, is very real. For Europe, any serious conflict would shatter the so far remarkable European unity on Iran, and reopen the kinds of rifts seen in the lead up to the 2003 Iraq War, the 2008 recognition of Kosovos independence, and the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya. European unity has been and will remain critical to weathering the ongoing economic crisis. Yet while Germany and other European countries might be willing to accept a limited (particularly if it were provoked) U.S.-Franco-British action against
6 http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/22/santorum-brushes-off-s-c-takeson-iran-in-florida/

Iran, a larger conflict would quickly engender strong divisions, to the economic and political detriment of all of Europe. An Iran war would also risk triggering a transatlantic rupture, which would likely be worse than the dark days of 2003. Now a devastating economic crisis would add additional fodder to potentially fierce U.S.-European recriminations over the conflict and political turmoil on either side of the Atlantic. There are also of course two less likely scenarios that Iran will bow to international pressure and dismantle its nuclear program, or that the Islamic Republic will acquire nuclear weapons without triggering any military response from outside its borders. Whatever the course of 2012, U.S. and European leaders will need to redouble their efforts to work together to confront what may come. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is reputed to have said, when asked what was most likely to blow his government off course, events, dear boy, events. There is little doubt that events may drive the Iranian nuclear issue this year. We can only hope that Western resolve and unity will prove equal to the challenge of navigating this nuclear minefield.
About the Author
Nicholas S. Siegel is the program officer at the Transatlantic Academy. Prior to joining the Academy, he served as assistant director of the Transatlantic Program at the Atlantic Council. He holds a masters from the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna and a bachelors from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

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