The Iranian Tipping Point

Frederick Kempe, The Wall Street Journal:

The operators of Iran's Natanz nuclear-enrichment plant called it the "Yankee virus" even though they couldn't establish its source. What they did know was that "the industrial accident" it spawned had shut them down and done such serious damage to their facility that it would take months to repair.

The software virus had triggered an irregular vibration of one of the 164 ultra-high-speed centrifuges used to separate out heavy uranium 238 for use as nuclear fuel. The centrifuge malfunctioned, knocking out the others until the whole system seized up.

The Iranians would never know how Natanz had been infiltrated or that the specially trained, U.S.-paid agents behind the high-tech attack had escaped the country without attracting notice.

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This fictitious scenario of covert action against Iran's nuclear ambitions isn't lifted from a spy novel. It is instead drawn from conversations with Washington insiders who are part of a growing cottage industry gaming ways to address what one senior Bush administration official says has the potential of surpassing Iraq as the most explosive foreign-policy issue of the president's final term. READ MORE

On the ladder of escalating measures to use against Iran, these experts say deniable sabotage within Iran comes far ahead of smart bombs raining down on the country's nuclear facilities but a good distance after sanctions such as banning Iran's national team from the soccer World Cup this June or suspending nominally "peaceful" nuclear-fuel deliveries from Russia.

Iran's leadership last week prompted its most open confrontation with the West yet over its nuclear program by removing special seals applied by the International Atomic Energy Agency to the high-speed centrifuges at Natanz. It thus is resuming "research" almost certainly aimed at bomb development.

That was followed last Thursday by Germany, France, Britain and the European Union jointly declaring an end to their negotiations with Tehran and calling, with U.S. support, for the matter to be referred to the United Nations Security Council. To that end, the five permanent members of the council plus Germany met Monday in London. Afterward, European diplomats appeared confident that Moscow wouldn't block referral to the U.N. when the IAEA's governor board meets Feb. 2-3. China's position remains unclear.

Their escalating debate over Iran swirls around several critical questions and their evolving answers.

Q. What has motivated Tehran to defy the West now?

A. The U.S. remains distracted by Iraq, and Iran is calculating that Washington neither has the stomach to strike it militarily nor the international backing for meaningful economic sanctions, says Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Studies. He says President Mahmound Ahmedinejad may also be calculating that conflict with the West can be used to excite nationalism at home that would reignite an Iranian revolution whose Islamic flames have waned.

Q. Do countries with deep ties to Iran -- particularly Russia and China -- consider the threat to Mideast and global security from a nuclear Iran serious enough to warrant action that they have long opposed?

A. Though these countries will oppose military action, their suspicions of Tehran have grown. The Russians have been building a $1 billion nuclear plant for the Iranians, yet they also want to avoid an Islamic bomb on their borders. Their failed negotiations to get Iran to enrich nuclear fuel for their plants on Russian territory has soured them on Tehran. The Chinese, who have signed a $100 billion, 25-year gas deal with Iran, likely fear that a nuclear Iran can only increase North Korea's nuclear aspirations.

Q. Will they approve referral to the U.N. and sanctions with enough bite to effectively stop Iranian nuclear-weapons development?

A. They appear ready to let the matter come to the Security Council, but sanctions will likely fall short of anything that might stop Iran's nuclear development in its tracks. That said, Western officials hope that sufficiently tough measures can show Iran that the world community is turning against it and thus strengthen the hand of "pragmatic conservatives" who might convince hard-liners to rejoin negotiations and resume compliance with international restrictions on Iran's nuclear program.

Fiery Rhetoric

The most important single factor galvanizing the world's powers behind a tougher approach to Iran has been President Ahmadinejad, who was elected last year. Western officials say it is Iran's Supreme Council and not the president who controls nuclear strategy, yet his extreme pronouncements have nevertheless increased concern about the danger of a nuclear Iran.

What's well-known is that he has called for Israel to be either wiped from the map or relocated to Alaska or Bavaria. More troubling to nuclear strategists is his religious pre-occupation with the coming of a Shiite Islamic messiah, which he referred to last September during a U.N. speech in New York to the befuddlement of delegates. He then described his role in a November speech in Tehran as usher "for the glorious reappearance of the Imam Mahdi, may Allah hasten his reappearance." According to Shiites, "the Mahdi" is the 12th imam and disappeared as a child in 941. They believe a final judgment and end of the world will follow after his seven-year reign.

Those who doubt President Ahmadinejad's religious convictions can watch a widely distributed videotape of his meeting with one of Iran's religious leaders during which he speaks of how he found himself bathed in a green light throughout his U.N. address and that "for those 27 or 28 minutes all of the leaders of the world did not blink." What U.S. and Israeli leaders fear is that such a leader might welcome a global conflagration and might not just talk but also execute an "eliminationist" strategy toward Israel. His rhetoric has heightened fears that a nuclear Iran would be more difficult to deter and willing to give nuclear materials to terrorists.

A U.S. official says Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, is trying to moderate President Ahmadinejad's more extreme pronouncements, which have provided an unwanted rallying point against nuclear ambitions that are otherwise shared by all factions of Iran's leadership.

On final analysis, the best explanation of why Tehran is acting now to resume its nuclear activities, says Mr. Clawson, is not Iran's president but rather that Tehran "believes it can get away with it." Not only is the U.S. tied up in Iraq, but when it comes to sanctions, Iran is betting the Security Council will avoid coming down heavy on the world's fourth-largest oil and second-largest natural gas producer at a time of rising energy prices.

If Tehran doesn't call off its resumption of "research," it will be abandoning a carefully calibrated approach, in sharp contrast to that of North Korea, of staying within the Nonproliferation Treaty and working with the West and the IAEA. Its approach has been to remain sufficiently cooperative to avoid sanctions while patiently and often secretly advancing work toward building a nuclear-arms capacity.

A study last fall by the International Institute of Strategic Studies confirmed the consensus of Western intelligence agencies that Tehran isn't after a quick nuke but rather has taken pains to construct a deep, sustainable, scientifically rich weapons program that would make it more the Middle Eastern India than a Persian Pyongyang. (The report concluded that "even if Iran threw caution to the wind" it would only be able to produce enough highly enriched uranium to produce a single nuclear weapon by 2010.)

However, another critical time line the Bush administration is watching is Iran's progress toward mastering nuclear-weapons technology, says Gary Samore, a proliferation expert at the MacArthur Foundation who edited the report. On that score, he says, "they are very close, probably less than a year."

Pressuring Tehran

Western officials still hope that diplomatic sanctions can hold the line. Europe and the U.S. believe they can ultimately convince the Russians and Chinese not to block a limited list of U.N.-imposed sanctions, including limits on travel, freezing specific bank accounts and banning Iranian participation at international sporting events.

Most important, says Mr. Samore, would be a ban on peaceful nuclear cooperation that would stop Russia from delivering the fuel necessary to run Iran's light-water Bushehr nuclear power plant, which is due to come on stream this year. Mr. Samore says the Russians thus far have delayed delivery of the fuel and would comply to a Security Council resolution.

In the end, however, it may only be military action that will set back a determined Iran. Pentagon planners are busy doing their computer simulations. Most experts believe Israeli airpower lacks both the range and numbers to hit the key targets and also prevent retaliation. The U.S. military is more confident it can strike the Iranians with the firepower and sorties to set them back many years, but at what cost?

Unlike Iraq, Iran has ample means to inflict pain on the U.S. and Israel through indirect and, in the case of Israel, direct military attack. U.S. experts worry about Tehran's ability to escalate violence in sensitive regions through groups it backs such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Islamic Jihad among the Palestinians and insurgents in Iraq.

What concerns Mr. Clawson of the Washington Institute more is the Iranian capability to disrupt shipping in the Straits of Hormuz or sponsor a horrendous terrorist attack by al Qaeda, which is believed to have links with Tehran. Iran has a history of backing terrorist attacks when it can preserve plausible deniability – such as the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.

"Part of the risk of military attack is that the Iranian response is incalculable," says Mr. Samore.