Turkey and Iran's Nuclear Capability

Barry Rubin, Turkish Daily News:

High-ranking Turkish officials have started speaking, even publicly, of their concern about Iran's drive to obtain nuclear weapons. This view is quite understandable, but how would this new development affect Turkish interests and is it inevitable? READ MORE

The first issue is timing. Iran still has several necessary steps before it poses a nuclear threat to its neighbors. It is now starting the uranium enrichment that would lead, if successful, to the building of atomic bombs. Even when that is done, Iran would still have to modify its medium-range missiles to carry such a nuclear warhead. When these things are all completed, Tehran would be able to fire a nuclear weapon capable of hitting most of Turkey.

No one knows how long this will take. During 2006, Iran will probably pass the point of no return after which it can make such weapons and no international sanctions or technical problem will stop them. But to have actual bombs, and certainly to have effective delivery systems, could take five years or more.

What can Turkey do about this problem? Not much directly. It can hope that U.S. and European efforts will dissuade Iran from developing nuclear weapons. There is a huge amount of diplomatic activity on this front -- meetings, statements, resolutions, and negotiations. The Europeans claim that their use of persuasion will be effective. But so far Iran has, basically, made fools out of Britain, Germany and France. It makes agreements then breaks them. Iranian officials make speeches in English about peaceful intentions then give speeches in Persian about how Iran is going to get the bomb no matter what anyone says.

Even if Western countries take the issue to the U.N. Security Council, it is unlikely Iran will back down. Russia and China are probably not going to support even tough diplomatic measures. Moreover, Tehran knows that Europe's willingness to act is very limited. European countries will never use force against Iran, don't even want a political confrontation and are eager to preserve their needed oil imports and lucrative trade with Iran. This is just one more example at the ineffectiveness of Europe in dealing with international crises.

A second possibility is that the United States or Israel would hit Iran by either overt military means or through covert sabotage and stop its progress toward nuclear weapons. This could happen, but may be more unlikely than likely. To take such action is difficult because of the distances involved and the fact that Iran's nuclear facilities are scattered. On a political level, this is also a difficult option because such an operation would likely lead to some type of war with Iran and would not enjoy international support. The United States is too over-extended in Iraq to act in this manner while domestic public opinion would be largely unfavorable, too.

This leaves a third alternative that the Turkish military seems to be seriously considering, an anti-missile defense system. Both the U.S. Patriot and the Israeli Arrow systems are possible for this purpose and likely to be effective against the relatively small number of missiles Iran could fire.

But why is Iran getting nuclear weapons a threat at all to Turkey? It is pretty unlikely that once Iran gets such arms -- as crackpot as some of its leaders are -- it would start firing them in all directions.

The answer is threefold. First, the nuclear program is in the hands of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the repository of its most hard-line ideologues who favor spreading Islamist revolution abroad. These are the people in Iran with the greatest possibility of doing something crazy. And even a relatively small group within this organization might use such weapons.

Second, although the Iranian government as a whole would be unlikely to turn nuclear weapons over to terrorists (and the terrorists would not need a missile to set one off in some foreign city), there are forces within the corps or other circles that might do so.

Again, while Iran's actually using nuclear weapons is a low probability, the devastating effect of these bombs makes even a small chance that this could happen very scary.

The biggest problem, however, does not involve the actual use of unconventional arms as a weapon but their use for diplomatic leverage. Basically, though the 1962 Cuban missile crisis was a rare exception, the countries possessing nuclear weapons have never used them as threats to force countries to do what they want. Iran has no such qualms. The moment it had the atomic bomb, every country within its reach would face intimidation.

Would the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, for example, do anything Iran didn't like if faced with such a threat? Wouldn't Iran use this leverage to get them to invite American forces to leave? And wouldn't Iran's possession of these weapons be a major incentive to Islamist revolutionary and terrorist groups to become even bolder in launching attacks?

Turks don't scare easily, if at all. Yet, having a neighbor which combined ideological radicalism, Islamist ideology, tremendous ambition, an unstable government and nuclear weapons would really reduce Turkey's freedom of action. The fact that Iran also, according to Turkish courts, actively encourages terrorism within Turkey and has now become the main sponsor of the terrorist PKK Kurdish group is also a matter of concern.

Thus, the Iranian nuclear issue is of vital importance for Turkey. It is a problem that is going to be one of the world's biggest over the next five years and it is also one with no easy solution.

* Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of Turkish Studies. His latest book is a biography of Yasser Arafat published in Turkish by Aykırı Yayıncılık. He can be contacted at profbarryrubin@yahoo.com