{"id":2720,"date":"2010-10-26T07:45:57","date_gmt":"2010-10-26T12:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.martinkramer.org\/sandbox\/?p=2720"},"modified":"2010-10-26T07:45:57","modified_gmt":"2010-10-26T12:45:57","slug":"if-iran-gets-the-bomb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/2010\/10\/if-iran-gets-the-bomb\/","title":{"rendered":"If Iran Gets the Bomb"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael J. Totten, probably the most widely read blogger on the Middle East, has just published<\/a> an interview with me, conducted in September.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I sought out Martin Kramer in Jerusalem because I knew he would give me an analysis well outside-the-box on Iranian nuclear weapons. He\u2019s a scholar, not a politician or pundit. And while he certainly has his opinions, he doesn\u2019t conveniently fit into anyone\u2019s ideological box.<\/p>\n

I was not disappointed, and I don\u2019t think you will be either. What he has to say is different from anything you\u2019ve read from anyone in the media, including me.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> I assume you read Jeffrey Goldberg\u2019s article<\/a> in The Atlantic<\/em> this summer. He asked dozens of Israeli decision-makers and analysts if they think Israel will strike Iran\u2019s nuclear weapons facilities, and the concensus seems to be that the odds are greater than fifty percent that it will happen before the middle of summer in 2011. What do you think?<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> It\u2019s in Israel\u2019s interest to convince the world that the decision-makers are leaning in that direction. The idea is to prompt somebody else to take action, in particular the Obama administration. So there\u2019s a debate about whether or not Jeffrey has been spun.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> Yes, and he mentioned that himself.<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> The whole purpose of spinning Jeffrey Goldberg\u2014assuming that\u2019s what happened\u2014was to prod the United States into taking a more forward position. Americans are taking a forward position already, but the idea here would be to multiply the effect.<\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t know. I haven\u2019t spoken to all the people Jeffrey talked to, and there are a lot of variables that we don\u2019t know yet. The timeline is open to question. The intelligence is also being debated. So while I wouldn\u2019t put a percentage on it, plans are definitely on the table. If the United States doesn\u2019t act, the moment will come when a decision will have to be made. We don\u2019t know what the arguments will be or in which ways the calculations will shift between now and then. Israel has the option, though, and it\u2019s on the table. I wouldn\u2019t say the odds are greater than fifty percent, but it\u2019s a credible option.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> What do you think Iran would actually do with a nuclear bomb?<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> The Iranians have a structural interest in creating doubt and uncertainty in the Persian Gulf. They have a larger population than any other Gulf state, and they don\u2019t have the share of oil resources that Saudi Arabia has. So their first objective would be to create a climate of uncertainty.<\/p>\n

Now, the Persian Gulf has been\u2014since the United States took over from the British\u2014a zone that is essentially under an American security umbrella. It is as crucial to American security as Lake Michigan. The United States doesn\u2019t use most of the oil coming out of the Gulf, but its allies do, so the stability of the Gulf has been associated with a steady flow of oil and a price that moves within a predictable range.<\/p>\n

Iran wants to create uncertainty there because oil is the only thing it has. Iran has nothing else\u2014some carpets and pistachio nuts, and that\u2019s it. Their population continues to grow, their needs continue to grow, and their grand ambitions continue to grow. So this, I think, is the first thing they would do with it. All it takes is to create a crisis or a succession of crises.<\/p>\n

Iran knows it can\u2019t wrest sole hegemony in the Gulf from the United States, but it wants to create a kind of dual hegemony shared with the United States. Nobody knows where the lines would run, but they wouldn\u2019t run just five to ten miles off the coast of Iran into the waters of the Persian Gulf. Iran would like to see its share extend to both sides of the Gulf, to effectively create a kind of push and shove between the United States and Iran.<\/p>\n

A lot of people on the Arab side of the Gulf will say they feel Iran\u2019s breath on their faces. The United States is there now, but the British were there once, too, and now they\u2019re gone. The Persians are always there and will always be there. So we\u2019ll see a lot of hedging. Iran would be perceived as the rising power and the United States a declining power.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t assume that in the Persian Gulf they don\u2019t hear what we say about this. Obama was famously photographed holding a copy of Fareed Zakaria\u2019s book The Post-American World<\/em> during the election campaign. And don\u2019t assume they don\u2019t hear Americans talking about imperial overstretch.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> You\u2019re talking about the Arabs here.<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> Yes, the Arabs. And this creates a dynamic where if Iran also has nuclear weapons they will increasingly hedge. Things they allow Americans now\u2014such as basing rights for operations in the Persian Gulf and beyond\u2014will become more and more difficult to negotiate if Iran opposes them. So we would see an erosion of the American position in the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n

I think Iran is a lot less interested in justice for the Palestinians than in establishing their command over the gulf they call Persian.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> We call it the Persian Gulf, too.<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> For reasons of geographic exactitude and custom. But Americans don\u2019t mean it should be dominated by Iran.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> Right.<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> The Iranians do. That\u2019s the longer term objective. And like I said, they\u2019re less interested in justice for the Palestinians than they are in this. They remind me a bit of Saddam Hussein. He said at one point that he would burn half of Israel, yet turned around and instead burned a lot of Kuwait. He wasn\u2019t as interested in being admired by the Palestinians as he was about controlling resources. The Gulf is always very much a resource game. So that would be the first objective of the Iranians. But, of course, Iran also wants to wage proxy wars elsewhere.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> They do have interests in the Levant [the Eastern Mediterranean].<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> They have interests in the Levant, but there\u2019s nothing here that can solve their fundamental problems, which is the mismatch of population and resources. Their game in the Levant is to get around America\u2019s flank. They see Israel as an extension of America, but it\u2019s not their primary area of interest.<\/p>\n

Obviously, though, they have an ideological interest here, and they\u2019re willing to fight Israel to the last Lebanese Shiite, but it\u2019s an open question how much they\u2019d be willing to sacrifice themselves directly.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s why I think Iranian nuclear weapons are a world problem as much as, or even more than, they are an Israeli problem.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> The Persian Gulf is certainly more of a world problem than an Israeli problem.<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> Israel has to take it seriously, though. After listening to Iran\u2019s discourse, Israel can\u2019t rule out the possibility that even a small faction could get their finger on the trigger.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a world problem, though, and the world has to ask itself if it can tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran deliberately creating uncertainty, instability, and doubt surrounding the great reservoir of the world\u2019s energy. If a coalition ever comes together to stop Iran, this will be the reason.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> What do you think will happen in the Levant if Iran builds a bomb? Will wars with Hezbollah and Hamas be more or less likely, and peace with the Palestinians more or less likely?<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> Those are two separate issues.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> Yes, but they\u2019ll both be affected.<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> Right. It will certainly create a situation where there would be an expectation among the supporters of Hezbollah and Hamas that Iran would act to come to their defense by using its nuclear capabilities to threaten Israel, but I\u2019m not sure Iran wants to do that. We saw during the last Lebanon war that the timing of the crisis was not to Iran\u2019s liking. The Iranians would not have chosen the summer of 2006 to have Hezbollah in a crisis with Israel.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> They were angry about it.<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> They view the Levant as an arena that can be integrated into their larger strategy, not so they can support a strategy that has been independently formulated by Hezbollah. Hezbollah doesn\u2019t deliberately formulate an independent strategy, but Hamas certainly does.<\/p>\n

If Iran decides to take the route that Israel and Japan have taken\u2014either nuclear ambiguity or being one screw away from having a bomb\u2014it would be less subject to moral extortion by the extremists in the Levant who would act unilaterally and expect Iran to come to their aid. So an ambiguous scenario wouldn\u2019t increase the possibility of warfare, but if Iran becomes an explicit and open nuclear state, that\u2019s a different story. Even the United States and the Soviet Union went on nuclear alert over an Arab-Israeli war [in 1973]. But you never know. Knowing in advance that it could lead to that kind of escalation, there might be mechanisms which would kick into action before things reached that level.<\/p>\n

I do think a nuclear Iran creates a dynamic where Israel, from a strategic point of view, is compelled to keep a tight grip on Jerusalem and a large swath of the West Bank for the simple reason that it creates a deterrent to an Iranian attack. If all our strategic assets are concentrated on the coastal plain around Tel Aviv, we\u2019re vulnerable. An Iranian ayatollah, Rafsanjani, has already noted that Israel is vulnerable to one strike. So how to we change that calculation?<\/p>\n

A big country like the United States disperses its assets across a vast continent when facing nuclear adversaries. A small state can\u2019t do that. But within this small state is a prime Muslim holy place, the liberation of which is championed by the Iranians, and it\u2019s in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

So if Israel faces a real nuclear adversary that threatens its destruction and has Islamic fervor as the basis of its ideology\u2014one that holds up Jerusalem as a symbol\u2014it will make all the sense in the world to concentrate every strategic asset it can right next to it.<\/p>\n

The Israeli leadership has built a duplicate command center in Jerusalem exactly like the one it has in Tel Aviv in the Ministry of Defense. So why stop at the top brass and the political leadership if you know that over the long term we\u2019ll face a hostile nuclear adversary? It makes sense to load up Jerusalem with strategic assets which would themselves serve as a deterrent to a future exchange. And it\u2019s a lot easier to do than position submarines in the Persian Gulf or the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n

So the long term effect would be to make Jerusalem central to Israel not only for political and cultural reasons, but also for strategic reasons. That doesn\u2019t mean all kinds of arrangements can\u2019t be made on the ground between Israelis and Palestinians about the day-to-day running of the city.<\/p>\n

In the past, Israel was concerned about holding the Jordan Valley as its eastern front against an invading conventional army. In a nuclear scenario Jerusalem itself would become crucial to preventing an adversary from striking a decisive blow which would render it no longer viable as a state. The idea is to persuade that adversary that even if there is a strike against Israel\u2019s concentration of population, Israel will still remain viable.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> It sounds, though, like this would make resolving the conflict with the Palestinians much<\/em> more difficult.<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> Yes.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> I figured we\u2019d agree, but can you explain why you think that\u2019s the case?<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> If there\u2019s a shift of Israel\u2019s assets from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the struggle over real estate up here becomes even more acute. There will be less leeway for Israeli concessions. Concessions are difficult to make in any case. Local security issues can be, in one way or another, finessed, but once they play out in this mega arena of confrontation between nuclear states, flexibility diminishes quickly. It would create tremendous pressure on Israel to maintain its right to decide the future of different pieces of turf close to the city.<\/p>\n

In the past we had the idea that in order for Israel to remain viable we had to settle the Negev Desert and the Galilee because they have large Arab populations. That was never for religious reasons, it was always for strategic reasons. A nuclear Iran would create strategic calculations for Jerusalem that weren\u2019t there before. There were always other strategic calculations for Jerusalem, but this would create a powerful new one. What would the Israelis and Palestinians discuss at the table once that became a factor?<\/p>\n

Linkage is a big issue, but there\u2019s a debate over which way linkage runs. Some say a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would make it much easier for the United States to deal with Iran. But I think the absence of a solution to the Iranian nuclear dilemma places a high premium on Israel holding if not the totality of the occupied territories, at least a sizable bit of real estate around Jerusalem as a strategic reserve.<\/p>\n

I say this as someone who has always believed there would be some way to compromise over Jerusalem, but when I see the prospect of a nuclear Iran on the horizon threatening Israel, I say to myself that I want as many of Israel\u2019s strategic, demographic, industrial, and technological assets in and around the city as possible.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> So what do you say to people who prioritize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over Iranian nuclear weapons?<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> I\u2019d like to know more about how this is supposed to affect Iran\u2019s calculations. I don\u2019t think it will. I think they decided long ago that they want to have a hegemonic role enhanced by nuclear capability. A resolution of the conflict here wouldn\u2019t deter them or persuade them from that ambition. On the contrary, they would believe that Israel would grow stronger and would be even more of a threat than it is today. They\u2019re going to pursue this track no matter what.<\/p>\n

The theory is that a resolution to the conflict would make it easier to mobilize Arab support.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> Right.<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> But how much Arab support does the United States need that it doesn\u2019t already have? Support from the Gulf Arabs is already guaranteed. They see Iran as a threat directed more at them than at anyone else.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> They do.<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> The Arabs who could conceivably be swayed are the Arabs of Egypt and the Levant, but it\u2019s difficult to envision a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would satisfy all of them. Quite a few formulas will alienate lots of them.<\/p>\n

And the question is: are they really necessary? Is it that important to have the so-called Arab street? It\u2019s extremely difficult to turn the Arab street into a strategic asset. Nasser tried to do it. Saddam Hussein tried to do it. Ahmadinejad is trying to do it. Erdogan is trying to do it. It\u2019s flattering, I suppose, to have your poster on walls here and there, but nobody has found a way to turn that into something they can use, and I don\u2019t think the United States has much prospect of doing so either. It\u2019s an intangible.<\/p>\n

A nuclear Iran, on the other hand, would be tangible. So I think linkage, in fact, runs the other way.<\/p>\n

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict only has a chance of being resolved if the Levant can be disconnected from the Gulf. So we have to deal with the Iranian issue first.<\/p>\n

Look at the history of the Middle East since the creation of Israel to the present. We have had two separate periods. The first lasted from 1948 until the late 1970s. During this period we had a war between Israel and the Arabs every decade. The Gulf region was stable. The British were there. There was always a concern that the conflict between Israel and the Arabs might create a ripple effect in the Gulf, and it finally happened in 1973 when they cut off the oil.<\/p>\n

Then the United States changed its policy. The Americans said they were going to support Israel so staunchly that the Arabs would despair of ever achieving victory and would therefore have no choice but to sign peace agreements. And that\u2019s what happened.<\/p>\n

Since 1973 there has been no state-to-state war in the Levant. We\u2019ve had intifadas, we\u2019ve had wars between Israel and non-state actors, but we haven\u2019t had the devastation of a state-to-state war. And the oil hasn\u2019t been shut off since then. The oil only gets cut off as an act of solidarity between states, not as an act of solidarity with the PLO, Hamas, or Hezbollah.<\/p>\n

So we now have an architecture that works in the Levant, but the Gulf has experienced a succession of wars. The Gulf now destabilizes the region. It has seen the Iran-Iraq war, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the latest Iraq war, and who knows what\u2019s to come. And we\u2019ve seen that the instability in the Persian Gulf region has a ripple effect in the Levant. It goes the other way now, and it\u2019s a consequence of the Iranian Revolution in 1979.<\/p>\n

Israel is the stake that has been planted in the Levant. Because it\u2019s powerful, it puts a high premium on rationality among all those who surround it. It serves as the basis for the security architecture.<\/p>\n

When the British left the Gulf in the early 1970s, the Americans weren\u2019t in a position to pick it up because they were busy in Vietnam. They had their dual pillars in the Gulf, Iran and Saudi Arabia, but one of them collapsed in 1979. And since that collapse, there has been no equivalent of Israel in the Gulf which the United States could use as a fulcrum around which to organize a region. So the pillar of stability has been the American deployment of its own forces again and again and again. They\u2019ve put millions of boots on the ground, and it\u2019s still not enough.<\/p>\n

So here in the Levant we\u2019re feeling the wash from the long-term destabilization of the Gulf. It is America\u2019s primary interest to keep these as two separate regions. The regional hegemon needs to make sure there is no cross-contamination between them.<\/p>\n

The regions used to be separate. During the British time, the Levant was run from London and the Persian Gulf from India. The Levant was called the Near East, and the Gulf was called the Middle East. These were two distinct zones. We\u2019ve conflated them in the meantime, and it\u2019s in the interest of the United States to disaggregate them again and to keep them disaggregated. Any attempt to project power from one into the other undermines the position of the regional hegemon. That was true when Saddam Hussein fired missiles at Israel, and it\u2019s true when Iran sends missiles to Hezbollah. It\u2019s always the radicals who do the bridging. The same was true with Nasser.<\/p>\n

And it compels others to do the same. If Israel acts over the head of the United States against Iran, it will be just the latest example. It\u2019s something the United States can\u2019t afford. It means that every time we have a problem in the Levant, it will create problems for the United States in the Gulf, and vice versa.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> How can the United States drive a wedge between the two regions?<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> That\u2019s easy. The U.S. just has to say that it supports its Israeli ally to keep order in its arena, and the U.S. will take responsibility for keeping order in its<\/em> arena. Just effectively divide responsibility. If the U.S. flags in its resolve to do that, it will be under pressure from those who are tempted to act outside their arena.<\/p>\n

My friend Steve Rosen at Harvard once said it would be shameful if the United States were to leave it to Israel to do what it should do in the Gulf. The Persian Gulf is an area of world interest where America plays the guarantor role.<\/p>\n

If Israel has to act as the guarantor in the Gulf, it will be a sign that America has dodged its responsibility.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> The Gulf Arab states are not-so quietly hoping Israel will do it if the U.S. does not.<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> They\u2019re looking for someone, anyone<\/em>, to do it.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> They\u2019re the ones who should be the most worried. We don\u2019t hear much about this from the Arab states in North Africa. They don\u2019t have as many reasons to be concerned.<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> That\u2019s a separate area altogether.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> Egypt is sort of a bridge, though, isn\u2019t it? Cairo sides to a certain extent with Israel against Hamas, and we know Mubarak isn\u2019t thrilled about what\u2019s happening in Tehran.<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> The main problem with Egypt is that its own regional role has been so much diminished. Not only can Egypt no longer project power beyond its borders as it did in Nasser\u2019s days, it can barely control events inside its national borders as we\u2019ve seen in the Sinai. Egypt clearly resents the rise of Iranian power. They don\u2019t necessarily trust anyone as a counterweight. Their approach all along has been that they don\u2019t want a nuclear Iran, but that the way to go about it is to de-nuclearize Israel as part of a grand bargain. They would achieve two goals at once. Both Iran and Israel would be cut down a peg.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> Do you think that\u2019s their sincere approach? Egyptian officials will say this in public, but what do they really think?<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> I think there\u2019s no question they\u2019d like the United States to play the role. They\u2019d much rather have the U.S. take the lead than Israel. They know what everyone knows\u2014the United States would do it much more effectively.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> Of course.<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> There would be nothing worse than a botched or half-complete operation. There\u2019s a very strong preference that the U.S. take care of this, among the Gulf Arabs and the Egyptians.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> And, of course, among the Israelis.<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> It\u2019s absolutely central to the strategy to maintain this division. And the only way to maintain it is for the United States to demonstrate tomorrow that it will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons or<\/em> to allow Israel to act unilaterally. The Gulf is a zone of American dominance, and the only way to assert that is to do what Carter did with the Carter Doctrine, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. He said there should be no outside power or local power that is allowed to challenge the United States in the Gulf. And a nuclear Iran clearly crosses that line.<\/p>\n

If even Jimmy Carter was compelled to issue a doctrinal statement in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan about the Persian Gulf, one would think that Barack Obama would see the need to do something similar. Obama should especially feel compelled to do so because there\u2019s a question mark there. He should declare the Persian Gulf a nuclear-free zone. It\u2019s too much to talk about the Middle East as a nuclear-free zone at this time, but the Persian Gulf is nuclear-free now, and it\u2019s time for the United States to come out and say it should remain nuclear-free.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> I have a hard time imaging Obama doing anything of the sort.<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> Yeah. Well.<\/p>\n

MJT:<\/strong> But I suppose one never knows.<\/p>\n

Martin Kramer:<\/strong> It would be an astonishing lapse if a man who promised to roll back nuclear proliferation watched proliferation develop in one of the least stable parts of the world, a place where the United States has only been able to maintain even a modicum of stability by a massive projection of its own forces. The region is of prime interest to the entire world for its energy resources. If it becomes nuclearized, it will be the one<\/em> thing for which Barack Obama would always be remembered by history, and he would be remembered by history as a failure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael J. Totten interviews Martin Kramer on the implications of Iran’s nuclear plans for the United States, the Middle East, Israel, and Jerusalem. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1167,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1278,622,2239,101187,2223],"class_list":["post-2720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barack-obama","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-jerusalem","tag-nuclear"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}