In my daily life I need to be a little circumspect about what I say on national security issues. As the science fiction author Robert Auerbach, I’m a little less restrained. Besides, after reading Agency y’all should know I have for-real national security credentials and know deeply scary people, so you already know the things I don’t say in public.
Those who know my background have been asking me a one-word question lately: “Iran?” They usually vary the question with additional unnecessary words, but the country name is really sufficient by itself.
tl;dr: war is hell, and sometimes so is peace.
The United States has been in a de facto state of low-intensity conflict with Iran since 1983, when Iran-backed terrorists (Hezbollah, “the Party of God”) murdered almost 250 Marines in Beirut by blowing up their barracks with a car bomb. It’s been a violent tit-for-tat ever since: we seized Iranian oil rigs in the ’80s, Iran ordered the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, we fought Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias in Iraq, Iran provided insurgents with explosively formed penetrators capable of breaching our armored fighting vehicles, and in Trump’s first term we openly assassinated General Soleimani of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force.
(Soleimani was also responsible for murdering a dear friend of mine. I wasn’t kidding about knowing deeply scary people. I never said they were on our side.)
The United States strategy for Iran for the last forty-two years has been “low-risk, low-impact operations sustained over decades in the hopes the next time the leadership is in crisis we’ll have sapped enough political and military resources to hasten their downfall.” As far as strategies go this one isn’t awful. I’d play it differently, but there’s undoubtedly many good reasons I haven’t been elected to the Presidency.
Now let’s talk Iran. Iran is completely committed to the idea the United States seeks its downfall. They hold to this like a madman to his last shreds of sanity, but at the same time, everybody knows they’re not wrong. We are seeking their downfall. And the logic is simple: sooner or later American troops will be marching in Tehran, unless they’re able to do something by which they can prevent anyone from marching in Tehran.
Nukes.
To a dictator, the great appeal of nukes is as an insurance policy. A rational adversary will change their strategic thinking when dealing with a nuclear-armed foe. Consider the Russo-Ukrainian conflict: were it not for Russia’s constant semi-credible threat of using nukes, we’d already have given Ukraine cruise missiles and the green light to target Moscow. The same basic story has been told in North Korea, in India, in Pakistan. With a credible nuclear arsenal, no outside government can end your regime. They might be able to annihilate you utterly, but you’ll never be marched in handcuffs to the Hague. That fact, by itself, tends to justify all the many (many!) political difficulties of joining the nuclear club.
Now look at israel. On October 7, Israel was attacked in a cowardly and barbarous way by… drum roll, please… Iran. Oh, yes, Hamas technically, but Iran is their patron and there’s no way this plan went off without Iran giving their tacit approval. Enumerating the different atrocities suffered by innocent Israelis would be exhausting and pointlessly cruel: it is enough to say it was war without humanity, none whatsoever.
Between Hezballah to the north and Hamas to the west, Israel has Iranian proxies on two fronts and each has shown a disturbing willingness to commit atrocities against civilians. Israel has done an excellent job dismantling Hezballah and an exceptionally bloody job dismantling Hamas (much of the blood shed by innocent Gazans), but the fact remains their political bosses and military strategists in Iran are still cheerfully in business. Israel believes, not without justification, the following:
- Iran has been engaged in proxy war against Israel since 1977
- Iran at the very least tacitly approves atrocities against Israelis
- A nuclear-armed Iran will be much more difficult to stop militarily
- Regardless of whether those nukes are ever used against Israel, their presence will box Israel in politically and militarily and make it difficult for Israel to protect itself.
Do the math: Israel believes, not without reason, they must not permit Iran to join the nuclear club lest Iran be enabled to commit more atrocities with impunity. Ergo, the Iranian program must be ended: diplomatically if possible, by main force otherwise.
The real problem comes from Iranian nuclear labs buried deep in mountains. These are the holiest of the holies and Israel only has one weapon capable of destroying them: namely…
… nukes.
Israel has never made their arsenal or yield schedule public, but it’s not unreasonable to think they have Teller-Ulam multistage bombs. It’s believed they started the Teller-Ulam design in 1979, and 48 years of research and development by a nation’s brightest engineers working with an unlimited budget is kind of a lot. If they have Teller-Ulams, it’s reasonable to think their yields are in the neighborhood of a few hundred kiloton, which seems to be an emerging world standard for anything you can package into a warhead.
If Israel insists on total destruction of the most important parts of the Iranian nuclear program, that is only possible with either:
- U.S. bunker buster munitions (which Israel doesn’t have the capability to deliver) dropped from U.S. bombers
- Nuclear weapons
One of the two systems will be used.
So the ultimate answer to the “Iran?” question, now that we’ve covered the most salient factors, is this: if we join Israel’s war on Iran we might be able to prevent multiple nuclear initiations (not “explosions”, not “detonations”; nukes initiate) all over Iran, but at the cost of getting into yet another open-ended long-term conflict in the Middle East.
Or we can say “not our circus, not our monkeys,” abandon a friendly country when they’re confronting an existential threat, and watch a Cerenkov dawn from far, far away.
Decide for yourself how you think “Iran?” should be answered. I provide analysis and outcomes, not decisions.
Choose your own adventure, my friends. But choose wisely.