Iran Nuclear Talks Threaten To Undermine U.S. Pivot To Asia

The central premise of the new U.S. defense strategy formulated in 2012 is that threats to U.S. security in regions such as the Middle East and Europe are declining, allowing the White House and Pentagon to orchestrate a so-called “pivot to the Asia-Pacific Region.” Given Beijing’s increasing belligerency as well as the increasing power of China’s military, the pivot such as it is seems to be coming none too soon. However, the way the United States and Western nations are approaching the nuclear negotiations with Iran, the assumption that the risks to U.S. security interests and those of allies in the Middle East will continue to decline needs to be reconsidered. The likely outcome of even the most successful negotiations will be a requirement for continuous U.S. military counterbalancing of the regime in Teheran and possibly outright containment.

It is already clear that no conceivable comprehensive agreement will achieve the elimination of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capability or its extensive know-how in designing and producing the components of a nuclear weapon.  As a report in today’s New York Times made clear, the most that Western negotiators are seeking is a “firebreak” in Iran’s nuclear capability, one sufficient to provide warning that they are breaking out of an agreement.

“Western officials and experts concede that Iran will have an enrichment program, but they want to constrain and control it to ensure that Iran cannot build a nuclear weapon quickly or undetected. They want some formula that limits the level of enrichment; caps the stockpiles of enriched uranium; dismantles or decommissions a large number of Iran’s centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium; removes the possibility that the heavy-water reactor will produce plutonium; and allows a deeper level of inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, signed by Iran.”[1]

The realization that there is no way to stop the Iranian program short of military strikes may be the reason that the U.S. recently added a cessation of Iran’s long-range ballistic missile program to its list of objectives. If we can’t stop them from building the Bomb, perhaps we can get them not to deploy a missile capable of reaching the United States.

The experts believe that such an agreement would provide between six months and a years’ worth of warning of an Iranian effort to acquire nuclear weapons. That would leave the world with just enough time to dither, engage in extended consultations and, perhaps, to impose renewed and even tougher sanctions. At that point, the U.S. would be left with two bad choices, strike Iran or deploy sufficient forces to the region to deter Iranian aggression.

Of course, even these options depend on the West having actionable warning. But there are reasons to believe that with even the agreement described above in place, the actual warning time would be substantially less, perhaps none at all. A January 2014 study by the prestigious Defense Science Board titled Assessment of Nuclear Monitoring and Verification Technologies came to the following conclusions:

• The nuclear future will not be a linear extrapolation of the past. The nature of the problem is changing significantly in a number of dimensions. In particular, security risks from threshold states, including Iran, are growing.
• The technologies and processes designed for current treaty verification and inspections are inadequate to future monitoring realities. Small, covert nuclear weapons programs may be all but impossible to detect prior to their being unveiled by the proliferating regime.
• An entirely new monitoring and verification paradigm is needed along with new tools and technologies.[2]

There are those who believe that it is already too late. The U.S. only “discovered” that Iran was working on a nuclear weapon in 2002. At that point, the program was already fifteen years old.  Given the extent of support Teheran received from North Korea, Russia and the A.Q. Khan network, it would not be surprising that all the physical elements of a nuclear weapon are currently stockpiled in secret locations in Iran.

Faced with a comprehensive agreement that would provide little or no warning time, the U.S. would need to respond by building up its military capabilities and those of its allies in the Persian Gulf region as a counterweight to Iran. Washington could well have to offer nuclear security guarantees to states such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. All these demands would come at a time when defense budgets are declining and forces are being reduced. As a result, the U.S. could be required to truncate its already anemic redeployment of forces to the Far East.