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Before You Bomb Iran: A Pre-Flight Checklist

This article is more than 9 years old.

Negotiations with Iran over the fate of its nuclear program are entering a critical stage.  As a consequence of economic sanctions and tireless diplomacy, an agreement may be reached that would seriously inhibit Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon for many years (and make it very hard for Iran to build one suddenly and without warning).

But these negotiations might also fail, or result in a deal that some will find unsatisfactory.  In either of those instances, the “military option” will be raised as an alternative for dealing with the abysmal prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.  Nevertheless, although I am among those who have a viscerally negative reaction to the thought of a nuclear-capable Iran, that does not mean that the resort to force will solve this dreadful problem, or advance U.S. interests more generally.

As I have argued repeatedly (including in this space), in considering the wisdom of the use of force (or any potential action in international politics), two iron laws of geopolitics must be heeded: (1) “success” can only be measured by the extent to which political goals are achieved; (2) problems in international relations are never really “solved” once and for all, they are simply superseded by the next set of problems, and so on, forever.  So it is extremely important—that is, absolutely necessary—to try very hard to anticipate the next set of problems that you will face as a consequence of the actions that you have just taken.

And so before signing off on bombing Iran, three questions in particular need to be asked, regarding the effects of a military strike itself, the consequences of such an attack within Iran, and—always—what the world looks like the day after the bombing stops.

Ultimately, even by the narrowest of military metrics, a U.S. strike on Iran is a measure of uncertain prospect.  This would be an airstrike—and only an airstrike—no ground invasion will follow.  Iran is larger in size than Iraq and Afghanistan combined, and with eighty million citizens, it is more populous than both together as well.  Even invasion and a decade of occupation were insufficient to impose our will on those two smaller, weaker countries, experiences that are all-too-relevant exemplars of those iron geopolitical laws: the yawning gap between the “successful” application of force and the achievement of the underlying goals for which force was introduced, and the fact that new problems (ISIS, anyone?) invariably come on the heels of solving old problems (getting rid of Saddam Hussein).

Bombing—again, even assuming the best case scenario—has its limits.  And its unintended consequences.  Presumably, such an attack would set back the progress of Iran’s nuclear program for months or even years—assuming that we have identified all of the right targets, hit them profoundly, and that all the measures that Iran must have taken in anticipation of such an attack (surely it occurred to them this might happen) were ineffective.  But the bombing would also bring about the end of the sanctions regime, and the end of any debate within Iran about whether or not to pursue a nuclear weapon.  Scientific knowledge cannot be bombed away, and whatever know-how it had previously would be put in the service of a desperate sprint to the finish line.  Thus, ironically, the resort to preventive war might ultimately guarantee rather than thwart the culmination of Iran’s nuclear aspirations.

The American attacks—the initial attacks, the immediate follow-up attacks, and, presumably, some follow-up attacks down the road (when, exactly, would we be “done”?)—would also have significant effects on domestic politics within Iran.  A rather unsavory crowd now governs, but Iran is characterized by a literate population, a large middle class, a variety of views, and considerable political contestation (the majority of the people in the country were born well after the Shah was chased from power, and place their grievances at the feet of the Islamic Republic).  And even the best bombing would result in considerable “collateral damage”—that is, dead innocents—and, to coin a phrase, “the collateral damage will be televised.”  Anti-Americanism would soar, the worldview of the worst elements within Iranian society would be confirmed, and the current regime empowered at the expense of moderate voices and interests.

To be noted, then, are the possibilities that a military strike might ensure a nuclear Iran and bolster the fortunes of its worst elements.  But these two problems likely pale in comparison to the implications of a third: How will Iran respond?  When you smack someone in world politics, they don’t always “take it and like it,” as Bogie once insisted—rather, if they can, they hit back.  It would be foolish in the extreme to fail to anticipate that if we strike Iran, they will respond somehow in some way.  And from there we will of course respond to that response (as will others who are drawn in—others who will make their own decisions, some of them contrary to our interests), leading to still more actions and reactions.  Keep in mind that Iran sits along the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, shares long borders with Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan (and four other countries in the region), is a major player in the fight against ISIS, and has a bitter political rivalry with Saudi Arabia.  At the very least, it is crucial to formulate some expectations about plausible scenarios in all of these areas and consider how they might play out in the wake of Iran’s response to our attack.  U.S. interests hang by a thread in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the region, and we would be well-advised to regard the timeless wisdom of Bob Dylan: “think you’ve lost it all/there’s always more to lose.”

Geopolitical acumen is rarely about knowing which choice will “solve the problem”; very often it is about finding the best way to make the least unpalatable choice from a menu of difficult and dispiriting options.  A nuclear-capable Iran is an extremely disturbing prospect.  But it seems most likely that trying to bomb our way out of this problem would make a very bad situation even worse.  In theory, it is of course possible for others to come to a different conclusion.  But it is essential that these questions be asked—and answered—before the planes take off.