By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, April 11, 2013
The idea of a nuclear Iran -- and of preventing a nuclear
Iran -- terrifies security analysts.
Those who argue for a preemptive strike against Iran
cannot explain exactly how American planes and missiles would take out all the
subterranean nuclear facilities without missing a stashed nuke or two -- or
whether they might as well expand their target lists to Iranian military assets
in general. None can predict the fallout on world oil prices, global terrorism
and the politically fragile Persian Gulf, other than that it would be uniformly
bad.
In contrast, those who favor containment of a nuclear
Iran do not quite know how the theocracy could be deterred -- or how either
Israel or the regional Sunni Arab regimes will react to such a powerful and
unpredictable neighbor.
The present crisis with North Korea offers us a glimpse
of what, and what not, to expect should Iran get the bomb. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
would gain the attention currently being paid to Kim Jong-un -- similarly not
otherwise earned by his nation's economy or cultural influence.
We should assume that the Iranian theocracy, like the
seven-decade-long Kim dynasty in North Korea, would periodically sound lunatic:
threatening its neighbors and promising a firestorm in the region -- if not
eventually in the United States and Europe as well.
An oil-rich, conventionally armed Iran has already used
that playbook. When it becomes nuclear, those previously stale warnings of
ending Israel or attacking U.S. facilities in the Persian Gulf will not be
entirely laughed off, just as Kim Jong-un's insane diatribes are not so easily
dismissed.
North Korea has taught the world that feigned madness in
nuclear poker earns either foreign aid or worldwide attention -- given that
even a 99 percent surety of a bluff can still scare Western publics. North
Korea is the proverbial nutty failed neighbor who constantly picks on the
successful suburbanites next door, on the premise that the neighbors will heed
his wild nonsensical threats because he has nothing and they have everything to
lose.
Iran could copy Kim's model endlessly -- one week
threatening to wipe Israel off the face of the map, the next backing down and
complaining that problems in translation distorted the actual, less bellicose
communiqué . The point would not necessarily be to actually nuke Israel (which
would translate into the end of Persian culture for a century), but to create
such an atmosphere of worry and gloom over the Jewish state as to weaken the
economy, encourage emigration and erode its geostrategic reputation.
North Korea is a past master of such nuclear shakedown
tactics. At times Pyongyang has reduced two Asian powerhouses -- Japan and
South Korea -- to near paralysis. Can the nations that gave the world Toyota
and Samsung really count on the American defense umbrella? Should they go
nuclear themselves? Can North Korean leadership be continually bought off with
foreign aid, or is it really as crazy serious as it sounds?
Iran would also be different from other nuclear rogue
states. The West often fears a nuclear Pakistan, given that a large part of its
tribal lands is ungovernable and overrun with Islamic radicals. Its government
is friendly to the West only to the degree that American aid continues.
Yet far larger and more powerful India deters nuclear
Pakistan. For all the wild talk from both the Pakistani government and tribal terrorists,
there is general fear in Pakistan that India has superior conventional and
nuclear forces. India is also unpredictable and not the sort of nation that can
be periodically threatened and shaken down for concessions.
Iran has no comparable existential enemy of a billion
people -- only a tiny Israel of some 7 million. The result is that there is no
commensurate regional deterrent.
Nor does Iran have a tough master like nuclear China.
Even Beijing finally pulls on the leash when its unpredictable North Korean
client has threatened to bully neighbors and create too unprofitable a fuss.
Of course, China enjoys the angst that its subordinate
causes its rivals. It also sees North Korea as a valuable impediment to a huge,
unified new Westernized Korea on its borders. But that said, China does not
want a nuclear war in its backyard. That fact ultimately means North Korea is
muzzled once its barking becomes too obnoxious.
A nuclear Iran would neither worry about a
billion-person, nuclear existential enemy nearby like India, nor a
billion-person patron like China that would establish redlines to its periodic
madness. Instead, Teheran would be free to do and say what it pleased. And its
nuclear status would become a force multiplier to its enormous oil wealth and
self-acclaimed world leadership of Shiite Muslims.
If North Korea has been a danger, then a bigger, richer
and undeterred nuclear Iran would be a nightmare.
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