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Why an Iranian Bomb Matters

June 22, 2004
IntellectualConservatism.com
Roger Howard

The most important reasons why an Iranian bomb matters are the least-mentioned.

At their Board meeting in Vienna last week, the governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency once again conjured visions of a specter that has long haunted the Western imagination -- the prospect of the Iranian mullahs developing the fissile material for a nuclear bomb that could one day target the cities of Israel and even southern Europe. And as the IAEA inspections continue and serious doubts about Iranian activities remain, that specter looks unlikely, for the moment at least, to be exorcised.

Why, though, is the prospect of an Iranian bomb a cause for such alarm? While Tehran is rational enough to accept that its own use of the weapon would provoke nuclear retaliation and destruction, runs the argument, their own protégés in the Middle East may not be so sensible. As a sworn enemy of Israel, Iran could easily smuggle fissile material to militia groups that could conceivably unleash them on Israeli or Western civilian populations not by firing a missile but instead by detonating them inside their towns and cities.

No one seriously disputes this is a cause for serious concern, as serious as the prospect of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence passing its own nuclear materials into the hands of its own proxy forces in Kashmir. But it is not, however, the paramount reason why an Iranian bomb really matters because it is a threat the outside world can easily deter: if your protégés use your weapons, we can simply say to the Iranians, then you are accountable and must pay the price.

Nor is it enough to say that the development of an Iranian bomb would provoke a regional arms race that could prove highly destabilizing, just as India’s nuclear program during and after the 1960s provoked a comparable Pakistani reaction. But Iran’s current situation differs considerably from the Indo-Pak model. Israel, its regional enemy, and Pakistan, a possible future rival for influence and resources, are both nuclear powers already and the other countries that might feel threatened -- Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Turkey -- are already well-protected by the long arm of the American nuclear umbrella. With whom, then, is this arms race going to occur?

The most convincing reasons to be deeply concerned about an Iranian bomb are in fact the least mentioned. The first is that the development of a warhead would be seen by ordinary Iranians as a huge national achievement and thereby enormously boost the prestige of the present regime. If this helps to sustain the rule of the mullahs, then of course the cause of democracy and human rights inside Iran would be dealt a very hard blow.

Viewed in these terms, stopping the development of an Iranian bomb is one of the very few things the outside world can constructively do to assist the humanitarian cause. The decade-long efforts of the European Union to promote human rights inside Iran has achieved nothing, not least because anything that smacks of foreign interference immediately raises hackles and so becomes counter-productive. “The truth is that European Critical Dialogue has failed to deliver,” as a senior Western diplomat told me in Tehran last autumn, admitting that the single supposed achievement of the policy -- a moratorium on the stoning to death of some criminals -- officially ended a practice that was already dead in practice. But we are not powerless to prevent the mullahs from reaping a political harvest of nationalism when they successfully test-fire a nuclear device.

The other main reason why an Iranian bomb would matter is that the possibility of serious political unrest inside Iran over the next few years cannot easily be discounted. It is of course possible that the mullahs will cling to power in the same way as the Chinese communists have clung to their own, buying off their enemies and introducing populist measures as well as ruthlessly suppressing disorder. But should the regime crumble before violent street protests, then the ensuing anarchy could easily allow nuclear materials to be spirited away by anyone who can bribe or steal their way into its nuclear installations. And just as former Soviet and Iraqi scientists were headhunted when their own masters fell from power, so could destitute Iranian scientists one day also prove easy targets for foreign governments wanting their expertise.

So for these rather different reasons the prospect of an Iranian bomb is indeed a deeply alarming one. Let us hope that it’s within our power to stop it from ever being realized.

Roger Howard is the author of Iran in Crisis? Nuclear Ambitions and the American Response.
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