BICOM

This is a transcript of a Fathom debate that took place in Central London on Tuesday 19^th February 2013. The event was hosted by Sky News’ Foreign Affairs Editor, Tim Marshall. The panellists were Brigadier General (ret.) Michael Herzog, Professor Malcolm Chalmers, Dr. Emily Landau, and Gabrielle Rifkind.

Michael Herzog, BICOM’s Senior Visiting Fellow, is a retired Brigadier General of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and a fellow of The Washington Institute. He has held several senior positions including serving as chief of staff to Israel’s Minister of Defense and special emissary for Israel’s Prime Minister and Minister of Defence in the efforts to relaunch the peace process (2009-10).

I believe that the issue we are about to discuss – the Iranian nuclear programme – is one of the most complicated facing Jerusalem, Washington and the major European capitals. It is extremely complicated because of the nature of the weaponry at stake, the regime type – an Islamist regime with strong anti-Israel and anti-Western sentiments – and because we’ve been trying to resolve this for two decades now, and we’ve been unsuccessful.

It’s also complicated because of the cultural gaps, the gaps between the actors and ultimately because there are no easy options.

Are the Iranians really after nuclear weapons? My answer is yes; and most Israelis would agree. I could give a long lecture about this, but for now, let me just say that Iranians have been concealing and cheating for two decades. That speaks for itself.

Some of what they are doing can only be explained as being for military purposes. An enrichment site, hidden 90 metres under a rock, that only hosts 3,000 centrifuges, does not make sense as a site merely for energy purposes. And their heavy water facility can only be for military purposes.

If you read the IAEA reports about what the Iranians are doing, there is a long list of things that cannot be explained other than for nuclear weaponry purposes, such as nuclear triggers, warheads with nuclear capabilities, and so on.

Even if the uranium they have been enriching to 20 per cent is ostensibly for medical research, they still have sufficient isotopes for years to come to conclude that Iran is after nuclear weapons. The Iranians are developing all the elements needed for what we call ‘breakout capacity’ – that is the ability to create a weapon. There is an ongoing weaponisation effort which has been reported by the IAEA. They already have a delivery system with a range that they can hit Israel, so now they need to develop nuclear warheads for them. We don’t focus on it, because we’re all focused on their uranium enrichment programme, but if you read the IAEA reports, they may even be able to develop initial plutonium capabilities in 2014, and this is even more dangerous than uranium enrichment.

It is estimated by both Israel and Western intelligence communities that if the Iranians make a decision today to make a nuclear weapon, it will take up to six months to enrich a sufficient amount of uranium and around a year to operationalise it. I believe the Iranians have made a strategic decision that this is what they want, but not the operational decision to make a weapon.

Let me very briefly go over the strategic options of how to respond to their nuclear programme. We’re talking about four major options.

The first is, through a variety of forms of pressure, to get the Iranians to change their policy and stop their nuclear programme, or at least limit it to a peaceful programme. I am talking mainly about political pressure and economic pressure, i.e. sanctions. The problem with this policy, which is currently being pursued by the international community, is that, in the meantime, the Iranians are continuing to develop their programme. The international community has been talking to them for years. Is there a timeframe for diplomacy or is it an open-ended process?

The big risk with this option is that Iran can withstand this pressure for years. In the meantime, they can develop their capabilities, immunise themselves from strikes by both Israel and America and ultimately shorten considerably the breakout time to making a bomb. Ultimately they can make a decision when and how to breakout at a time of their choosing and it will be impossible to stop them. This is a problem that Israel has identified. The American red lines put forward to the Iranians say ‘we will stop you only when you make a decision to make a bomb and move in that direction.’

Another option is regime change. I don’t believe this is an option you can rely on. Governments have tried regime change; the US certainly has, and the Israeli government tried it in Lebanon. We have never really succeeded and it is risky. It may take years if you rely on domestic processes in Iran for this to happen and, in the meantime, the regime may reach nuclear capabilities.

So if these two options don’t work, we’re left with the other two strategic options, which are the containment of a nuclear Iran on one hand, and military prevention on the other. None of us want to be in a situation where we have to choose between these two options. It is a very bad choice.

Let me just frame the debate in Israel regarding these two options, as it is very different from the debate in Europe or the US. You don’t have two major schools of thought, one advocating containment and the other advocating prevention. I would say that most Israelis don’t believe that containment can work with the Iranians.

Naturally Israelis feel directly threatened by the Iranian nuclear programme. They believe that even if you can deter Iran from actually employing nuclear weapons, you cannot contain it from dangerously shifting the strategic balance in the Middle East. We are going to face a nuclear arms race, and instability under the umbrella of nuclear deterrence. I don’t want to think of a situation where the nuclear arms race is between Shi’ite and Sunni Islamist regimes. This would be very dangerous.

Many people ask if Israel has a military option. The answer is yes. It is not as robust as the US option, but it would certainly hold the programme back for several years. The problem with the military option is not the operational aspect; it is the ‘day after’. The first issue will be the retaliation that follows. We can expect what I call a third Lebanon war ‘plus plus’. The Iranians will fire missiles at Israel. They will activate Hezbollah and some other Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza who will fire on Israel and so on.  It is not a doomsday scenario, certainly not as Syria is preoccupied with its own civil war. But it will be a challenge. The biggest dilemma for Israeli decision-makers in the aftermath will be how do to prevent Iran from reconstructing its nuclear programme. For that, all types of pressure on Iran currently applied by the international community will be required.

The question put forward to us was: should all options be kept on the table? My answer is clearly, yes. I believe that the Iranians froze their programme in 2003 because they were afraid that Americans would strike against them after Iraq. The fact that they have not yet broken out is because they’re afraid of the military option. They don’t cross Israel’s explicit red line of 20 per cent enrichment of the materials sufficient for one bomb because of this threat. So yes, all options should be kept on the table in order to deter Iran and to provide backbone for sanctions and diplomacy.

Professor Malcolm Chalmers is Research Director/Director UK Defence Policy at RUSI, and Special Adviser to the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy.

Although I was asked to talk about the UK policy, I’m not representative of the UK government in this discussion.

Having followed this debate for quite some time now, both inside the UK government and then outside, there is a danger of crying wolf on this issue and claiming that we’re about to come to a tipping point where decisions of a very dramatic nature have to be taken.

That argument has been around for some time and we need to be careful about any such claim. I would say the most probable scenario over the next year will be a continuation of the status quo: no peace, no negotiated settlement, but no war either. The reason for that is I think getting a negotiated settlement between the E3+3 and Iran is going to be very hard. But I think the main parties involved want to avoid war. Therefore, ‘no peace, no war’ is probably where we are going to be at for some time to come.

Getting a negotiated settlement is going to be very hard because neither the American nor the Iranian governments feel that they have enough room for movement for the ‘grand bargain’ that would solve this issue. I suspect the Iranian leadership simply doesn’t believe that there is anything that they could do, short of ending any sponsorship of their regional allies in Lebanon and Iraq and Palestine, holding free and fair elections, and allowing a US-sponsored candidate to take power, that would lead to an end to the sanctions, which after all have been in place since not long after the Iranian Revolution. Even if President Obama was prepared to go some significant way to lifting sanctions, if the only thing that Iran did was listen to the concerns on the nuclear agenda, would the international community then be prepared to lift all or most of the sanctions?

There is a credible case to be made that the economic sanctions are having a really big impact on the Iranian economy. It is probably having quite an impact on Iranian political leaders too, making them think about how they could reverse those sanctions. But I am sceptical about whether I can see a bargain that would allow those sanctions to be substantially lifted now that they are in place. Unless the Iranians believe there is something they could do that would allow the reversal of sanctions, they will not be able to sell to their country the prospect of some sort of bargain.

I think that the US, and its allies, would find it very difficult to sign up to an agreement that would involve very substantial softening of sanctions, if they felt that there was not a deal on the nuclear side that was sufficiently deep and intrusive as to prevent any future breakout. There are plenty of proposals out there for confidence building measures, such as stopping production of Fordow, while continuing with production of low-enriched uranium. The problem is that they are often one-sided against Iran.

So I think ‘no peace no war’ is probably a safe prediction. Of course, you never know what might happen, especially after the Iranian presidential elections. The Supreme Leader is clearly under a lot of pressure due to the sanctions, and it’s possible you could have a development similar to the end of the Iran-Iraq war, when Iran took a bitter pill in order to lift the greater threat to their country. But I don’t think it’s very likely.

So much of the nuclear deterrent theory is based on countries giving the impression that they are prepared to be irrational in some circumstances. Very radical and apparently irrational declaratory policy by President Ahmadinejad can be rational in terms of the anti-nuclear terms. My judgement would be that both sides want to avoid military action. I think that is certainly true of President Obama. In his State of the Union speech he says, “We’re going to end the war in Afghanistan.” What he means is “we’re going to end American involvement in Afghanistan.” Whether there continues to be a war after 2014 is not America’s business.

That’s not the sort of president who is going to take preventative action against Iran simply because their stockpile of 20% uranium is sufficient to build two bombs rather than one. My impression from people in the UK security community would say that Israel’s positioning for military action in the near-term is significant but certainly not overwhelming. If military action was to be taken by Israel – in particular without the operational breakout, without the expulsion of inspectors or a deliberate and very visible attempt to actually construct a weapon as distinct from constructing the capability in material terms to have the weapon – then it would be even more isolated in the international community than it is now.

It is clearly isolated already because of its policy on settlements and the increasingly distant prospect of a two-state solution, but if Israel launched a unilateral attack in the absence of an evident Iranian breakout, a sort of preventative attack of the same calibre of the recent attack against Syria or back in the 1980s against Osirak in Iraq, then this would add to the perception of Israel as a rogue state, and would harm its relations in the region as well as in the United States and Europe. Israel would much prefer any attack on Iran to be carried out by the United States, as much for political reasons as operational ones.

The one thing that I think could trigger a military attack by the United States would be if Iran were to take that extra step to dash to a bomb. Given how much international attention there is on Iran, it would be an enormous gamble by the regime as it would provide legitimacy to a military attack.

My final point is that I think if war does come, it won’t be like the preventative attacks in Iraq and Syria, and it won’t be like the wars Israel has waged on Lebanon and in Gaza. Whatever the immediate retaliation, we would be in a situation which many of us, perhaps, including my country, would be in a state of war with one of the major powers in the Middle East which, in all likelihood would seek to rebuild their nuclear capability covertly. We would therefore be faced with the prospect of repeated attacks on Iran which would become progressively harder as it got better at defending itself.

A war, whether low or high intensity, which would be very difficult for either side to pull out of is something I am confident that the UK is very strongly committed to avoiding.

Dr. Emily Landau is Senior Research Associate and Director of the Arms Control and Regional Security Project at the Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv.

I was asked to speak on how can nuclear proliferators can be stopped and to suggest policy directions for the international community, the NPT, and the IAEA.

Before I move to that though, I can’t resist making a few comments on what we’ve heard so far. This is basically a non-proliferation issue. Iran made a decision to join the NPT back in the 1970s. It made a commitment not to go for a military nuclear capability and has been violating this for years. This is an international issue not an Israeli one. The actors that have the role and responsibility to deal with this challenge are the permanent members of the Security Council, not Israel. Israel’s predicament is that it is one of the countries that will suffer the most from the adverse consequences of the failure of those that have the responsibility to stop Iran, but who will suffer the least from the consequences of their own failure.

The countries that have the responsibility need to step up to the plate and deal with Iran. If Iran goes nuclear, it has implications not only for the NPT but for any international treaty. What does it mean if a country joins an international treaty, proceeds to violate it, and nothing happens? It should be unacceptable but this is the situation we’re dealing with. Because the NPT doesn’t really have strong teeth for dealing with violators, strong states have stepped up to the plate and taken on the role of negotiating with Iran.

However, it’s very difficult to negotiate with a determined proliferator. This is not be a game of building confidence; make no mistake, it is a game of hardball negotiations. Iran wants a military capability; the international community wants Iran to stop. It’s pretty close to a zero sum situation.

With regard to the military option, I would suggest we do not think about this as war, necessarily. There is a whole array of military options. One should also take into account the difference between threatening military force and actually carrying it out. A credible threat of military force is an essential lever of pressure on Iran to finally get it serious about the negotiations.

I will now speak about the IAEA, the NPT, and the international community.

The most important thing for the IAEA – if we’re thinking about future proliferators down the line – is that it needs to change its organisational culture. The IAEA needs to understand that there are dangerous states out there that don’t have any qualms about cheating on the commitments they have made. So it needs to change the way it thinks about its inspections, and to start thinking more in terms of seeking out violations. From talking to some of the inspectors in the IAEA I think they realise that this is what needs to be done, but it is a big organisation.

For the NPT, the most important thing is to create benchmarks for declaring non-compliance. One of the biggest problems in dealing with Iran is the time that was lost between 2003 and 2008 in endless discussions of whether they were really going for a military option. Everything turns on interpretation of the evidence and political interests come into play. The Russians, even when the IAEA report of November 2011 came out were still saying, ‘Does this really mean that Iran is going for a military capability? Where’s the proof?’ Precious time was wasted because states were still putting a big question mark next to that statement.

Fordow has room for about 3,000 centrifuges. That does not make any sense in the context of a civilian programme. Natanz has room for something like 54,000 centrifuges which is what you need for a civilian programme. 3,000 centrifuges, however, in the context of a clandestine nuclear programme makes a lot of sense. It is just what you need in order to secretly enrich uranium to the higher levels you need for between one and two bombs.

That kind of evidence should be given a lot of sway in determining whether Iran is non-compliant. If there’s no good civilian explanation, and there is a very good military explanation, those are the sorts of things that need to be taken seriously. The same case could be made in regard to Iran’s decision to enrich uranium to 20 per cent in February 2010. Though not clear-cut evidence that Iran is going for a military capability, this kind of evidence should be taken very seriously in the context of the NPT.

Finally, for the international community, the best way to stop a determined proliferator is to make sure that it does not become an advanced determined proliferator. If Syria’s nuclear facility had not been bombed in 2007, we probably would be dealing with somewhat of a similar situation that we are now dealing with in Iran. The years that have gone by in the Iranian case have only strengthened their hand.

When diplomacy is chosen, understand that this is a game of hardball. It is not about confidence building; it is about stopping a determined proliferator that is violating a clear commitment that it made according to an international treaty to remain non-nuclear.

Gabrielle Rifkind is Director of the Middle East programme at the Oxford Research Group and has facilitated a number of Track II roundtables in the Middle East on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as on the Iranian nuclear issue.

The Oxford Research Group have spent a lot of time sitting with Iranians, who have access to the decision-making process or are part of the actual official negotiations, trying to find out what a deal could look like. There is going to be another round of official talks at the end of the month.

What is really good about this panel is that it sees things through different lenses, and that is a great strength. We start from the position that you actually have to do business with your enemies. They say extremely disturbing things, behave very aggressively, and go as far as to become, or feel like they have become, a real existential threat. We would also say that in order to do business, you have to think as they do. To actually negotiate a deal you also have to address what the security anxieties are of the other side, but most governments don’t actually think like that.

However, when you are dealing with resistance politics and revolutionary groups, trying to impose conditions means you will fail. We say that you have to understand the narrative, the mind-set of the people with whom you are trying to negotiate. On one hand, we have a ‘fanatical rogue Iran’ determined to bring nuclear armageddon, and then from an Iranian perspective, we have a ‘perfidious imperialist West’, determined to hold back the Islamic nation.

The Iranian Revolution was founded on the need for an enemy in order to achieve social cohesion. Their society has been glued together by its opposition to the US and Israel. On top of that we have seen extremely provocative behaviour from Ahmadinejad, with Holocaust denial – stuff that is deeply disturbing. We also have a supreme leader who is reclusive; hermetically sealed off from the West, and surrounded by a small group of advisors.

Most people would say that the sanctions have had an effect, and it could be that this is part of what is bringing Iran to the table. There are those who are now saying that we have to incentivise the country and offer some juicier carrots.

It is not only about hardball, it is also about deals that are actually in their best interests. If you listen to what goes on in the build-up to the negotiations, there is always talk and finger pointing saying the other side has got to show that it is serious. The truth is there is mutual suspicion on both sides; one side doubting the seriousness of the other. That is just what happens in negotiations. If we talked about Palestine and Israel we would hear exactly the same narrative about not believing in the seriousness of the other.

One of the problems with the negotiations is the way they are framed. We have what is called the E3+3, which was originally Britain, France and Germany, and then China, Russia and the US. It is quite hard for these countries to actually agree amongst themselves. Seventy per cent of their time is working out if they could come to a common agreement.

Talk about bilaterals is a good sign, although because of the elections coming up in Iran in June there may not be much movement. The US and Iran sitting down together is something that they have not done for 33 years. Salehi, the Iranian Foreign Minister, made a statement at the Munich Conference saying that they would sit down with the Americans. However, immediately after that, we had the supreme leader saying – but bear in mind that it was on Revolutionary Day – “You Americans want to negotiate pointing a gun at Iran. The Iranian nation will not be intimidated by such actions.” My American colleagues thought this meant that the bilateral talks were off. However, we read it that the supreme leader has a huge distrust and suspicion but there could still be serious negotiations. He has empowered Salehi to begin engagement and we will see what will happen on that track. There has been some positive signalling going on, such as a slowing down of the missile programme, a resumption of converting small amounts of highly-enriched uranium into the active fuel so it can’t be used for bomb-grade uranium.

If a deal was to be done, what could it look like? In the end, how do you incentivise all different parties? Just making demands doesn’t work. Everybody has to see negotiations to be in their interests. One of the things that we recommend strongly is to outline what the endgame is going to look like and how you get there. There is a lot of concern about that because people think you are showing your cards and the Iranians are saying in the end that they want all the sanctions lifted.

There is an area that is very contentious but key for the Iranians. Under the NPT Iran claims the right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes. They are completely consumed with the idea that they are not going to be pushed around by the West; they’re not going to be told that they are not going to have what they are entitled to or treated the same as other countries.

The kind of deals we want to do with our enemies are not the deals we want to do with our friends, but if you are going to end the conflict, you don’t want to be talking about stopping Iran, you want to be talking about how a reciprocal deal would incentivise all the parties and deal with the security needs of all sides.