| 摘要 | Speaking about Iran’s nuclear program last month in an interview intended to reassure Israelis, President Barack Obama said that “a military solution will not fix it, even if the United States participates.” Such denigrations of the deterrent power of force have long been noticed in Iran. In a speech last July, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gloated: “There are very few people in today’s world who take these military threats seriously.” And why should they? The U.S. administration is engaged in sensitive negotiations while systematically depriving itself of leverage.
Military force may not be the ideal solution to the Iran nuclear issue, but it is an indispensable backdrop to viable diplomacy. By far the most effective agreement ever negotiated with Iran came in 2003, when the Islamic Republic agreed to suspend all its nuclear activities. The Europeans spearheaded the talks, but American power fortified their mandate. In the intervening decade, Iranian officials–including President Hasan Rouhani, according to his memoir–noted the concern that Iran had about George W. Bush at the height of his power. The fear of being the target of American retribution led Iran to dispense with its program. After that fear dissipated in 2005, Iran resumed its nuclear activities.
Contrast that with today: In contravention of sound strategy, the Obama team has been eager for negotiations while denigrating its coercive power. It is a staple of the administration’s rhetoric that sanctions only led to massive accumulation of centrifuges by Iran. This point is often noted by President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. Paradoxically, it is a talking point put forth by Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, a diplomat skilled at seducing. Had Iranians sensed that the U.S. was prepared to enforce its “red lines” with force, then they may have been less inclined to dismiss American mandates and the International Atomic Energy Agency demands for access to atomic sites. The question now is whether anything can be done to restore the luster of the military option and convince the Islamic Republic that it may pay for nuclear intransigence.
Policy makers refer to a “credible military option,” but little has been done over the past six years to leverage a military threat to advance our diplomatic objectives. President Obama has made references to President Ronald Reagan to justify negotiating with the ayatollahs, but his team has overseen no defense innovation like Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative that could alter Tehran’s calculus without firing a shot.
In fact, the only public capability the Pentagon has developed to target Iran’s nuclear program is the Massive Ordnance Penetrator program. This is the Defense Department’s answer to Iran’s deeply buried nuclear facilities. But even if this bunker-buster bomb could penetrate the nuclear facility in Fordow, for example, it cannot make the military option credible if U.S. officials continue to signal that we have no intent to use it. Similarly, our forward deployed forces in and around the Persian Gulf–which includes a substantial array of naval and air assets–has done precious little to rein in Tehran’s destabilizing paramilitary activities across the Middle East.
Signaling that we have no intent to use force weakens our deterrence posture, arguably more than if we had no military presence in the Middle East. Moreover, it has probably helped convince Iran that it can sign a deal and have a nuclear weapon, too.
What’s missing from the equation is a renewed emphasis on developing the 21st-century equivalent to the Strategic Defense Initiative to counter the Iranian nuclear program. Perhaps the ingredients for such a capability reside in the Pentagon’s “offset strategy,” though policy makers have directed this effort almost exclusively toward countering China.
For an administration that has prioritized developing innovative defense capabilities, the Obama team has shown remarkably little interest in applying those efforts to the Iran scenario. The result is a military option that lacks credibility, fails to strengthen our diplomacy and possibly invites Tehran to develop a nuclear program while fearing little consequence.
Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Roger Zakheim is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. |
