What the Iranians Are Probably Thinking

by William R. Polk

Mr. Polk taught at Harvard from 1955 to 1961 when he was appointed a member of the Policy Planning Council of the US State Department. In 1965 he became professor of history at the University of Chicago and founded its Middle Eastern Studies Center. Subsequently, he also became president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. Among his books are The United States and the Arab World, The Elusive Peace: The Middle East in the Twentieth Century, Neighbors and Strangers: the Fundamentals of Foreign Affairs and the just-published Understanding Iraq. Other of his writings can be accessed on www.williampolk.com.

The American military learned from the German army that war gaming is often helpful in seeing what motivates the opponent, what he is likely to do and what effect his doing it would have. So, I will here imagine that I am an Iranian policy planner doing what I used to do for the American government. Here is what I would see and what would I advise.

Reading what American officials are saying in the press I would assume that they are planning to attack the country, abort Iran’s nuclear program and destroy the regime. My job would be to make invading Iran less attractive and offer an alternative that America could accept. First, I would ask intelligence analysts what the risks are.

The first is espionage. The US could attempt through covert action to bring about a coup d’état as it did in Iran in 1952. Iranian security officers would report that the US is now doing this.

The second risk is an aerial attack like Israel made in 1981 on the Osiraq nuclear facility in Iraq. America has given Israel the weapons to carry out such an attack on Iran and itself has bases surrounding Iran from which it could launch its own attacks. But such an attack could probably not succeed with conventional weapons because the most important Iranian sites are deep underground. So, the Americans would probably use nuclear weapons. This would be a catastrophe: even a small nuclear weapon – what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called a “robust nuclear earth penetrator” -- would kill thousands, perhaps scores of thousands of Iranians, and throw up about 1 million cubic meters of radioactive soil.

As an Iranian policy planner, I would carefully study the recent history of Iraq as a sort of “war game.” I would see that not having nuclear weapons did not save Saddam. I would also see that it was not so much nuclear weapons that worried the US. During the Reagan and first Bush administrations, the US actually helped Saddam move toward acquiring them. Now America has accepted even North Korea into the nuclear club. So, the lesson I would draw is that had Saddam waited until he had a bomb, the US probably would not have moved militarily against him.

But Saddam did not have time to wait. Would Iran? What I would see a rising tide of threat: from being told that Iran is part of the “Axis of Evil, ” I would note that America is pressuring suppliers not to sell Iran even “conventional” means to defend itself. Iranian intelligence officers would report that for much of the last two years, Americans have been over-flying Iran, pin-pointing targets as they did in Iraq before their 2003 invasion, and infiltrating agents to encourage revolt. Since it is on the Internet, I would have read the “National Defense Strategy of the United States of America,” justifying preemptive attack. So, how could Iran defend itself?

Iran’s first defense is its people. Although the government is disliked by many Iranians, they are as unlikely to aid a foreign invader as anti-Castro Cubans were during the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion or anti-Saddam Iraqis were during the 2003 invasion. The 150,000 members of the Revolutionary Guard showed their fanatical devotion to their country during the Iraq-Iran war and almost certainly would do so again. Iran is large and has several times the population of Iraq; so it could, and almost certainly would, fight a protracted guerrilla war. The government has been stockpiling suitable arms to do so.

Iran’s second asset is that American forces are bogged down in the Iraqi “quicksand.” Most Americans realize that guerrilla wars are ruinously expensive and virtually unwinnable; they might not support an attack on another country. Almost certainly America’s allies would not.

The third asset is that, unlike remote and isolated North Korea, Iran has foreign friends and allies. Iran’s national religion, Shiism, has millions of adherents outside of Iran. Paradoxically, insuring the political success of the Iraqi Shiis was the most significant gift of America to Iran. An American attack on Iran would push the Iraqis Shiis into what has been heretofore a mainly Sunni resistance. Then, American troops would be almost as much hostages as actors.

Iran’s fourth asset is that, unlike North Korea, it is a significant trading partner with countries and multinational corporations in much of Europe and Asia. China, in particular, is a major consumer of Iranian oil. Disruption of Iranian production would hurt China and drive much of the world into depression.

The Iranian policy planner, however, would be naïve to count on these assets. He would realize that governments do not always act on a rational intelligence assessments. Sometimes they are driven by ideology or listen to the siren song of those who seek their help. As in Iraq, exile groups tell the Americans that the Iranian government is weak and that the people are only waiting for a signal to overthrow it. So, the Iranian planner would tell his government that the only sure way to avoid attack is to acquire nuclear weapons. That is what all the other nuclear powers -- the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and now North Korea – have done.

The “acquisition phase,” however, is a time of great danger. Iranians must assume that America, Israel and perhaps others will try to stop Iran before it gets nuclear weapons. Therefore a prudent Iranian policy planner would advise his government to move as rapidly and as secretly as possible. Presumably this is being done. A second prudent action would be to deploy facilities widely to make their destruction difficult or impossible. This has already been done. (Parenthetically, to show that my hypothetical Iran policy planner is not just a wooly-minded Persian mullah, a distinguished student of strategy at the Hebrew University in Israel commented that “Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy.”)

During this dangerous acquisition period, which might last several years, I would advise the Iranian government to throw dust in the eyes of would-be attackers. The “dust” could consist of the claim that Iran’s program is purely for the production of energy and so is both peaceful and legal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and/or that under appropriate circumstances Iran would drop work on weapons. Diplomatically, it could hold endless discussions on terms and conditions with the International Atomic Energy Agency, with the European Union and, even, with the United States. This is exactly what has happened. Dissimulation (taqiyyah) is, after all, a traditional Shia Persian defense.

Dropping the role of a Persian adviser, I see two key questions: first, could Iran already have a nuclear weapon? The answer is a guarded yes. During the period of the collapse of the Soviet Union, controls broke down. The “guardians” were not being paid a living wage and were looting storage dumps. Almost everything was for sale. Iran had the money to buy. No one knows if it actually did. We know that it got components and know-how from Pakistan. If it has even one weapon, then an attack by the US would almost certainly be catastrophic either or both to America and to Israel.

Second, if Iran does not yet have the bomb, what should be done? Further threats will only harden its resolve and military action would cause unacceptable damage. The only sensible way out of the dilemma we face is a serious move toward regional nuclear disarmament and suitable security guarantees to Iran. Such a change of policy has so many benefits for America – and rest of the world including Israel – that it should be undertaken immediately.