Face-Off
America and Iran are locked in a test of wills over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Is there a way out short of war?
The one area that could bite the Iranian government hard is an embargo on its oil and natural gas, which bring in more than 40 percent of its revenue. But with painfully high oil prices, few countries are willing to contemplate measures that could drive oil above $100 a barrel.
Still, the confrontation is already inflicting pain. Iran's stock market has fallen 40 percent since Ahmadinejad took office last year. Tens of billions of dollars in private capital have flown out of Iran--much of it to Dubai across the Persian Gulf. As a sign of hedging, an estimated 10,000 Iranian businesses have been set up in Dubai, according to Abbas Milani, an Iran specialist at Stanford University. Some within Iran's elite have begun to criticize Ahmadinejad's blunt handling of the nuclear issue.
If diplomacy and sanctions don't work, what about force? Pentagon planners are believed to have mapped out airstrikes with bombers and cruise missiles. Such strikes would be nothing like the Israeli raid on Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981 by a half-dozen planes. Iran's numerous nuclear sites are spread out over a large country and protected by extensive air defenses that will get stronger when Russia delivers advanced Tor antiaircraft missiles purchased by Iran. Moreover, secret facilities may remain undiscovered. Others contain multiple buildings and tunnels.
Hundreds of targets. Nor would bombing mean permanent destruction of the program. Rather, the plans would prescribe a target set and the likely effect--for example, an 80 percent chance that the program would be set back for, say, five years. The plant at Isfahan and the centrifuge complex at Natanz could be rebuilt in one or two years. The growing know-how of Iran's nuclear personnel would remain. To eradicate most of the nuclear infrastructure, an air campaign might need weeks. "You can quickly get up to hundreds of targets," cautions Kenneth Pollack, once an Iran expert at the National Security Council and author of The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America. Patrick Lang, a former top defense intelligence analyst, posits an operation of 1,000 sorties.
There are other risks, too: downed American pilots or captured special forces. Attacks on U.S. or allied troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Attempts to block the Straits of Hormuz, the strategic gulf waterway. Terrorist attacks as far afield as Europe and America. Anti-Americanism spiking across the Islamic world. An attack might prompt an all-out national drive for nukes. No less a personality than the dissident Nobel Peace Prize-winner Shirin Ebadi warns that Iranians would unite against an attacker. Says Pollack, "When you look at the costs and benefits, it doesn't look like a great trade-off."
Actually, most of the options don't look terribly good. The mullahs may well have concluded that the Bomb is their ticket to regime survival. For now, Ahmadinejad is thriving on the pressure. He may not be the man who would have his finger on the Iranian trigger, but he has parlayed the standoff into political gains for himself and other hard-liners. The dispute serves to distract Iranians angered by 30 percent unemployment, housing shortages, and rigid religious strictures. The Iranian president, meanwhile, seems buoyed by Bush's political weakness and American distress in Iraq.
Bush says that an Iranian nuke is "intolerable." If that's right, he'll have to find a solution that is tolerable.
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