Maybe The Mullahs Don't Want War

Suppose, reader, that you were a mad Iranian mullah determined to obtain nuclear weapons at the earliest opportunity. Would you brag and boast and taunt the West--before you had actually finished your work? Or would you keep very still and quiet, denying everything until you had the bomb safely in your clutches?

The choice seems obvious, right? And yet the Iranian mullahs consistently choose option one--with all the risk of provoking an air war against a nuclear program they must certainly greatly value.

Last week, Iran announced that it had successfully enriched uranium and "joined the nuclear club." A senior official in Iran's Revolutionary Guards claimed to have trained 40,000 suicide bombers and aimed them at 29 Western targets. On Sunday, Iran announced a US$50-million gift to Hamas--only hours before a Palestinian suicide bomber struck in Tel Aviv.

What on earth can the Iranians be thinking?

One possibility is that they are so confident in their own defenses that they think they can defeat or deter an American strike against their nuclear facilities.

The Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, a think-tank that follows Iranian issues closely, last week reported that Iran's uranium-enrichment facility at Nantanz has been hardened with new layers of earth and concrete: The facilities are now 26 feet underground.

Other facilities have been distributed across the country, and nobody feels confident that U.S. intelligence has located all or even most of them. So maybe the Iranians think their nuclear program can survive anything the Americans throw at them.

If so, that's quite a gamble they are taking.

Which leads to a second possibility: The Iranians believe that American willpower has been so weakened by Iraq that the United States will not dare to attack them.

Certainly, the Iranians have often professed to believe this. In August 2005, newly elected Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent the Iranian parliament a policy document that declared Iran a "sunrise" power and America a "sunset" power "in its last throes."

U.S. opponents of a strike against Iran warn that Iran can retaliate against U.S. forces in Iraq--that's the main reason that James Fallows, a journalist who often reflects Democratic party foreign-policy thinking, argues in the current Atlantic that "Realism about Iran starts with throwing out any plans to bomb."

But however busy the U.S. Army may be in Iraq, the U.S. Strategic Air Command has plenty of under-employed B-1 and B-2 bombers back in North America. And if Iran can retaliate against the United States, the United States can counter-retaliate against Iran. In Sunday's New York Times, former Clinton officials Richard Clarke and Steve Simon observed that the key to war-gaming a problem like Iran is to figure out which side possesses "escalation dominance"--or in plain English, who can ultimately hit whom harder. Can even the mullahs doubt that the U.S. holds this dominance?

And even if mullahs do fantasize that they are a rising power and that America is declining, would they not then be wiser to stage their confrontation 10, 20 or 30 years from now? Why today, when America still looks strong and is led by a president the Iranians regard as eager for a fight?

Which leaves this third possibility: Maybe the mullahs do not want war--but they do want this confrontation.

Look at what the Iranians are getting from this crisis: $70 oil; the attention of the world; and an ever more lavish buffet of inducements and bribes from the EU-3 negotiating team. This week, it is said, the EU-3--the U.K., France and Germany--are offering security guarantees to Iran; that is, promises to protect the Iranian mullahs against the enemies they have made (including Israel?) and even potentially against their own people.

You can understand why the Iranians would look at today's mess and say: "Works for us."

If there is to be any hope of avoiding a U.S.-Iranian war, the U.S. and its friends have to act now to stop the confrontation from working for the mullahs--and start making it work against them.

That would begin with recognizing that the Iranians do fear the United States and do fear war--and that the more credible the threat of an American strike is, the better the hopes for a negotiated end. Which in turn means that America's friends must applaud, not criticize, when the Americans take a tough line--when, for example, they position their forces in a more menacing way, or test "bunker-busting" bombs, or fund anti-regime Iranian groups.

There are nervous days ahead, and the winner will be the side better able to keep its nerve. And if anyone finds this confrontation too scary, please keep in mind: The confrontations will only get scarier after the Iranians go nuclear.