DAR AL ISLAM - IRAN: THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR PROJECT WILL BRING ON ITS RUIN

Iran Will Regret Its Nuke Program; Here's How
By Robert Haddick

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Three Paths to Iran's Ruin

The Iranian nuclear program will spark a reaction against it. All of these reactions will be very painful to the people of Iran, but not equally so.

Air strikes

Of all of the likely reactions to the Iranian nuclear program, a U.S. military air campaign focused on Iran's nuclear-industrial complex would be the most humane for the Iranian people. U.S. air power has the technical capability to discretely target the sites specific to Iran's nuclear industry while leaving untouched the rest of Iran's infrastructure and civilian population.

There is a long list of arguments against bombing Iran's nuclear industry. I personally oppose this option because the political and diplomatic damage the U.S. would suffer from this action would not be worth the benefits to the U.S. of the air campaign, especially when there are other options available that are not so politically damaging.

Another argument advanced against air strikes is that air operations planners won't know where all of the targets are and that the effects of bombing would only be temporary. In any case, some argue, bombing would unify the Iranian population and afterward Iran would renew its efforts to get a nuclear arsenal.

In his book Fiasco, Mr. Thomas Ricks describes the post-war evaluation of the 1998 Operation Desert Fox air and missile campaign against Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons programs. American air operations planners faced the same uncertainties they currently face with respect to Iran. And after the Desert Fox campaign ended, intelligence officers were unsure what they had accomplished.

But according to Mr. Ricks, analysis on the ground in 2003 showed that the Desert Fox campaign achieved far more than expected. Perhaps most important, the air campaign demoralized Iraq's scientific and engineering community. Iraq's special weapons programs withered away after the Desert Fox campaign and never restarted.

International sanctions

Although its terms are very far from being fulfilled, the recent agreement with North Korea to gradually dismantle its nuclear program gives new hope to the effectiveness of sanctions. It seems as if financial, banking, and luxury goods sanctions, targeted at leaders of a regime are especially useful at changing behavior.

Based on the possible success of the North Korean sanctions, the international community may be encouraged to employ this model against Iran. The Iranians themselves apparently recognize how vulnerable they are to sanctions. The Paris newspaper Le Monde obtained a secret Iranian government report that discussed Iran's vulnerability to sanctions (here is the Le Monde story in French, here in English, translated by Google). Unfortunately, an internationally-supervised sanctions program is not likely to be successful because too many countries will not cooperate with the program and will instead continue to trade with Iran.

But if national governments fail to impose economic and financial sanctions on Iran, Iran remains highly vulnerable to sanctions imposed by self-organized non-state actors. These sanctions could create more misery for the Iranian people that those imposed by legal and legitimate international policy.

Sanctions imposed by terror

Iran receives 80-90% of its export earnings from oil exports. Due to problems with Iran's oil refining sector, Iran must import 40% of the gasoline it consumes. Iran's existing oil fields suffer natural output declines of 8-10% per year. Iran requires foreign capital investment and foreign technical expertise to maintain its oil industry and the income it produces. (See this country report from the U.S. Energy Information Agency for background on Iran's energy sector. And see this recent academic study predicting the collapse of Iran's oil industry.)

Iran's undiversified economy is highly vulnerable to attack. Murder and intimidation, performed by a ruthless non-state group, may be all that is required to slowly but surely grind down the Iranian economy.

As previously mentioned, the Iranian oil industry requires the expertise of foreign engineers to maintain its output. An anti-Iranian terror group could target for assassination the engineers and executives (and their families) of any French, Russian, Japanese, or Chinese oil companies that may be considering work in Iran. The goals of such a terror group would be to create social and political chaos inside Iran, to weaken the government and its ability to function, and to dry up funding for Iran's nuclear industry.

Such an anti-Iranian terror group could mete out the same treatment to foreign bankers working with Iran, European oil trading firms, import-export companies, tanker shipping companies, tanker crews and their families, etc. A sharp wave of such murders might be enough to send out a chilling signal to those contemplating work for Iran.

Given the already precarious state of Iran's economy and its fragile political situation, relatively minor disruptions to Iran's commerce could induce chaotic effects inside the country. Grinding down Iran's oil industry through a private campaign of murder and intimidation could choke off Iran's main source of income. This would eventually inflict more suffering and more social disruption on Iranian society than either an American air campaign or internationally organized sanctions. And it will very likely occur if these other options don't.

In my last article at TCS Daily, I discussed how wealthy individuals could implement their own private foreign policies. We should not be surprised to see Iran used as a laboratory for such an experiment.

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Pertinent Links:

1) Iran Will Regret Its Nuke Program; Here's How