In consequence of recent hostilities, Iran’s prospects for gaining military nuclear capacity have been significantly degraded. Ipso facto, the potential Iranian nuclear threat to Israel has been slowed. Still, these unprecedented prospects have not been removed altogether. And Iran remains allied with certain state enemies of Israel that are “already nuclear.”
What should Israel do?
What ought to be Jerusalem’s next protective steps, whether sudden or sequential?
Under authoritative international law, the right to take such steps[1] would be “peremptory.”[2]
The correct answers are clear and straightforward. Israel should do what is needed to upgrade and enhance its nuclear deterrence posture. More precisely,this posture, which includes both doctrine and strategy,[3] will depend on Israel’s willingness to substitute “selective nuclear disclosure” for “deliberate nuclear ambiguity.”[4]
Assorted clarifications are necessary. Reason dictates that Israel does have a “bomb in the basement” (i.e., an operational nuclear military capacity), but that its deliberately ambiguous nuclear deterrent will need core modifications. The overall strategic purpose of a more conspicuous nuclear deterrent would not be to acknowledge the obvious (i.e., that Israel has nuclear weapons), but to emphasize that these weapons are usable at foreseeable levels of military engagement. Plausibly, where a major state adversary did not perceive such “usability,” it would not be adequately deterred.[5]
It’s high time for candor. Even after Israel’s recent victories over Iran, it would be unreasonable to assume that “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” will work indefinitely. At some not yet determinable point, Iran’s degraded potential to acquire functional nuclear forces could return to status quo ante bellum. By anticipating such peril, a tangible danger that could become force-multiplying in calibrated increments, the Jewish State could best understand something genuinely elemental: In the future, Iranian perceptions of Israeli nuclear credibility will require more rather than less nuclear disclosure.[6]
At first, this argument may sound naïve or counter-intuitive. Nonetheless, strategic realities in the Middle East should never be extrapolated from simplifying narratives or empty witticisms. To meaningfully identify and calculate these realities will represent a challenging intellectual task, an imperative of the highest order.
To survive, even after expressly acknowledging nuclear ordinance and nuclear policy, a country smaller that America’s Lake Michigan will require extraordinary strategic thinkers. On existential matters, such unique “minds” could matter much more than courageous military warriors.[7] Looking ahead to the “next war,” Israel’s always-capable warfighters will remain necessary but insufficient.
For Israel, this is not the time for “common sense.” Among other things, leadership in Jerusalem will need to understand progressively urgent matters of “chronology.” To wit, Iran’s leaders function with a different concept of time than do Israel’s decision-makers.[8] Unambiguously, the Iranian side has subordinated “clock time” (i.e. “profane time”) to “sacred time.”
There will be tangible correlates. On critical matters of strategic doctrine, Iran maintains a “higher law” obligation not to capitulate to enemy “unbelievers.” Inter alia, leaders in Tehran would never submit to an American president’s demand for “unconditional surrender.” Like it or not, and for as long as it takes, these leaders are fully prepared to “wait.”
For Israel, Israel’s cumulative stance requires a timely loosening of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity.” Even if Iran’s nuclear potentialities were massively set back by the recent Israeli and American bombardments, there would be other enemy states to worry about. These states could be already-nuclear, pre-nuclear or “merely” non-nuclear adversaries. Relevant examples would be Sunni Arab states (e.g., Saudi Arabia, Egypt), Turkey, or Pakistan. After the just-halted Israel-Iran war, Pakistan explicitly reaffirmed “complete solidarity” with Iran. This declaration included threats of direct nuclear retaliation against Israel if Iran were to face nuclear attack by the Jewish State.[9]
Another nuclear state ally of Iran is increasingly problematic. North Korea, a geographically distant and non-Islamic state, has a documented history of belligerent interactions with Israel. In principle, at least, a temporarily defanged Iran could call upon an already-nuclear proxy in Pyongyang, and Israel’s survival would then depend on the enhanced credibility of its nuclear deterrent.
How do matters stand right now, in the aftermath of a temporarily-halted Israel-Iran war?[10] Using Reason as its sole decisional standard, Israel will need to update its national strategic posture (doctrine and strategy) by shifting from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.” Though a resumed war with Iran could become nuclear even while Iran remained non-nuclear, that war would be “asymmetrical” and favor Israel ipso facto.
In the future, if Israel remained committed to its “bomb in the basement” nuclear posture, the country’s intra-war opportunities to achieve “escalation dominance”[11] would be severely limited. Even if Tehran were to accept the reality of Israel’s nuclear options, it might not believe that Jerusalem would be willing to actually exercise these options. As a result, a tit-for-tat dynamic of conventional warfare could proceed unabated and Israel might need to face the exhausting prospect of interminable attrition warfare.[12] Already, Iran is planning to buy Chinese Chengdu J-10C fighter jets compatible with PL-15 missiles, the same ordnance used by Pakistan’s air force.
There are many complex and intersecting issues. From Israel’s perspective, only “selective nuclear disclosure” could help keep Iran non-nuclear. Unless Israel had somehow managed to persuade Iran that its operational nuclear forces were tactically usable (ironically, this means weapons that are not presumed “too destructive”), Israel’s re-arming adversary could remain committed to ongoing military struggle. Plausibly, such commitment would be hardened by any further Iranian embrace of “martyrdom operations.”
Here , antecedent reasoning warrants clarifications. Harboring alternative hopes for regime change in Tehran would be futile and self-deceiving. Among other shortcomings,[13] Iranian regime transformations would always be subject to prompt or incremental reversals.
Israel cannot rely forever on an implicit nuclear deterrence posture. Regarding any future or still-impending war with Iran, it is necessary for Israel to consider once- speculative but no longer unrealistic scenarios. Among narrative possibilities, Pakistan and/or North Korea could sometime become nuclear proxies for a non-nuclear Iran. At that stage, any Israeli continuance of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” would be stubbornly foolish and manifestly self-destructive.
Until now, Iran’s hyperbolic threats against Israel have been contrived (“pretended irrationality”). How else could a reason-directed strategist explain a non-nuclear state’s military threats against a nuclear state? In principle, Israel could “call Iran’s bluff,” but only if its non-nuclear forces were recognizably superior to Iran’s conventional forces and/or Jerusalem had previously made more explicit Israel’s nuclear options.
There is more. Israel will need to ensure “escalation dominance” in all realistic conflict scenarios. Ultimately, this means keeping Iran non-nuclear.[14] Though there will be many technical questions on optimal levels and times regarding “selective nuclear disclosure,” this is not yet the right moment for raising such details.
Some final clarifications are now in order. Even a pre-nuclear Iran could make combat use of radiation dispersal weapons and/or conventional missiles/drones launched against Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. In a worst case scenario, Iranian ally North Korea would place nuclear assets at Tehran’s operational disposal. North Korea has a tangible history of involvement in Middle Eastern military matters. Pyongyang built a nuclear reactor for Syria at Al Kibar that was subsequently destroyed by Israel’s Operation Orchard on September 6, 2007.
For Israel, even after the dramatic weakening of Iran and its terror-surrogates, the time for “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” is coming to an end. Failure to recognize this inflection point could ensure intermittent or near-continuous warfare with a rearming Iran. Whatever the relative costs, any such conflict would be net-injurious for Israel.
While it is uncertain that “selective nuclear disclosure” could end Iran’s belligerent designs against Israel, a more selectively-explicit Israeli deterrence posture would represent Jerusalem’s only rational choice. At the same time, even this enhanced doctrine and strategy might not be enough. Jerusalem, with or without its American ally, might still need to launch a new round round of measured preemptive strikes.[15]
For the moment, Iran is down, but it is not out.
[1] In law, even if a threatened state has defensible “just cause,” it must still respect corollary obligations of “just means.” These are obligations of the “law of armed conflict” or “humanitarian international law.” In essence, under law, every use of force must be judged twice: once with regard to the right to wage war (jus ad bellum), and once with regard to the means used in conducting war (jus in bello). Following the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, and the United Nations Charter, all right to aggressive war has been abolished ipso facto. However, the long-standing customary right of self-defense remains, codified at Article 51 of the Charter. Similarly, subject to conformance, inter alia, with jus in bello criteria, certain instances of humanitarian intervention and collective security operations may be consistent with jus ad bellum. The laws of war, the rules of jus in bello, comprise (1) laws on weapons; (2) laws on warfare; and (3) humanitarian rules. Codified primarily at The Hague and Geneva Conventions (and known thereby as the law of The Hague and the law of Geneva), these rules attempt to bring distinction, proportionality and military necessity into belligerent calculations.
[2] According to Article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties: “…a peremptory norm of general international law is a norm accepted and recognized by the international community of states as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general international law having the same character.” See: Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, Done at Vienna, May 23, 1969. Entered into force, Jan. 27, 1980. U.N. Doc. A/CONF. 39/27 at 289 (1969), 1155 U.N.T.S. 331, reprinted in 8 I.L.M. 679 (1969).
[3] In military parlance, strategy is not identical to doctrine. More precisely, doctrine is the framework from which strategic goals should be extrapolated. Generically, in orthodox military thinking, such doctrine describes the tactical manner in which national forces ought to fight in pertinent combat situations, the prescribed “order of battle,” and assorted corollary operations. The literal definition of “doctrine” derives from Middle English, from the Latin doctrina, meaning teaching, learning, and instruction. Always, a central importance of codified military doctrine lies not only in the way it can animate, unify and optimize available military forces, but also in the fashion that it can transmit desired “messages” to a pertinent enemy.
[4] For an earlier assessment of this distinction by the author, see Louis René Beres at 2013 Herzliya Conference address (Israel): https://www.runi.ac.il/media/soipnf0a/louisreneberes.pdf
[5] Recall classical nuclear strategist Herman Kahn’s observation in Thinking About the Unthinkable (1962): “Deterrence is not just a matter of military capabilities. It has a great deal to do with perceptions of credibility.”
[6] On deterring a potentially nuclear Iran, see: Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain, “Could Israel Safely Deter a Nuclear Iran?” The Atlantic, August 2012; and Professor Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain, “Israel and Iran at the Eleventh Hour,” Oxford University Press, February 23, 2012. General Chain (USAF/deceased.) served as Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC).
[7] Examples would be J. Robert Oppenheimer, nuclear thinker Herman Kahn (see epigraph, above) and Yuval Ne’eman. The present author (Louis René Beres) was a long-time friend and colleague of Professor Ne’eman.
[8] See by this writer at Israel Defense: Louis René Beres, https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/65219
[9] For early accounts by this author of nuclear war risks and effects, see: Louis René Beres, Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Louis René Beres, Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1983); Louis René Beres, Reason and Realpolitik: U.S. Foreign Policy and World Order (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1984); and Louis René Beres, Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1986). Most recently, by Professor Beres, see: Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (New York, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed. 2018). https://paw.princeton.edu/new-books/surviving-amid-chaos-israel%E2%80%99s-nuclear-strategy
[10] Under international law, a cease-fire is a temporary cessation of hostilities, not a war-terminating agreement. But when does a formal “state of war” exist between states? In the traditional view, a declaration of war was necessary before any true state of war could exist. Hugo Grotius divided wars into declared wars, which were legal, and undeclared wars, which were not. (See Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace, Bk. III, Chapters. III, IV, and XI.) By the start of the twentieth century, the position that war obtains only after a conclusive declaration of war by one of the parties was codified by Hague Convention III. This treaty stipulated that hostilities must never commence without a “previous and explicit warning” in the form of a declaration of war or an ultimatum. (See Hague Convention III Relative to the Opening of Hostilities, 1907, 3 NRGT, 3 series, 437, article 1.) Currently, declarations of war may be tantamount to admissions of international criminality, because of the express criminalization of aggression by authoritative international law, and it could therefore represent a clear jurisprudential absurdity to tie any true state of war to formal and prior declarations of belligerency. It follows that a state of war may now exist without any formal declarations, but only if there is taking place an actual armed conflict between two or more states and/or at least one of these states considers itself “at war.”
[11] On “escalation dominance,” see article by Professor Louis René Beres at The War Room, US Army War College, Pentagon: https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/nuclear-decision-making-and-nuclear-war-an-urgent-american-problem/
[12] For analysis of Israel deterring not-yet-nuclear adversaries, see article co-authored by Professor Louis René Beres and (former Israeli Ambassador) Zalman Shoval at the Modern War Institute, West Point (Pentagon): https://mwi.usma.edu/creating-seamless-strategic-deterrent-israel-case-study/
[13] An obvious case in point would be Iranian regime change to a more dangerous government in Tehran. Here, the “success” of Israel-promoted regime change would be a substantially worse outcome for Jerusalem.
[14] On Iran’s post-war nuclear weapons potential, see at Israel Defense: https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/65544
[15] Any future Israeli decisions on preemption would likely be based on (a) expectations of enemy rationality or irrationality; (b) expected likelihood of enemy first-strikes; (c) expected costs of enemy first-strikes; (d) expected schedule of enemy nuclear (or biological) weapons deployments; (e) expected efficiencies of enemy active defenses over time; (f) expected efficiencies of Israel’s active defenses over time; (g) expected efficiencies of Israeli hard-target counterforce operations over time; (h) expected reactions of unaffected regional enemies; and (i) expected US, Russian, Chinese, Pakistani and/or North Korean reactions to Israeli preemptions.
