With Iran’s proxies getting pummeled by Israeli airstrikes and Iranian ballistic missiles failing to make much of a dent against Israel — although several dozen broke through Israeli air defenses during the Oct. 1 attack, causing minimal damage to the Nevatim airbase — Tehran is no doubt feeling vulnerability.
In the span of less than a month, Israel has done significant damage to a key node in Iran’s regional deterrent posture, devastating Hezbollah’s leadership structure and destroying as much as half of the militia’s missile inventory. Thousands of Israeli troops are now in southern Lebanon, combing through villages and small towns, looking for more Hezbollah military infrastructure to destroy. And sooner or later, Iran will experience Israeli military retaliation directly, with Iranian military and intelligence facilities at the top of Israel’s target list.
Hezbollah served a valuable function for Tehran. Although Israel holds escalation dominance over Iran in terms of conventional military power, Hezbollah was a card the Iranians could play if the Israelis dared to strike its nuclear program. Having a non-state militia with 150,000 missiles stationed right across its northern border, primed to respond to any attack against Iran, was no doubt something the Israelis had to take deadly seriously. This, combined with Iran’s missile program — the largest in the Middle East — restrained successive Israeli governments from undertaking a bombing campaign that would destroy at least part of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
That Iranian deterrent, however, is looking mighty weak today. Hezbollah is now in a fight for its life and wouldn’t be of much use in a direct Israel-Iran conflict. The Iranian missile program is proving to be less impressive than it appears on paper. Iran’s nuclear program is, therefore, in perhaps its most vulnerable state, leading some U.S. and Israeli defense hawks to argue that now is the perfect time to drop ordnance on the enrichment plants and centrifuge manufacturing facilities.
The Iranians aren’t deaf to the noise. Some Iran experts now believe that, with Hezbollah in crisis, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could weaponize the nuclear program to recoup some of the deterrence that has been lost over the last year. This isn’t an absurd notion; the Islamic Republic, like every other regime on the planet, is concerned first and foremost with its own personal survival and longevity. Whether non-proliferation advocates want to admit it or not, nuclear weapons remain the best insurance policy a state can have. This isn’t supposition; senior Iranian officials have been more cavalier about the prospect of changing Iran’s nuclear doctrine and revisiting Khamenei’s fatwa against nuclear weapons if the security situation changes. The Iranian public seems to agree, with a recent poll finding that 69% support Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb.
And yet it’s precisely this obsession with survival and self-preservation that could dissuade Khamenei from authorizing such a dramatic move, particularly at a time when a vocal, influential minority is already clamoring to take military action against Iran. While one can’t rule out the possibility of Khamenei covertly authorizing a crash-program toward a bomb, away from the prying eyes of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the world’s intelligence services, this would be a big gamble indeed. Covert programs don’t always succeed, and if they are discovered, the ramifications could be expansive.
One recalls a moment in 2009 when the U.S. and France picked up intelligence on the development of an underground covert enrichment facility near Qom and disclosed it to the rest of the world. Tehran, which claimed it was a cooperative state in the nuclear realm, was left struggling to make its case. Russia and China became far more willing to support Washington’s sanctions regime against Tehran from that point forward.
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The U.S. intelligence apparatus has only gotten more sophisticated in the 15 years since. Speaking to a conference this week, CIA Director William Burns asserted that Washington is monitoring Tehran’s nuclear work above and beyond the IAEA’s current access. Referring to the possibility of an Iranian breakout, Burns said, “We are reasonably confident that — working with our friends and allies — we will be able to see it relatively early on.”
Is Iran willing to roll the dice regardless? This is what U.S. policymakers are talking about behind closed doors. Trying to discern the motives and predilections of another state isn’t an exact science, especially when the state in question is an adversary prone to deceptive practices. But what can be said with certainty is that Iran is a rational actor led by contemptible but rational people who understand just how consequential the repercussions would be if they were caught red-handed.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.