Putting Force Back on the Table?
The Times of London has revealed today that Saudi Arabia is prepared to open part of its airspace for an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, quoting both Saudi and US defense sources. Apparently, the Saudi armed forces have run drills geared to avoiding any accidental engagements between Israeli planes and Saudi air defenses in case of an IAF attack on Iran, with the approval of the Obama administration. The timing of this leak — just three days after another round of sanctions was passed by Security Council in S/RES/1929 — is, of course, conspicuous. The Saudis’ prompt and categorical denial only lends credence to the report. (As the old proverb has it, “never believe anything until it’s been officially denied.”) To my mind, this looks very much like an open admission, by the US and parts of the Arab world that are directly threatened by Iran’s nuclear ambitions, that inducements and sanctions won’t do the job — especially if they latter are subject to Russian and Chines approval — and need to be backed up by a more or less credible threat of the use of force.
Even before the fourth round of UN sanctions was passed, the tenor was that, while (a little) more substantial, it wouldn’t be good enough — not by a long shot, in fact. By the time it became public knowledge that, as part of securing Russia’s approval for the sanctions resolution, the US would be allowing the Russians to sell their S-300 SAMs to Iran after all (thus violating both the actual provisions and the spirit of the resolution before it was even adopted), counting on their continued self-restraint, it was already abundantly clear that the impact of the renewed diplomatic effort would be negligible at best.
With the tug of war within the Security Council over (for now) and the relative futility in terms of probable outcomes of the West’s achievement apparent to all involved, trying to put force back on the table in some form or other makes a lot of sense. Abandoning coercive diplomacy in favor of just diplomacy has done less than nothing to strengthen the Western position. It was quite obvious from the outset that the coercive element would have to be thrown back in sooner or later. At the heart of the problem, back then, was credibility, of which a pure engagement strategy seemed to have more than any approach that as much as hinted at the option of preventive military action, thoroughly discredited as that was in the wake of Iraq. As of June 2o1o, engagement is dead, if not yet officially buried. Meanwhile, the credibility problem is alive and well and will continue to plague any Western effort, whether it involves overt coercion or not.
The only coercive threat that the West can muster at this time and that has at least some credibility is that of Israel going it alone (with tacit US and Arab consent). It’s potency, however, is very limited. The minimum prerequisite for a coercive diplomacy success is an unambiguous committment by the signaling actor(s) to the use of a sufficient amount of force, if and when compliance, the meaning of which has to be clearly defined, is not forthcoming. Even if such a committment is made, coercion still fails in many instances. Either way, vaguely hinting at what a third actor might or might not do is not likely to be more effective than another round of squeamish sanctioning. This is even more true because Israel’s capacity for action is limited, in terms of both military capabilities and legitimacy. After all, doing significant damage to Iran’s nuclear program would be a long way from “Osirak Redux”. By my reckoning, only the United States has the wherewithal to mount an operation on the necessary scale and only the USAF is, or rather will be, in possession of the necessary means (specifically, the B-2 bomber and Massive Ordnance Penetrator/GBU-57 munitions to be deployed in the near future). However, a US military option that is politically viable and has reasonable chances of success is currently not in sight.
Under these circumstances, giving the Israelis the green light wouldn’t get us anywhere near breaking the back of Iran’s nuclear program, let alone breaking its determination to go nuclear. On the contrary, any such move is bound to be counterproductive at this time. Saudi Arabia’s decision to open its airspace makes the threat of an Israeli attack slightly more credible, because it would make an IAF raid somewhat more feasible, but that threat remains feeble. Nonetheless, any step that works toward putting force back on the table is to be welcomed, even if prevention is not one’s strategy of choice. For any promising approach in our dealings with Iran will have to have a strong and credible military element to it. To think otherwise would be folly.
