While many of those now advocating containment as the optimal U.S. strategy toward the Islamic Republic see this the moderate (and superior) alternative to preventive war and/or coercive regime change, such an approach would be inherently unstable. In all likelihood, the pursuit of a containment strategy by the United States vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic would ultimately lead to a U.S.-Iranian military confrontation.
The Iran policy debate in the United States is certainly turning in an increasingly hawkish direction. [Proponents] assert that, as Iran’s nuclearization proceeds, Tehran “can be contained only if Washington is prepared to use force against an emboldened adversary armed with the ultimate weapon”. They argue that, for containment of a nuclear-armed or even nuclear-capable Iran to work, the United States will need to draw and enforce clear “red lines”:
“No initiation of conventional warfare against other countries; no use or transfer of nuclear weapons, material, or technologies; no stepped-up support for terrorist or subversive activities. Washington would need to be just as explicit about the consequences of crossing those lines: potential U.S. military retaliation by any and all means necessary. Tehran would probably test U.S. resolve early on, believing that regional dynamics had shifted sharply in its favor. In that case, the United States would face a momentous credibility crisis because it had failed to stop Iran from going nuclear after persistently declaring that such an outcome was unacceptable. Even close U.S. allies would doubt Washington’s security guarantees. An emboldened Iran would test Washington in several ways…Such dangerous and destabilizing actions cannot be addressed by tough diplomatic talk or yet more U.N. Security Council resolutions. It can be addressed only by a willingness to respond with force. And in the curious logic that governs deterrence, a Tehran that believes Washington will retaliate will be less likely to act aggressively in the first place.”
In other words, to contain and deter a nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable Iran, the United States will almost certainly need to demonstrate its willingness to use force against the Islamic Republic over lower-level, non-nuclear provocations. Earlier this month, Steve Walt wrote a post on his blog that takes a critical look at Lindsay and Takeyh’s arguments. In particular, Steve usefully dissects Lindsay and Takeyh’s incorporation in their analysis of “a series of worst-case assumptions” and “familiar alarmist rhetoric that has been a staple of hawkish commentary for decades”. Steve reminds us that, “in the run-up to the war in Iraq, a critical moment came when moderates and liberals joined forces with the neoconservatives who had been pushing for war since the late 1990s. The poster child for this process was Kenneth Pollack, whose pro-war book The Threatening Storm (written under the auspices of the Council on Foreign Relations) gave reluctant hawks a respectable fig-leaf for backing the invasion.” Steve then notes that “alert readers with good memories will notice that [Lindsay and Takeyh’s arguments] are the same arguments that pro-war hawks made about Iraq.”
Steve also points out that,
“like most Americans writing about Iran these days, Lindsay and Takeyh never consider the one approach that might actually have some small chance of heading off an Iranian bomb. That approach would be to take the threat of regime change and preventive war off the table and accept Iran’s enrichment program—on the strict condition that it ratifies and implements all elements of the NPT Additional Protocol. At the same time, the United States would engage in serious and sincere discussions about a range of regional security matters, including a public U.S. guarantee to forego regime change.”
But that, unfortunately, instead, containment is fast becoming the “moderate” alternative policy option for those who don’t like military options against Iranian nuclear targets or explicit support for regime change in Tehran. Many advocates of containment argue that the United States has decades of Cold War experience with containing a nuclear-armed hostile power and deterring that power’s use of its (very large) nuclear weapons arsenal. So, why not take that experience and apply it to the task of containing the Islamic Republic?
During the Cold War, containment—eventually supplemented with détente as a political framework for managing Soviet-American tensions—made sense as an “interim” American strategy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, at a time when fundamental East-West conflicts were not likely to be resolved pending substantial political change in the Soviet bloc and both sides had an existential interest in avoiding direct military confrontation. But this is not likely to work between the United States and Iran, for at least two reasons.
First, while the United States and the Soviet Union were roughly at parity in their military capabilities, the United States is and will remain vastly superior to Iran in every category of military power, conventional or otherwise.
This leads inexorably to our second point—in an atmosphere of ongoing uncertainty about America’s ultimate intentions toward the Islamic Republic, Iranian leaders will continue working to defend their core security interests in ways that are guaranteed to be maximally provocative to the United States. Lacking conventional military capabilities, Iran pursues what Iranian officials have described to us as an “asymmetric” national security strategy.
- As we have discussed at greater length in other settings, this strategy includes the use of proxy actors—political, paramilitary, and terrorist—in neighboring states and elsewhere, to ensure that those states will not be used as anti-Iranian platforms. Iran’s ties to Hizballah and HAMAS clearly fall under this chapter of the Islamic Republic’s national security strategy. According to Iranian national security officials, the cultivation of these proxy actors provides the Islamic Republic with an effective measure of strategic depth it otherwise lacks.
- Iran’s asymmetric strategy also includes developing unconventional military capabilities—missiles, chemical weapons, and at least a nuclear weapons “option”.
No U.S. administration, of either party, would be able to maintain domestic support for a containment strategy vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic as it pursues such policies.
And, so, we come back to our main argument, as we stated at the outset—a U.S. strategy of containing Iran is likely to lead to a U.S.-Iranian military confrontation. This, ironically, is something that Lindsay and Takeyh acknowledge with their argument that the United States may well have to use force against Iran relatively early after the formal declaration of a containment posture, in order for America’s commitment to that posture to be seen as credible.
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