Unthinkable by Kenneth M. Pollack Read Free Book Online

opposition groups waging irregular wars against his regime, and mounted periodic air campaigns, rising to strikes on a near-daily basis after 1998. Indeed, America’s containment of Iraq was far, far more aggressive than any other containment regime. It was one containment regime where the emphasis was much more on speeding the collapse of the regime than it was on preventing the regime from expanding its power beyond its borders—although the United States expended considerable energy and resources doing that as well. Our containment of Libya, Syria, Vietnam for several decades after 1975, and China in the 1950s and ’60s fell somewhere between these extremes.
    So too has America’s containment of Iran oscillated between a more defensive and a more offensive focus. In truth, Washington tended to take its lead from Tehran in this matter. Since the Iranian Revolution, U.S. policymakers have mostly regarded Iran as an unnecessary headache and have tried to have as little to do with it as they could. That was why the Reagan administration was so reticent to get into a fight with the Iranian military in the Persian Gulf, why Clinton explicitly chose to contain Iran passively compared to its aggressive containment of Iraq, and why Bush 43 went after Iraq and Afghanistan but could barely formulate a policy toward Iran. Iran has often been put in the “too hard” category of American foreign policy. In so doing, we have ceded the initiative to the Iranians.
    If the United States continues to pursue containment toward a future nuclear Iran, we will have to continue to employ both offensive and defensive aspects of containment, and at times may need to focus more on the offensive aspects and other times concentrate primarily on its defensive features. However, what must change is our tendency to cede the initiative to the Iranians and react to their behavior. This is important because a nuclear Iran will present greater threats and challenges to the region than in the past, and the United States will need to regularly gauge whether it is better for our own interests and those of our allies to take a more defensive or a more offensive posture toward Iran. Some of that will be based on opportunities—opportunities to push for regime changeas well as opportunities to shore up various defenses. Yet another part should be designed to shape Iran’s behavior as best we can to help minimize the inherent problems of containment: the potential for expanded Iranian subversion and irregular warfare, the potential for more crises with Iran, and the potential for proliferation in particular.
    Figure 1: The Dangers of a Nuclearizing Iran

Breakout Capability Versus Arsenal
    There are many reasons for Washington to continuously reassess and recalibrate the offensive and defensive aspects of its containment of Iran. However, one of the most important is the need to dissuade Iran from fielding an actual nuclear arsenal even after it achieves the capability to do so quickly. In the end, containment might mean containing a nuclear Iran, even one with an actual nuclear arsenal. While that may prove necessary, it would be undesirable. It would be far safer and easier instead to contain Iran if it were limited to a theoretical breakout capability, even a relatively narrow one. The difference in the dangers posed by an Iran with a breakout capacity of even a month or two and an Iran with a deployed nuclear arsenal is greater than the difference between Iran without abreakout capability at all and Iran with a breakout capacity. 1 It is also another reason why containment cannot become mere appeasement—allowing Iran to build and do whatever it wants as long as it does not employ nuclear weapons.
    If Iran has only a breakout capability, all of the problems of containment discussed in the previous chapter vanish. Think about it: As long as Iran does not have actual weapons and only a potential ability to assemble one or more