Prevention is not a radical policy. It is fully legal when authorized by the UN Security Council under Article 39 of the Charter, which calls upon the Council to determine “threats” to international peace and decide what to do about them. The Council imposed preventive sanctions on South Africa in 1977 to punish apartheid and prevent a regional race war. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, in October 1962, the United States unilaterally—illegally but arguably justifiably—imposed a blockade to prevent the Soviet Union from making Cuba into a missile base threatening the United States. Responsible governments regularly face the choice of whether to try to deter a potential foe or to act first—that is, preventively—to save themselves from a blow that the other seems to intend, has delivered before, and could again deliver.
The international community is beginning to develop a jurisprudence of prevention focusing on lethality, likelihood, legitimacy, and legality—criteria that help assess the seriousness of threats not yet imminent and the appropriate responses to them.
• Lethality identifies the likely loss of life if the threat is not eliminated.
• Likelihood assesses the probability that the threat will occur.
• Legitimacy covers the proportionality, necessity, and deliberativeness of proposed responses.
• Legality asks whether the threatening situation is itself produced by legal or illegal actions, and whether the proposed remedy is more or less legal.
All four standards should be taken into account when considering prevention. Absent good reasons relevant to each standard, preventive action is not justified.
Preventing an Iranian bomb is clearly desirable, judging by those 4Ls, but not an immediate vital necessity. Lethality is fortunately not imminent. Iran is four to ten years away from nuclear weapons according to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte. But there is a long-run lethal threat. Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, judges that Iran is at least seeking a “screwdriver” bomb, one that would be a week or so away from assembly in a crisis. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threats to “wipe Israel off the map” and Iran’s arming of Hezbollah clearly threaten Israel. Annual “Death to America” celebrations and the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that housed U.S. airmen convey continuing threats to the United States. Current threats may be so much hot air; but it is disturbing that, knowing how provocative they have been, Ahmadinejad has repeated them time and again.
Much more likely than a direct attack on either Israel or the United States (which would be met with an overwhelming response) is Iran’s continued funding, arming, and directing of Hezbollah. Iran could also tilt the regional balance of power in ways that threaten the world economy. The Bush administration eliminated Iran’s regional containment by creating power vacuums in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were once the barrier walls to Iranian expansion. All Iran needs is nuclear capability to serve as an umbrella over a much more adventurous and coercive policy toward the Persian Gulf and its cheap oil that fuels and controls world prosperity.
With regard to legality, Iran’s threats themselves violate the UN Charter (Article 2.4). But Iran’s current attempts to acquire a nuclear fuel reprocessing capability appear to be within the scope of peaceful energy in the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Iranian threats have generated responses that reveal a rising level of concern. Various Israeli officials off the record and Vice President Dick Cheney on the record say, “We join other nations in sending that regime a clear message. We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
What is missing is a response that is both effective and legitimate—one that is proportionate to the threat. Even a Middle East hawk such as Kenneth Pollack who (in The Gathering Storm) made the case for war against Iraq, argues (in The Persian Puzzle) for caution in dealing with Iran. Iran is four times the size with three times the population of Iraq. An Iraq-style invasion would unify the country in resistance. A surgical strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would likely miss many hidden sites, accelerate Iran’s program, and legitimate its acquisition of a full-scale nuclear weapon capability in the eyes of the Islamic world. Comprehensive sanctions and a steady campaign of air attacks such as was imposed on Iraq in the 1990s could degrade Iran’s nuclear program, as they successfully did Iraq’s. But the international community accepted the sanctions on Iraq only after Saddam Hussein twice invaded his neighbors. Many in the region are well aware of past Anglo-American covert interventions against Iran (against Mossadegh in 1953 and in support of the shah) and are not unsympathetic to Iran’s hyper-defensive nationalism.
The existing level of uncertainty and the immense costs of the military action both argue for trying an alternative mixed strategy of sticks and carrots, with multilateral authorization. Trade sanctions should be targeted narrowly on nuclear capacity and the governing regime. The current U.S.-European draft (October 26) circulating in the Security Council meets these standards, if we exclude the bizarre attempt to exclude Iranian students in foreign universities from classes in nuclear physics. (Completely apart from its implications for academic freedom, no one has suggested that Iran currently lacks the technical expertise to create a bomb.)
These sticks should be accompanied by carrots that take seriously Iranian denials of any intention of creating nuclear arms—if Iran is prepared to verify them. As a start, the United States should promise not to do what it neither can nor should; that is, change Iran’s regime by invasion. Beyond that, sanctions should be lifted in return for moderation, such as Iran’s recognition of Israel within its 1967 borders. Furthermore, as ElBaradei recently offered, the IAEA could guarantee full access to nuclear technology short of reprocessing by assuring access to reprocessed fuel on market terms from an IAEA facility. American billionaire Warren Buffett has offered the money to jump-start this nuclear fuel facility ($50 million). Even reprocessing could be permitted, if Iran is prepared to accept unrestricted, no-notice IAEA inspections. A moderate Iran could also be rewarded with membership in the World Trade Organization.
But at the end, there is no guarantee that this combination of preventive sticks and carrots will work. If they do not, deterrence is the best recourse. Iran should be informed that there will be no strategic gain from nuclearization. NATO should promise to defend the states of the Gulf from any Iranian attack. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, the United States should give Israel access to a more robust, second-strike deterrent, such as a nuclear missile submarine. Recreating the cold war nuclear standoff in the Middle East is not a happy outcome. The citizens of Tel-Aviv and Tehran become hostages, their lives dependent on the prudence of their two governments. But if prevention fails, it does appear to be the least bad outcome.
Michael W. Doyle is the Harold Brown Professor of International Affairs, Law and Political Science at Columbia University. This essay draws from his Tanner Lectures on “Anticipatory Self-Defense,” delivered at Princeton University, November 8-9, 2006.
Read other responses: Shlomo Avineri, Yitzhak Nakash, Suzanne Nossel, Anne-Marie Slaughter.
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