Iran and the Bomb 

By Reuel Marc Gerecht

Sunday, October 29, 2000; Page B07 

During America's war against Iraq, Iranian clerical circles were abuzz 
with a nuclear debate. If Saddam Hussein had had the bomb, the mullahs 
wondered, would the United States have challenged his conquest of 
Kuwait? 

With the Islamic Republic's recent test firing of the Shahab 3 
intermediate-range missile--whose primary mission is unquestionably as a 
delivery vehicle for a nuclear warhead--the clerical regime has again 
clearly told us its answer. Tehran understands, as does Baghdad, that 
nuclear-tipped missiles will go a long way toward neutralizing the naval 
power of the United States.

Backed by such weapons, Iran or Iraq could cajole, intimidate or even 
invade its neighbors, reasonably betting that Washington wouldn't 
eagerly play nuclear poker over oil wells. America's alliances with 
Saudi Arabia and the other Arab gulf states, in particular Bahrain with 
its critical port facilities for the U.S. Navy, could start to weaken.

The Clinton administration, though always quick to underscore its 
intention to militarily stop the rebuilding of Iraq's weapons of mass 
destruction, has been far less quick and clear about what's to be done 
about Iran's nuclear aspirations. The administration has tried 
repeatedly to influence Iran's weapons-related high-tech suppliers--
Russia, China and North Korea--but the regular repetition of its 
entreaties and protests, and the obvious advance of Iran's medium- and 
long-range missile programs, don't lead one to believe that these 
countries fear American retaliation.

It will most likely be Iran, not Saddam Hussein's Iraq, that first 
challenges the United States with nuclear Realpolitik in the Middle 
East. Contrary to what the Clinton administration has hoped, the 
"moderate" Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami, and his "leftist" 
clerical allies are no less, perhaps more, of a strategic challenge to 
the United States than are the "conservative" forces behind Iran's more 
powerful but weary revolutionary leader, Ali Khamenei.

Khatami and his clerical allies passionately want to reanimate Iran's 
Islamic revolution by reconnecting it to the people through limited 
democracy. "Moderation" at home may well mean more action abroad. 
Refreshed, the Islamic Republic could more capably defend its religious 
and national interests against its principal foreign foes--the United 
States, Israel, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

The serious divisions within the clergy on domestic affairs have 
repeatedly inclined the ruling mullahs to unite on foreign policy. There 
is probably no issue among them that has more unifying appeal than an 
Iranian nuclear bomb. It is the ultimate guarantor of the Islamic 
Republic's survival against foreign threat.

Though Saddam Hussein probably has made progress in "reconstituting" his 
weapons of mass destruction programs, the Iranians may well have 
leapfrogged their Iraqi enemy. President Khatami's nonthreatening 
personality combined with Europe's and East Asia's commercially based 
foreign policies have brought back to Iran a wide variety of European 
and Asian businessmen.

It wouldn't be at all surprising to learn that while the United States 
focused on Saddam Hussein, the developed world's businessmen have 
supplied Iran with a growing variety of dual-use technologies.

Though the Islamic Republic hasn't been kind to its intellectual elites, 
regularly purging its best and brightest for ideological deficiencies, 
this zealotry has definitely cooled against the scientific and 
technocrat types. Internet-savvy, commercially inclined and larcenous, 
clerical Iran has, in nuclear-related fields, probably surfed, bought 
and stolen as much as possible from the West--not to mention from the 
Russians, Chinese and North Koreans.

Although an Iranian nuclear missile is preferable to an Iraqi one--the 
clerics, unlike Saddam Hussein, are not Hitlerian predators--its 
strategic impact on the projection of U.S. military force doesn't differ 
from Iraq's. A review of congressional debates and testimony before the 
Gulf War quickly reveals the extreme shakiness of our resolution to 
fight in the Middle East. Always attentive to the American scene, 
Tehran, armed with nuclear missiles, would likely become immensely fond 
of intimidating the oil-rich, pro-American and religiously distasteful 
Arab Gulf states. The possible ramifications of this on the Middle 
East's always explosive politics would be electric. We should anticipate 
nuclear cooperation between Israel and Turkey.

If the United States hasn't deployed a ship-born anti-ballistic-missile 
system by the time Iraq and Iran go nuclear--the only credible way we 
can both spook our enemies and gird our own loins--then the Middle East 
will certainly give us a new, provocative "dialogue of civilizations." 
We won't care for the conversation.

The writer is a former Mideast specialist in the CIA.

(c) 2000 The Washington Post Company