Iran’s Karkas Mountains region contains the city of Natanz, believed to house Iran’s primary uranium enrichment facility. Sabotage and cyberattacks have slowed, but not stopped, the enrichment efforts. Credit: Julia Maudlin.
The Islamic Republic will soon possess its long-sought nuclear arsenal. But a Western strategy of nuclear cost imposition can flip this victory into a destructive liability for the regime.
Two facts are now obvious. First, the Islamic Republic of Iran desires a nuclear arsenal. Second, it will obtain this nuclear arsenal soon. Given the political realities in the United States, and the military constraints of Israel’s position, there is little chance of a major strike that meaningfully degrades the Iranian nuclear program.
Two questions, therefore, are relevant. First, what will the character of Middle Eastern competition be once Iran announces its nuclear status? Second, how can the United States and Israel adapt their forces to an Iranian nuclear arsenal in the short-term and long-term alongside the broader threat that Iran poses?
The answer is to impose costs on Iran’s nuclear program, turning it into a strategic liability for the Islamic Republic. This can be done through technological initiatives and force structure reforms. First, Israel and the United States must invest in top-line missile defenses to undermine the broader threat from Iranian bombardment. Second, they must embrace weapons that blur the line between conventional and nuclear capabilities to enable, during a future confrontation, credible attacks on Iran’s second-strike capability. This strategy is a form of geopolitical jiu-jitsu, wherein the enormous costs of maintaining nuclear weapons convert Iran’s nuclear arsenal from a strategic asset into a significant financial and defense liability.
Iran’s Likely Nuclearization
Attempts to stymie Iran’s nuclear ambitions and capacity have been a fixture of American foreign policy debate since the 2000s.1 However, the situation has changed radically since both the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear negotiations at Vienna and the Trump administration’s 2018-2020 pressure campaign. At this point, Iran’s nuclearization is a near-certainty. The United States – alongside its European allies and Israel – must adjust to this new reality rather than attempting to revive these obsolete strategies.
Nuclear arms have a distinct role in Iranian strategic culture. The experience of war with Iraq in the 1980s, particularly Iraqi bombardment of Iranian population centers, emphasized Iran’s need for the bombardment capacity to respond to any adversary in kind. This has evolved into a world-leading missile and drone force.2 Nuclear weapons would serve as the pièce de résistance of this bombardment system. Iran would finally be capable of threatening any major urban area in the Middle East with destruction; in the near-term threatening Europe; and in the long-term, with the proper technological developments, even the United States.3
Israel has waged a largely covert campaign to spoil Iranian nuclear development, at times with U.S. assistance. This has slowed Iranian nuclear development, potentially by well over a decade. Yet at this point, actions that further delay Iranian nuclearization should not be expected. The issue is threefold.
First, the Iranian nuclear program is too developed for anything but multiple days of airstrikes against sites across the country – in other words, a strategic bombing campaign, albeit brief – to degrade its development. Iran has made extraordinary progress even since the 2020 assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, as demonstrated by its missile developments and accelerated nuclear enrichment.4 Moreover, because the United States and Europe have spent the past three years negotiating a new Iran deal with even less stringent conditions than the original, Iran has had the time to build up a uranium stockpile and potentially produce several nuclear devices.5 Additionally, Iran’s connection with Russia has almost certainly accelerated its design process, even if Russia remains hesitant to give Iran total technical access to its nuclear systems.6
Second, such a large-scale strike would need to be U.S.-executed. Israel does not have the military capacity to conduct an operationally-relevant, let alone strategically-relevant, attack on the Iranian nuclear program. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF)’s strike fighters would need to fly in dozens of sorties over at least a few days. Only its longest-range fighters could be employed, given that the Israeli Air Force has only a limited number of tankers until the KC-46s arrive in the next few years.7 Iran has improved its air defenses since 2020, in no small part with Russian assistance.8 It also has an extensive early warning network facilitated by its Axis of Resistance proxies in Iraq and Syria, the most natural path for an Israeli strike.9 Israel could avoid this and transit the Arabian Peninsula, but that would require Saudi acquiescence. Riyadh has shown no inclination to engage in the current Middle East crisis, instead enjoying the benefits of its Chinese-brokered detente with Iran. Saudi Arabia is extremely unlikely to allow Israel to use its airspace to strike Iran, for that would risk the direct Iranian reprisals which the Kingdom so fears.10 An Israeli strike is thus off the table, and has been since 2021, if not 2018.
Third, the United States and its European allies have no appetite for any kind of strike. The Biden administration spent its first two years pursuing a new Iran deal. It subsequently sought to bribe Iran into silence over the summer of 2023.11 Even after the October 7 attacks against Israel – an operation almost certainly of Iranian genesis given Tehran’s joint planning with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad – United States and European leaders have refused to identify Iranian culpability.12
These three conditions – Iranian nuclear development, Israeli incapacity, and a lack of American attention and political will – all make this the best possible opportunity for Iran to test a nuclear weapon. A test may be coming very soon. Tehran’s theocrats ascribe significance to certain dates.
It is clear, then, that Iran is hurtling towards a nuclear arsenal, and may have several devices in a small stockpile today.13 However, a key question remains: how much will Iranian behavior change once Iran becomes a nuclear-armed power?
Iranian Strategy After The Bomb
Predicting the impact of Iranian nuclearization on the Islamic Republic’s broader strategy requires understanding the fundamental strategic situation informing Iranian behavior. We must understand what objectives Iranian strategy seeks to accomplish, and how it seeks to accomplish these objectives, in order to grasp the role of Iranian nuclear weapons.
The United States and Israel have never answered these questions in a coherent manner, and this confusion lies at the heart of the difficulties Iran nuclear policy presents Washington and Jerusalem. Simply put, the nuclear program is both connected to broader Iranian strategy and one of that strategy’s least important components.
Iran lacks a declared nuclear arsenal. Yet it still feels comfortable enough to functionally conquer, ethnically clean, and rebuild Lebanon, much of Assad-controlled Syria, and significant parts of Iraq; fight a war with Israel in Lebanon; support nearly every Palestinian Islamist and radical faction, including assisting their operations against Israel in 2023; and launch a salvo of more than 100 drones and missiles against Israel in April 2024.14 Even if Iran had never pursued a nuclear weapons program, it would remain an enormous strategic problem for the United States. Iran’s objectives have persisted absent nuclear weapons for decades. Tehran seeks to destroy Israel politically (that is, to convert the Jewish state into an Arab-Islamic one through constant military pressure and political isolation), while also ejecting the United States from the Middle East, thereby isolating and co-opting American regional allies. Iran’s campaign since the October 7 attacks has sought this objective: by keeping Israel in a constant state of stress, and continuously probing American capabilities and resolve, Iran hopes to exhaust both adversaries.15
Nevertheless, Israeli and American policymakers have treated the nuclear file as the sum total of the Iran challenge. This obsession explains both the American fixation on arms control agreements with Iran and the Israeli fixation on striking against targets in Iran rather than pressuring Iran’s mechanism of military expansion, its Axis of Resistance.16
Iranian nuclear development would be used to further its existing strategy rather than sparking radical strategic changes. Iran will use a nuclear weapon to intimidate its neighbors further, bullying the Saudis into accepting some version of a perpetual regional peace – that is, avoiding participation in a regional conflict – and harassing the Turks enough to cut a deal over the Levant. It will also revert to vague but menacing nuclear threats, akin to Russia’s, given the impact the words “nuclear” and “escalation” have on Chatham House-cum-Foggy Bottom sensitivities when used in the same sentence.17
These are all political-diplomatic uses: Iran will employ nuclear bluster to prevent the formation of another regional anti-hegemonic coalition. But Iran will not use nuclear weapons as an actual credible military tool, at least not during the initial years of its arsenal’s expansion.
A Strategy Of Cost Imposition
An Iranian nuclear arsenal will have some influence on Tehran’s strategy, but Iran’s fundamental objectives and strategic options will not change. The subsequent question U.S. policymakers will ask is whether deterrence is possible. Yet deterrence is the wrong framework. Cost imposition is the right one.
Iran is not impossible to deter. The Islamic Republic’s theocrats may be convinced of the righteousness of their cause and the justice of embracing martyrdom in the face of the Zionist-Crusader adversary. Yet this does not make Iran a wholly irrational, bloodthirsty state that cannot be credibly threatened in a crisis. Indeed, Iranian ideology mirrors most strongly not Sunni Islamism, with its focus on triggering the apocalypse, but Soviet Marxist-Leninism, with its embrace of inevitable victory and concurrent acceptance of multi-decadal, and potentially even multi-generational, timelines.18 Therefore, deterrence in its traditional sense is the wrong framework, not because it is impossible, but because it misses the point. The United States must win a competition with Iran, ultimately reducing Iranian power enough to prevent Tehran from destabilizing or dominating the Middle East. Nuclear deterrence is not an overarching policy, but a small part of a much broader strategy.
Such a strategy should turn Iranian nuclear weapons into a liability for Tehran by leveraging the expenses that are attendant with nuclearization.
Nuclear weapons are extraordinarily expensive. They require a large amount of maintenance and have high storage costs. Iran in particular is vulnerable to a Pakistan-like situation, under which a fragmented security state and budgetary limitations necessitate the separation of warheads and launchers until wartime, slowing responsive strikes.19 Moreover, Iran’s initial arsenal will be small — no more than a dozen-plus warheads. This is far too small to serve as a real second-strike capability, since if Israel had the capabilities to conduct a strike – or the United States had the political will for it – then Iran’s program could be wiped out immediately.
This vulnerability will close in the next 20 years as Iranian nuclear technology improves and Iran enjoys more support from Russia, China and North Korea. Yet the nuclear arsenal will remain a significant expense. Nuclear weapons are far more than just a warhead mounted on a missile or an air-dropped nuclear bomb. They require secure storage, command and control, and a fully reliable launch mechanism. Even wealthy European states have struggled to field nuclear arsenals. France, operating a nominally independent nuclear deterrent, spent over half its air force budget on nuclear weapons during the Cold War and has spent about a tenth of its military budget on maintaining its nuclear delivery system ever since.20 The British mitigated nuclear weapons costs, but only because the UK had greater American technical support and the transfer of Polaris. Today, the nuclear budget of around £3 billion takes up around six percent of Britain’s defense budget.21 Iran will have some assistance from Russia, China, and North Korea. However, all three powers will guard their true nuclear command-and-control systems and may limit technical cooperation given their natural paranoia.22
The result is the potential for a long-term strategy of cost imposition that allows America and Israel to turn the Iranian nuclear program into a liability for the regime. In brief, a cost imposition strategy prioritizes capabilities that compel the enemy to react in a costly manner, both financially and organizationally, which leads to the diffusion of finite resources over time. Iran is far smaller an adversary than the former USSR, modern Russia, and China. It can be worn down relatively quickly with the right approach.
Imposing costs on Iran more broadly can involve several steps, including more aggressive sanctions, a broader cyber campaign against critical infrastructure and military sites, sabotage, and most critically, attacks on the Axis of Resistance. In a nuclear context, the costs are more specific.
The United States and Israel must hold significant portions of Iran’s nuclear arsenal at risk prior to launch, while also investing in the air and missile defenses that will counter Iran’s drone and missile bombardment fleet and nuclear weapons. This will compel Iran to expand the size and range of its nuclear arsenal, while also diversifying its delivery systems. Iran’s technical base is significantly smaller than that of Israel, let alone the United States, enabling it to be ground down over time.
Executing The Strategy
Three sets of technologies can execute this cost-imposition strategy.
First, the United States and Israel must invest in several missile defense systems, in particular accelerating the deployment of railguns and directed energy weapons. The former use an electromagnetic accelerator (essentially an enormous magnet) to accelerate a shell far faster than gunpowder would allow, enabling long-range interception.23 The latter is, in effect, a real-life laser beam that can burn a hole through or overheat and melt an incoming aerial target.24
The advantage of both railguns and directed energy weapons is their relative cost. Any Iranian nuclear use will come alongside extensive conventional bombardment. By deploying cutting-edge air defenses that eschew traditional interceptors, the United States and Israel can greatly increase magazine depth, reducing the odds of a successful nuclear strike and forcing Iran to build more missiles and warheads at high cost.
There is precedent for investing in novel technological defenses to nuclear attacks to impose costs on nuclear adversaries. President Reagan’s 1984 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, nicknamed “Star Wars”) aimed to create a network of ground- and space-based missile defenses to protect the United States from a Soviet nuclear attack. Although this system was never realized, the SDI famously goaded the USSR into investing more in their nuclear system during an economic crisis, contributing to the USSR’s collapse.25 A strategy of nuclear cost imposition could repeat this success with Iran.
Second, on the offensive, the United States and Israel must develop new types of long-range drones and space-based capabilities that can suppress or destroy Iranian air defenses and radars. By credibly threatening to limit Iran’s ability to identify enemy attacks, the United States can compel Iran to develop more densely-layered defenses pushed out farther from its territory. The result will be greater financial costs for its proxy system in Iraq and Syria, removing cash from domestic public services and the Iranian security state.
Third, the United States and Israel should develop fast-flying penetration assets, ideally hypersonics, that can hit multiple sites in Iran concurrently. Hypersonics need not be deployed in significant numbers; even a few dozen can threaten to hit hardened Iranian targets across the country nearly simultaneously, especially if combined with anti-air and counter-command-and-control assets that destabilize Iran’s response capability.26
The goal of this strategy is not simply to deter Iranian nuclear use. It is also designed to impose costs on the Iranian state for long enough that it begins to question the wisdom of a confrontational stance towards the United States and Israel or simply unravels under financial pressure.
Living with the Iranian bomb will not be easy. Yet the United States and its allies, ironically enough, have a second chance to counter the strategic threat from Iran — by turning the Islamic Republic’s formal nuclearization against itself.
References
1 See, e.g., “Iran’s Continuing Pursuit of Weapons of Mass Destruction: Testimony by Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton before the House International Relations Committee Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia,” U.S. Department of State Archive, June 24, 2004.
2 Kamran Taremi, “Ballistic Missiles in Iran’s Military Thinking,” Wilson Center, October 14, 2003.
3 Michael Elleman, “Iran’s Ballistic Missile Program,” U.S. Institute for Peace, The Iran Primer, April 12, 2024.
4 Kelsey Davenport, “Iran Accelerates Highly Enriched Uranium Production,” Arms Control Association, 2024.
5 Joby Warrick, “Nuclear Deal in Tatters, Iran Edges Close to Weapons Capability,” Washington Post, April 10, 2024.
6 Hanna Notte and Jim Lamson, “The Uncomfortable Reality of Russia and Iran’s New Defense Relationship,” War on the Rocks, July 24, 2024.
7 Michael Makovsky et al., “U.S. Must Expedite Delivery of KC-46A Aerial Refueling Tanker to Israel,” JINSA, May 2, 2023.
8 Max Bergmann et al., “Collaboration for a Price: Russian Military-Technical Cooperation with China, Iran, and North Korea,” CSIS, May 22, 2024; Joby Warrick, “Russian Weapons Help Iran Harden Defenses against Israeli Airstrike,” Washington Post, April 15, 2024.
9 Farzin Nadimi, “Iran Potentially Expanding Its Air Defense Axis in Lebanon and Syria,” Washington Institute, November 15, 2023; “Details about IRGC Building Air Defense Network in Syria,” Iran International, January 23, 2023.
10 Giorgio Cafiero, “A Year Ago, Beijing Brokered an Iran-Saudi Deal. How Does Détente Look Today?,” Atlantic Council, March 6, 2024.
11 Farnaz Fassihi and Michael Shear, “U.S. Reaches Deal with Iran to Free Americans for Jailed Iranians and Funds,” New York Times, August 10, 2023.
12 Jonathan Schanzer, “Iran-Hezbollah Intelligence Center May Help Hamas Target Israel,” Foreign Policy, September 13, 2022.
13 Joby Warrick, “Iran Edges Close,” Washington Post, April 10, 2024.
14 Julien Barnes-Dacey and Hamidreza Azizi, “Beyond Proxies: Iran’s Deeper Strategy in Syria and Lebanon,” ECFR, June 5, 2024; Martin Chulov, “Iran Repopulates Syria with Shia Muslims to Help Tighten Regime’s Control,” Guardian, January 13, 2017; Robin Wright, “Iran’s Attack and the New Escalatory Cycle in the Middle East,” United States Institute of Peace, April 16, 2024.
15 Peter Bergen, “Opinion: What Does Iran Really Want?,” CNN, April 14, 2024.
16 Seth Cropsey, “Step up Pressure on Iran’s Proxies,” Wall Street Journal, April 21, 2024.
17 Pavel K. Baev, “Nuclear Brinkmanship in Putin’s War: Upping the Ante,” Brookings Institution, May 14, 2024.
18 Seth Cropsey, “To Thwart Iran, Fight a War Of Attrition,” Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2024.
19 Tim Craig and Karen DeYoung, “Pakistan Is Eyeing Sea-Based and Short-Range Nuclear Weapons, Analysts Say,” Washington Post, September 21, 2014.
20 Norman Friedman, The Fifty-Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2007); Claire Mills, “The French Nuclear Deterrent,” House of Commons Library, November 20, 2020.
21 Paul Graham, “RAF Nuclear Deterrence in the Cold War,” U.K. Ministry of Defense, 2023; Claire Mills, “The French Nuclear Deterrent”, Briefing Paper no. SN04079, House of Commons Library, UK Parliament, November 20, 2020.
22 Michael Eisenstadt, “Russian Arms and Technology Transfers to Iran: Policy Challenges for the United States,” Arms Control Association, accessed August 7, 2024.
23 Brandon J. Weichert, “Railguns: The ‘secret Weapon’ the U.S. Navy Doesn’t Have,” National Interest, August 6, 2024.
24 “Directed Energy Weapons: High Power Microwaves,” Office of Naval Research, accessed August 7, 2024.
25 Ken Adelman, “The Phantom Menace,” POLITICO, May 11, 2014.
26 Brad Lendon, “US Tests Hypersonic Missile in Pacific as It Aims to Keep up with China and Russia,” CNN, March 21, 2024.