Saturday, April 07, 2007
Regarding Iran: Command-and-control as an argument of convenience
The last fortnight's Iranian hostage crisis has surfaced a question of great moment: does Iran's central government have control over its military, or not?
The press is reporting that the government in Tehran does not have control over its military. The Guardian:
A senior Iranian source with close ties to the Revolutionary Guard, told the Guardian: "If this had been between Iranian and American soldiers it could have been the beginning of an accidental war."
With the crisis now over, a remarkable degree of consensus is emerging among British, Iranian and Iraqi officials about what happened over 13 nervous days - namely that the decision to seize the Britons was taken locally, and was not part of a grander scheme cooked up in Tehran.
"My best guess is that this was a local incident which became an international incident," said one British source closely involved in the crisis.
The New York Times:
One senior official, who like some other officials who discussed the issue spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing internal assessments of Iran’s motivation, said that the administration’s internal assessment of the episode, while incomplete, suggested that the seizure of the Britons was “probably not directed from the upper reaches government.”
Michael Ledeen thinks this is preposterous:
Very funny. The IRGC report directly to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i, who approved the orders to take hostages (especially American, British, Canadian and Australian) several months ago. Acting on those orders last September, Iranian troops in Iraq attempted to capture some Americans. Unlike the Brits, the Americans defended themselves, killed at least one Iranian, and escaped the trap.
There are certainly fractious disputes within the Iranian regime, but no military officer would take such action without such orders. Anybody who believes that should be reassigned to the study of academic politics.
My regular readers will not be surprised that I tend to agree with Mr. Ledeen on this one. The precise timing may have come as a surprise to the Iranian leadership -- according to the Guardian's story, when the hostages were grabbed the critical mullahs and bureaucrats were scattered around the country on holiday and not prepared to deal with the blowback -- but I find it hard to believe that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps promotes that much initiative in its lowest echelons. Police states just do not run that way. Whatever Iran's apologists in Western intelligence service claim in off-the-record comments to left-wing newspapers, it is far more likely that the Iranians who grabbed the British sailors were operating under rules of engagement approved in Tehran.
So why are officials from Iran, Iraq, the United Kingdom and even the United States in such a rush to declare this a rogue operation, and why is the press so accepting of that judgment? The answer, I'm sure, is that if it were widely acknowledged that Tehran had ordered the kidnapping of the sailors the crisis between Iran and the West would almost certainly escalate, perhaps out of control. At a minimum, Britain would have to cut off diplomatic relations, and American proponents of overt military action against Iran would have greater political leverage.
There is, however, at least one enormous implication that flows directly from the suddenly popular claim that the Islamic Republic lacks control over its own military: When and if Iran gets nuclear weapons, would it have secure command-and-control over them?
There are a host of reasons to fear an Iranian bomb, but most of them assume calculated decisions by the Iranian leadership or the powers around them. Once it has a bomb, Iran could threaten or destabilize its neighbors or project power through Hezbollah with little fear of conventional retaliation. At one extreme, it could "Finlandize" Iraq and the Sunni Arab states in the Gulf, and thereby greatly limit the options of the United States. Even less stable countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt might develop nuclear weapons in response, and Israel would get very jumpy. And so on.
However, neither doves nor hawks been much worried that Iran would lose control over its nuclear weapons. This confidence derives from the sneaky discipline with which Iran has pursued its covert weapons program. Most descriptions of that effort suggest a great deal of security and control, and so the assumption has been that Iran would also secure actual weapons (see the last paragraph of my notes from a "roundtable discussion" on Iran at Princeton about a year ago).
This assumption that Tehran would have control over its weapons pervades the arguments of the doves who make the case for containment (as opposed to preemption or interdiction). Since the leadership of the Islamic Republic has demonstrated a certain capacity for skillful brinksmanship -- it knows how to push a crisis to the point of maximum advantage and then back away before its adversaries decide to act -- the "containment doves" believe that a nuclear Iran could be managed and deterred, even if at some cost, just as we contained bureaucratic Communist countries during the Cold War. See, e.g., this article by Ephraim Kam or this typical essay from The Atlantic.
But what if the Islamic Republic does not, in fact, control its nuclear weapons? Then all hope of deterring or containing a nuclear Iran simply vanishes, and interdiction becomes the only viable option.
Presumably, the people who today want us to believe that Iran's military captured those British sailors on its own initiative will argue tomorrow that the Islamic Republic has iron clad control over its nuclear weapons. It will require enormous creativity and open-mindedness -- or maybe just rank stupidity -- to believe both arguments.
14 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Apr 07, 12:01:00 PM:
I do agree with your assesment, but this bi-polar "thinking" with regard to mullahs is going on since Carter's days. Before 91 it was justified by a cold war needs, now the justification changed a little but the same people do the justification.
By 
Escort81, at
Sat Apr 07, 01:39:00 PM:
Let's assume the most generous interpretation of the hostage taking -- that it was a scheme executed by the local IRGC leaders at the port with no knowledge of it in Tehran until after the fact.
The scheme itself, relative to what should be a run-of-the-mill border dispute, is still a mockery of proportionality, approaching the level of Steve Martin's famous routine:
"The cure for overcrowding? Death penalty for parking tickets."
The way the operation itself was executed suggests that the capture tactics had been rehearsed and that some training for it had taken place. It was a page from a playbook.
What does it say about the leadership in Tehran (or the various factions thereof) that once the "rogue seizure" takes place, they figure that the best way to proceed is to take the prisoners to Tehran, treat them in not such a nice way (as the former prisoners are now discussing back in the U.K.), and hold them for the better part of two weeks? Tehran did not elect to immediately correct the effect of a "rogue seizure" and discipline the IRGC officers involved -- they pinned medals on these officers on national TV!
As to TH's logical concluding paragraph, he is describing a classic case of what George Orwell would have called "doublethink".
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Apr 07, 02:12:00 PM:
SJ, regarding:
Precisely. For the same reason, every time military decisions are made in Iraq without George W. Bush's input, it is evidence that the U.S. does not have control over its nuclear weapons.
Actually, no American commander would (today, anyway) capture Iranian uniformed sailors in disputed waters without authorization from the top. We know that the detentions of Iranians inside Iraq happened only after explicit changes in the rules of engagement approved by the White House.
In any case, the command-and-control of America's nuclear weapons is well understood, and even the subject of Hollywood movies. Indeed, American nuclear doctrine is fully explained, in detail, for anybody to analyze. If Iran's procedures and doctrine are that transparent and robust when the time comes, then the world will take comfort from that transparency. It is unlikely, however, that Iran will be so forthcoming. If it is not, the world will be left to measure the risk based on other indicators, such as whether Iran can control its military in the ordinary course.
For what it is worth, I tend to believe that Iran does have good command-and-control. But then, I'm not buying the story that the most recent incident was a rogue operation, either.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Apr 07, 02:12:00 PM:
"Precisely. For the same reason, every time military decisions are made in Iraq without George W. Bush's input, it is evidence that the U.S. does not have control over its nuclear weapons."
I thought you were smarter than that.
"The IRGC report directly to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i"
Now. Name a part of the US military that fulfills the same function as the Revolutionary Guard and answers only to the President. Go ahead.
Give up?
That's because there *aren't any.*
But if we did have such a branch of the military, (the only branch entrusted with nuclear arms, BTW) and it answered only to the president then yeah, maybe your snide comment would apply. If Delta Force were about 800 times its current size, were used as a sort of heavily armed international secret police, and had a monopoly on American nuclear arms, and obeyed only the president of the US, for instance, then one could argue that if Delta Force acted without the orders of the president to trigger an international incident then the rational command and control by the central leadership of the USA over its nuclear arsenal should be called into question.
By , at
Sat Apr 07, 02:17:00 PM:
Dear Mr. TigerHawk:
Naturally Westhawk agrees with you since we made this very argument in January 2006.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, the U.S. government created the "Cooperative Threat Reduction Program", a program to finance the dismantling of Russia's excess nuclear weapons and the safeguarding of its surplus weapons-grade materials and parts. Everyone was rightly worried about the political stability of post-Soviet Russia, and the CTR program seemed like a reasonable method of risk mitigation.
The Westhawk post cited above wondered why countries like Pakistan and Iran, not famous for political stability, don't also deserve their own CTR programs? We asked the question "tongue in cheek."
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Apr 07, 02:25:00 PM:
Westy,
Actually, we imposed such a program in Pakistan in the months following September 11. See the account in George Friedman's book, America's Secret War: Inside The Hidden Worldwide Struggle Between America and Its Enemies. Friedman, as you probably know, is the founder of Stratfor.
By Purple Avenger, at
Sat Apr 07, 03:13:00 PM:
For the same reason, every time military decisions are made in Iraq without George W. Bush's input, it is evidence that the U.S. does not have control over its nuclear weapons.
No, its evidence you're a typical liberal dolt with no knowledge of how our nuclear weapons process operates. The president has the football, period. Even our nuclear armed subs no longer have the ability for an autonomous launch. That being removed some years ago.
By , at
Sat Apr 07, 04:28:00 PM:
Um, maybe Iran 'losing control' over its nuclear weapons would not be the worst possible outcome, considering who the leaders of Iran are.
I mean, are you telling me there might actually be someone there worse than Ahmadinejad?
Perhaps a fractured command and control system there would ensure the weapons are actually unusable.
By Christopher Chambers, at
Sat Apr 07, 06:23:00 PM:
TH, why don't you quit your job, sign up and go "interdict" while the rest of figure out how to deal with a crumbling infrastructure, health care, housing, debt/credit crisis, education, etc. etc. here? Even Colin Powell's finally coming out of his "good soldier" prison and will be commenting on this bullcrap, plus everything from Alberto Gonzales to righties threatening to expose aspects of his wife's manic/depressive episodes, all in an interview by Tavis Smiley.
Better still, why don't you and Imus go over there and teach those Godless ragheads a lesson. But please interdict quickly...the gas prices are hell aleady and summer hasn't even started yet.
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Sat Apr 07, 06:56:00 PM:
Yeah, I'm with Chris, and how about hamster rights as well? It's much too big an issue not to be intruded into every other discussion.
By Purple Avenger, at
Sat Apr 07, 07:00:00 PM:
You do not understand sarcasm
Perhaps you don't know how to express it?
By Purple Avenger, at
Sat Apr 07, 07:58:00 PM:
posted something using the same reasoning
The point of my response is that the "reasoning" is NOT THE SAME because the situations are in fact quite different.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sun Apr 08, 01:59:00 PM:
Let's revisit this, shall we?
"Precisely. For the same reason, every time military decisions are made in Iraq without George W. Bush's input, it is evidence that the U.S. does not have control over its nuclear weapons."
Hmm.
You are either the single worst deliverer of sarcastic comments I think I've ever seen, or this was a snide, off the cuff dig at the logic of the original post, from which you have since backpedaled and about which you are now being disingenuous.
As I've seen you be sarcastic and witty before (and also make snide comments), I vote #2.
If you're going to back away from a previous comment, at least be honest about it.
By , at
Sun Apr 08, 11:30:00 PM:
Despite what the liberals have told us the soviet union did,nt die out when the wall fell it just exoanded to cover the whole european continent and their looking to do the same with us JOE McCARTHY was right
