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How the Iran Deal Could Complicate U.S. Efforts to Prevent a Nuclear Breakout

(War on the Rocks) Michael Eisenstadt - President Obama has often stated, regarding Iran's potential nuclear weapons ambitions, that "we preserve all our capabilities...our military superiority stays in place." Further scrutiny, however, raises questions regarding whether political and military dynamics set in train by the nuclear deal with Iran will in fact make preventive military action even more problematic and, therefore, unlikely. The agreement will almost certainly enable Iran to strengthen its defenses and its retaliatory capabilities. In the next 10 to 20 years, Iran could more than double the size of its current inventory of about 800 short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. This will stress regional missile defenses and dramatically increase the size of an Iranian retaliatory strike. Moreover, Iran is free to continue its development and production of land attack cruise missiles, which are not addressed directly in the deal. Future underground facilities are likely to be located at sites that are even better protected and deeper than the current underground facilities at Natanz and Fordow. Fordow probably represents the outer limits of what America's current generation of conventional deep penetrator munitions ("bunker-busters") can take on. Iran has hundreds of underground bunkers and facilities that it could use for clandestine nuclear activities, playing a shell game with foreign intelligence services, which would have to determine which ones are being used for proscribed purposes. The nuclear deal with Iran could therefore complicate U.S. efforts to deter, detect, and prevent a future Iranian nuclear breakout, while buying Iran time to counter some of America's most potent capabilities. The writer is director of the Military and Security Studies Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
2015-09-01 00:00:00
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