WASHINGTON — A report published by the U.S. Army War College ruled out a U.S.
military or diplomatic option to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Instead, the report, entitled "Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran,"
said the dismantling of Israel's purported nuclear weapons program
could be the only way to prevent a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
The report, entitled "Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran," was edited by Henry Sokolski, executive director of the
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, and Patrick Clawson, deputy
director at the Washington Institute.
"You have a whole neighborhood of folks posed, at any time, to go
nuclear," Sokolski said. "A Middle East with yet more nuclear powers could
turn into a big, big death bath."
The report envisioned a nuclear Iran seeking to dominate the Middle
East and intimidating neighboring Europe. The scenarios included
skyrocketing oil prices, the reduction of U.S. influence in the region and
increased insurgency in Israel and Gulf Arab states.
The report financed by the Defense Department and said to have been based
on leading U.S. experts in nuclear proliferation, Iran and the Middle East recommended
that the United States encourage "Israel to set the pace of nuclear
restraint in the region by freezing its large reactor at Dimona and calling
on all other states that have large nuclear reactors to follow suit."
The
report also called on Israel to agree to International Atomic Energy
Agency inspections of the Dimona nuclear reactor, said to house the nuclear
weapons program of the Jewish state.
Israel has never confirmed or denied reports that it possesses nuclear
weapons. But the Jewish state has pledged not to be the first to use nuclear
weapons in the Middle East.
In July 2004, IAEA director-general Mohammed El Baradei urged Israel to
abandon nuclear weapons in proposed regional arms control negotiations. The
United States has not formally joined this call.
The report said the dismantling of Israel's nuclear weapons could lead
to similar moves by other countries in the Middle East, including Algeria
and Egypt. But the report envisioned that Iran would not halt its nuclear
program and could achieve weapons capability in 2006.
As a first step, Israel was urged to announce the cessation of
operations at Dimona. The report said Israel should then be prepared to
dismantle Dimona and transfer nuclear material to the United States.
"It should make clear, however, that Israel will only take this
additional step when at least two of three Middle Eastern nations --
Algeria, Egypt, or Iran -- follow Israel's lead by mothballing their own
declared nuclear facilities that are capable of producing at least one
bomb's worth of plutonium or highly enriched uranium in 1 to 3 years," the
report said.
Under the proposal, all states in the Middle East would dismantle
their large research and power reactors, hexafluoride, enrichment plants,
and reprocessing capabilities. Pakistan and other nuclear weapons states
must also agree not to redeploy nuclear weapons in the Middle East during
peacetime.
"With a nuclear weapons option acting as a deterrent to the United
States and allied action against it, Iran would likely lend greater support
to terrorists operating against Israel, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Europe,
and the United States," the report said.
The United States should work to contain and deter Iran from posing
such threats, the report said. The report recommended increasing U.S.-GCC
naval cooperation, constructing pipelines in the southern Gulf and isolating
Iran.
"Would taking these steps eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat?" the
report asked. "No. Given Iran's extensive nuclear know-how and capabilities,
it is unlikely that the United States or its allies can deny Iran the
technical ability to covertly make nuclear weapons."
The report warned that Iran could not be bribed or bombed into
submission. Teheran could respond with a war against the United States,
Israel and Arab allies.
"Any overt military attack would give Tehran a casus belli either to
withdraw from the NPT, or to rally Islamic Jihadists to wage war against the
United States and its allies more directly," the report said. "Whatever
might be gained in technically delaying Iran's completion of having a bomb
option would have to be weighed against what might be lost in Washington's
long-term efforts to encourage more moderate Islamic rule in Iran and the
Middle East."
