At the margins of regional conflict in the Middle East

Though Iran is not-yet-nuclear, an asymmetrical nuclear war with Israel is still possible. Even a conventional war in the region could elicit calibrated nuclear operations by Israel. Any such unprecedented war scenario is most worrisome in circumstances wherein Iran would target Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor and/or employ radiation dispersal weapons against the Jewish State. Similarly, unique escalations could follow in the wake of an Iranian resort to biological or electromagnetic pulse (EMP) ordnance.

Any direct war risks between Israel and Iran would likely evolve from the expanding conflict between the Jewish State and Iranian sub-state proxies. Significantly, Israel’s asymmetrical nuclear advantage over Iran could be gainful only during a direct military engagement with Iran. There are no foreseeable circumstances in which Israel could deter a jihadist criminal organization such as Hezbollah with either implicit or explicit nuclear threats.

Looking ahead to imminently direct conflict with Iran, a tactically successful preemption against Iranian weapons and infrastructures (an act of “anticipatory self-defense” under international law) is no longer reasonable to expect, at least as a “one-off” move of war. Rather, such a multi-layered defensive action would need to be undertaken incrementally, in stages, not as a singular strike and (optimally) during an already-ongoing war against Hezbollah terror-group surrogates. Back in 2003, when my Project Daniel Group presented its early report on Iranian nuclearization to then-Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, Iranian targets were substantially more daunting than was Iraq’s Osiraq reactor on June 7, 1981 (the date of Israel’s remarkable “Operation Opera”).

Nonetheless, in a direct war against Iran, Israel could have no choice but to launch multiple and mutually-reinforcing preemptive strikes against pertinent enemy targets. Considering both technical weapon-system characteristics and Iranian decision-making orientations, Jerusalem could likely undertake such an ambitious launch plan with operational confidence. In any event, there is likely to be no rational alternative.

There will be further details and complex nuances. In proper scientific terms, it is always meaningless to estimate the probabilities of unique events. In extremis, however, Israel could never allow itself to be bound by the very strictest analytic standards of logic and mathematics. Whatever their limitations (because an Israel-Iran nuclear war would represent a unique or sui generis event), Jerusalem’s estimations would be indispensable.

To the extent that they could be usefully estimated, the real risks of an Israel-Iran nuclear war would depend on whether such a conflict was intentional, unintentional, or accidental. Apart from applying this critical three-part distinction, there could be no adequate reason to expect operationally-gainful strategic assessments. Ensuring existential protections from openly declared Iranian aggressions, Jerusalem should always bear in mind the absolute primacy of national self-defense. “The safety of the people,” we learn from Cicero, “shall be the highest law.”

It is essential that competent Israeli strategic analysts do their level best to examine all current and future nuclear risks relating to Iran. During his US presidential tenure, Donald J. Trump lauded “pretended irrationality” as a US security tactic vis-à-vis North Korea. Yet, such a “common sense” preference could never be operationalized without incurring variously intolerable harms. Most concerning is that while neither side engaged in strategic risk-taking would actually want war, either or both “players” could still commit irremediable errors during inevitable searches for “escalation dominance.”

Interestingly, tactics of “pretended irrationality” have a distinctly tangible Israeli history. Years ago, Moshe Dayan already expressed tactical hopes for such inherently unpredictable stratagems. Warned the legendary IDF chief of general staff and minister of defense: “Israel should be seen as a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.”[2]

There is more. An unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war between Jerusalem and Teheran could take place not only as the result of misunderstandings or miscalculations between rational leaders, but also as an unintended consequence of mechanical, electrical, or computer malfunction. This should bring to consideration a further distinction between unintentional/inadvertent nuclear war and accidental nuclear war. Though all accidental nuclear war must be unintentional, not every unintentional nuclear war must occur by accident. On one occasion or another, an unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war could be the result of fundamental misjudgments about enemy intentions.

“In war,” says Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz famously in On War, “everything is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.” In fashioning a successful “endgame” to any future nuclear confrontation with Iran, Israel’s leaders should understand that this crisis would be about more than improving any relevant “force-ratios.” To an unknowable but still-weighty extent, it would also concern “martyrdom” efforts designed to acquire “power over death.”

A true nuclear war has never been fought. There are no recognizable experts on fighting a nuclear war, not in Washington, not in Pyongyang, not in Jerusalem, not in Tehran. What will be required in Jerusalem, therefore, is more broadly intellectual guidance than Israel could reasonably expect from even its most senior military officers and national security planners. To manage its core existential problem vis-à-vis Iran, Israel needs theoretical scientists and “high thinkers” of Yuval Ne’eman or J. Robert Oppenheimer stature. Reciprocally, Jerusalem ought to strictly disavow strategic counsel drawn from narrowly partisan domestic politics or “common sense.”

There is an additional point concerning estimable risks of an Israel-Iran nuclear war. From the standpoint of Jerusalem, the only truly successful outcome of any impending direct conflict would be one that ends with a slowdown or prevention of Iranian nuclear war fighting capabilities. Among other things, Israel ought never to take authentic survival risks with Tehran if the best outcome could only be status quo ante bellum.

Providing for Israeli national security opposite a still-nuclearizing Iran ought never to become an ad-hoc or seat-of-the-pants “game.” Without a suitably long-term, systematic and theory-based plan in place, Israel would be unprepared for any Iran nuclear conflict that is deliberate, unintentional or accidental. At every stage of its competition with Tehran, Jerusalem should never lose sight of the only sensible rationale for maintaining its presumptive nuclear weapons and doctrine. That focused justification is (1) stable war management at all identifiable levels; and (2) + nuclear deterrence.

What sorts of nuclear war should be under discussion? Any bilateral use of nuclear weapons would signify a symmetrical nuclear war, even if Israel were tangibly more powerful than Iran. And if Israel was the only nuclear combatant state, an asymmetrical nuclear war could still be initiated.

This definitional clarification raises one final point of imposing magnitude: It is unlikely but conceivable that Iran could sometime enlist North Korea as an already-nuclear surrogate. This enlistment would be done to compensate for Iran’s not-yet-nuclear status. While such an alliance relationship would be enormously ironic (because the nuclear state ally would be the proxy of the not-yet-nuclear partner), it could still make sound strategic sense to Pyongyang and Tehran.

Whether or not such an elevated alliance could prove gainful to North Korea and/or Iran, the associated strategic threat to Israel would be unprecedented and existential. Accordingly, this plausibly under-examined threat should be factored in to Jerusalem’s presumed plans for operational nuclear deterrence. More than anything else, Israel’s strategic plans should include a prompt policy shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.” The underlying rationale of this shift would not be to merely reframe the obvious (i.e., that Israel is a nuclear power), but to remind would-be aggressors that Israel’s nuclear weapons are operationally usable at all possible levels of impending warfare.