Diverse narratives of an Israel-Iran War” avoiding intellectual conquest

“It must not be forgotten that it is perhaps more dangerous for a nation to allow itself to be conquered intellectually than by arms.” Guillaume Apollinaire, The New Spirit and the Poets (1917)

Israel’s power in world politics is based on maintaining intellectual supremacy. Above all, such supremacy must be emphasized at the strategic policy-making level. Moreover, this strategic supremacy should be conspicuous and easily recognizable. Until now, it is only at the tactical or operational level that Jerusalem’s military policy supremacy has continued “beyond reasonable doubt.”

Even with an uninterrupted nuclear monopoly in the Middle East, Jerusalem will need to optimize this advantage as a strategic obligation. On current matters concerning protracted or enlarged Israel-Iran war, Israel should specifically figure out one particular irony. Though Iran is not in any position to gain “escalation dominance” during foreseeable military engagements with Israel, its leaders continue to taunt the Jewish State with unsupportable threats of annihilation.

What is going on here? Israel is an already-nuclear adversary. Iran remains pre-nuclear.

Why does the militarily inferior state think it can threaten the militarily superior state with impunity and net-benefit?

What exactly is Iran seeking to accomplish by declaring such an ironic posture?

If Tehran’s stance is merely bombast or bravado, it could not help the Islamic Republic once an ongoing war was already underway and rapidly escalating.

During any new crisis, only Israel could reasonably expect to achieve “escalation dominance.” Iran and its assorted terror-surrogates could still inflict grave harms on Israeli civilians (non-combatant populations remain the only predictable targets of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah), but only at a risk of suffering unacceptable retaliatory consequences.

Why should Iran, the currently inferior side in competitive risk-taking, pretend crisis-dominating capacities that it plainly does not have? Is this seemingly paradoxical behavior an example of “pretended irrationality,” or is Tehran in fact irrational or potentially irrational? And if the latter, does Jerusalem have any rational alternative to launching pre-war or intra-war preemptions against nuclear-related targets in Iran?

There are critical nuances. An ongoing war against Iran could assist the Jewish State in preventing that recalcitrant adversary from “becoming nuclear.” Ironically, any further spasms of military bluster from Tehran could serve only Israel’s interests. In essence, such visceral eruptions could portend authentically existential harms for Iran.

For the moment, the most plausible paths to an accelerating Israel-Iran war (a war in which Iran would still be non-nuclear) would involve unpredictable escalations from Israeli military engagements with Hamas, Hezbollah or other jihadist proxies. During such an unprecedented war, even a not-yet-nuclear Iran could elicit “limited” Israeli nuclear responses. Though such responses could be consistent with authoritative international law, their cumulative effects on both friend and foe could be radically destabilizing.

A notably worrisome escalation danger would lie in Iranian use of radiation-dispersal weapons or an Iranian conventional attack on Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. In a worst-case scenario, an already-nuclear North Korea would engage Israeli military forces on behalf of Iran. In such a presumptively under-examined but increasingly credible scenario, North Korea would act as an equalizing state surrogate for the Islamic Republic. On an interesting historical note, North Korea engaged militarily with Israeli forces in the past, most visibly during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

For Jerusalem, there are immediately important specifics to identify, decipher and monitor. By definition, all conceivable scenarios would be unprecedented. This means, among other things, that related and derivative predictions could never express anything more than “quasi-scientific” exercises. In logic, true assessments of probability must stem from a determinable frequency of relevant past events. Always.

There has never been a nuclear war (Hiroshima and Nagasaki don’t “count”). Even if Iran were to remain pre-nuclear, Jerusalem could sometime calculate that it would be gainful for Israel to cross the nuclear combat “firebreak.” This concerns circumstances wherein any non-introduction of Israeli nuclear weapons could allow Iran to gain an upper hand during crisis bargaining. In existential crisis circumstances, Israel could decide to “go nuclear” (though at intentionally limited or tactical levels) in order to maintain “escalation dominance.”

What next for Jerusalem? Immediately, facing an intransigent and potentially nuclear Iran, Israel needs to update and refine its posture of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity.” The key objective of such urgently-needed changes would be ascertainably credible nuclear deterrence, a goal requiring prompt policy shifts to “selective nuclear disclosure.” Though strikingly counter-intuitive, Iran will need to be convinced that Israel’s nuclear arms are not too destructive for actual operational use.

There will be variously perplexing nuances. For Israel to fashion reason-based nuclear policies, Iran’s leaders should be considered rational. But it is also conceivable that Iran would sometime act irrationally, perhaps in alliance with other more-or-less rational states like North Korea or with kindred terror groups such as Hezbollah. In the case of North Korea, any actual and direct war against Israel would be much more challenging than any expanding conflict with Iran per se.

Aside from North Korea, unless Jerusalem were to consider Pakistan an authentic enemy, Israel currently has no nuclear state enemies as such. Still, as an unstable Islamic state, Pakistan is subject to coup d’état by assorted Jihadist elements and is closely aligned with Saudi Arabia and Iran. At some still-indeterminable point, the Sunni Saudi kingdom could decide to “go nuclear,” not because of Israel, but owing to reasonable fears of Shiite Iran’s nuclear progress. This significant decision could be reinforced by parallel or coinciding nuclear decisions in Egypt and/or non-Arab Turkey.

Israel needs less faith in “common sense.” It needs more faith in disciplined and refined strategic reasoning. Such reasoning will have to be logic-based and dialectical.

For Israel’s nuclear deterrence to work longer-term, Iran will need to be selectively told more rather than less about “the Zionist enemy’s” nuclear targeting doctrine and about the invulnerability and penetration-capability of Israel’s nuclear forces. In concert with such major changes, Jerusalem will need to substantially clarify elements of its still-opaque “Samson Option.” The point of any such clarifications would not be to “die with the Philistines” (per the biblical Book of Judges), but to enhance “high destruction” options of its strategic deterrence posture.

Though the only purposeful rationale of Israel’s nuclear weapons could be viable deterrence at variable levels of military destructiveness, there will remain circumstances under which Israel’s nuclear deterrent could fail altogether. How might such prospectively intolerable circumstances arise? It’s not a hypothetical question. Accordingly, a comprehensive answer could be extrapolated from four basic conflict scenarios or narratives. These narratives could result as a “by-product” of Israel’s expanding war with Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies or of a sustained direct belligerency between Israel and Iran.

All of these narratives could be impacted, modified or changed by pro-Iranian surrogate interventions of Russia and/or North Korea. By definition, such game-changing interventions would remove Israel’s present advantages regarding “escalation dominance,” and could render more plausible the specter of Iranian-jihadist victory. Because such narratives would be without precedent, it will be impossible for Jerusalem to make any science-based judgments of probability. Here, intellectual supremacy would remain the font of all durable Israeli power, strategic and tactical, but still not represent absolute assurance of security and survival. In these unprecedented scenarios, only unpredictability would be predictable.

(1) Nuclear Retaliation

If Iran were to launch a massive conventional attack on Israel, Jerusalem could ultimately escalate to a limited nuclear retaliation. If Iranian first-strikes were to involve chemical or biological weapons, electromagnetic weapons (EMP) or radiation-dispersal weapons, Israel could immediately or incrementally launch a calibrated nuclear reprisal. This decision would depend, in large measure, on Jerusalem’s expectations concerning follow-on Iranian aggression and its estimations of comparative damage-limitation. A nuclear retaliation by Israel could be ruled out only in circumstances where the Iranian aggressions were conventional and “hard-target” oriented; that is, oriented toward Israeli weapons and military infrastructures and not involving Israel’s civilian populations. Nonetheless, there are foreseeably residual circumstances wherein Israel could judge a limited nuclear weapons use to be rational, lawful and cost-effective.

(2) Nuclear Counter Retaliation

If Israel should feel compelled to preempt Iranian aggression with conventional weapons, that enemy state’s response would largely determine Israel’s escalatory moves. If this response were in any way nuclear, including “only” radiological weapons, Israel would likely turn to certain correlative forms of nuclear counter-retaliation. If this enemy retaliation were to involve other non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction or mass disruption (e.g., EMP weapons), Israel could still feel compelled to take enhanced escalatory initiatives. This vital decision would depend on Jerusalem’s considered judgments of Iranian intent and its corollary calculations of damage-limitation.

If the Iranian response to Israel’s preemption were limited to hard-target conventional strikes, it is unlikely that Israel’s decision-makers would move toward nuclear counter-retaliations. If, however, the Iranian conventional retaliation was “all-out” and directed in whole or in part toward Israeli civilian populations, an Israeli nuclear counter-retaliation could not be excluded. Such counter-retaliation could be ruled out decisively only if Iran’s conventional retaliation were presumptively proportionate to Israel’s preemption; confined to Israeli military targets; circumscribed by codified legal limits of “proportionality” and “military necessity” and accompanied by variously persuasive assurances of non-escalatory intent.

(3) Nuclear Preemption

It is highly unlikely (perhaps even inconceivable) that Israel would ever decide to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against Iran. Though circumstances could arise wherein such a strike would appear rational in strategy and permissible in law, it is implausible that Israel would ever allow itself to reach such “end-of-the-line” circumstances. In principle, at least, an Israeli nuclear preemption could be expected only where Iran had (a) acquired authentic (chain-reaction) nuclear and/or other weapons of mass destruction; (b) clarified that its intentions paralleled its capabilities; and (c) was believed ready to begin a “countdown to launch.” Also incentivizing would be the belief by Jerusalem that exclusively conventional preemptions could no longer be consistent with preservation of the Jewish State.

(4) Nuclear War Fighting

If nuclear weapons should ever be introduced into a conflict between Israel and Iran, some form of nuclear war fighting would ensue. This would hold true so long as: (a) Iranian first-strikes would not destroy Israel’s second-strike nuclear capability; (b) Iranian retaliations for an Israeli conventional preemption would not destroy Israel’s nuclear counter-retaliatory capability; (c) Israeli preemptive strikes involving nuclear weapons would not destroy Iran’s second-strike nuclear capabilities; and (d) Israeli retaliation for conventional first-strikes would not destroy Iran’s nuclear counter-retaliatory capability. For the time being, at least, any Iranian nuclear capacity sans Russian or North Korean surrogate state backup would be limited to radiation dispersal weapons and/or conventional rocket attacks against Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor.

In Jerusalem, overriding security focus should remain fixed on Iranian capabilities and intentions, but ought also to include coinciding intersections with sub-state surrogate objectives and operations. In the final analysis, the Iran/Hezbollah/Houthi/Hamas/Fatah threat to Israel is not “just” an isolable terror threat, tactical threat or strategic threat, but a multi-dimensional peril that could sometime trigger nuclear warfare with Iran.[2] As for the incendiary warnings of “annihilation” still blaring incessantly from Tehran, acting to fulfil such genocidal threats without Russian/North Korean assistance would be more injurious to Iran than to Israel.

For the moment, this conclusion is understood by authoritative leadership elements in Tehran, and Israel will likely retain the upper hand in still-impending struggles for “escalation dominance.” To best ensure that this critical Israeli advantage remains continuous and undiminished, however, Israel should promptly (1) declare appropriately verifiable shifts from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure;” and (2) reveal the most persuasive contours of its deterrence-enhancing “Samson Option.” Both intersecting remedies should be oriented not to expressly nuclear war-fighting strategies or tactics, but to advantage-based postures of nuclear war avoidance.

What should be concluded? For these postures to “work,” Jerusalem must heed the 20th century French poet’s (Guillaume Apollinaire) broadly generic advice about avoiding intellectual conquest, here emphasized at “macro” rather than tactical levels. Despite repeatedly establishing its intellectual primacy at these operational levels, Israel has yet to prove convincingly that the final “strategic score” will be in its favor. For the Jewish State’s most gifted military thinkers, this daunting task will need to be “job one.”