A nuclear-armed Iran would not pose a fundamental threat to the United States and its regional allies like Israel and the Gulf Arab monarchies, according to a new report released here Friday by the Rand Corporation.

Entitled “Iran After the Bomb: How Would a Nuclear-Armed Tehran Behave?“, the report asserts that the acquisition by Tehran of nuclear weapons  would above all be intended to deter an attack by hostile powers, presumably including Israel and the United States, rather than for aggressive purposes."An Iran with nukes will still be a declining power." -- Alireza Nader of the Rand Corporation

And while its acquisition may indeed lead to greater tension between Iran and its Sunni-led neighbours, the 50-page report concludes that Tehran would be unlikely to use nuclear weapons against other Muslim countries. Nor would it be able to halt its diminishing influence in the region resulting from the Arab Spring and its support for the Syrian government, according to the author, Alireza Nader.

“Iran’s development of nuclear weapons will enhance its ability to deter an external attack, but it will not enable it to change the Middle East’s geopolitical order in its own favour,” Nader, an international policy analyst at RAND, told IPS. “The Islamic Republic’s challenge to the region is constrained by its declining popularity, a weak economy, and a limited conventional military capability. An Iran with nukes will still be a declining power.”

The report reaches several conclusions all of which generally portray Iran as a rational actor in its international relations.

While Nader calls it a “revisionist state” that tries to undermine what it sees as a U.S.-dominated order in the Middle East, his report stresses that “it does not have territorial ambitions and does not seek to invade, conquer, or occupy other nations.”

Further, the report identifies the Islamic Republic’s military doctrine as defensive in nature.  This posture is presumably a result of the volatile and unstable region in which it exists and is exacerbated by its status as a Shi’a and Persian-majority nation in a Sunni and Arab-majority region.

Iran is also scarred by its traumatic eight-year war with Iraq in which as many as one million Iranians lost their lives.

The new report comes amidst a growing controversy here over whether a nuclear-armed Iran could itself be successfully “contained” by the U.S. and its allies and deterred both from pursuing a more aggressive policy in the region and actually using nuclear weapons against its foes.

Iran itself has vehemently denied it intends to build a weapon, and the U.S. intelligence community has reported consistently over the last six years that Tehran’s leadership has not yet decided to do so, although the increasing sophistication and infrastructure of its nuclear programme will make it possible to build one more quickly if such a decision is made.

Official U.S. policy, as enunciated repeatedly by top officials, including President Barack Obama, is to “prevent” Iran from obtaining a weapon, even by military means if ongoing diplomatic efforts and “crippling” economic sanctions fail to persuade Iran to substantially curb its nuclear programme.

A nuclear-armed Iran, in the administration’s view – which is held even more fervently by the U.S. Congress where the Israel lobby exerts its greatest influence – represents an “existential threat” to the Jewish state.

In addition, according to the administration, Iran’s acquisition of a weapon would likely embolden it and its allies – notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah – to pursue more aggressive actions against their foes and could well set off a regional “cascade effect” in which other powers, particulary Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt, would feel obliged to launch nuclear-weapons programmes of their own.

But a growing number of critics of the prevention strategy – particularly that part of it that would resort to military action against Iran – argue that a nuclear Iran will not be nearly as dangerous as the reigning orthodoxy assumes.

A year ago, for example, Paul Pillar, a veteran CIA analyst who served as National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, published a lengthy essay in ‘The Washington Monthly’, “We Can Live With a Nuclear Iran: Fears of a Bomb in Tehran’s Hands Are Overhyped, and a War to Prevent It Would Be a Disaster.”

More recently, Colin Kahl, an analyst at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) who also served as the Pentagon’s top Middle East policy adviser for much of Obama’s first term, published two reports – the first questioning the “cascade effect” in the region, and the second, published earlier this week and entitled “If All Else Fails: The Challenges of Containing a Nuclear-Armed Iran,” outlining a detailed “containment strategy” — including extending Washington’s nuclear umbrella over states that feel threatened by a nuclear Iran — the U.S. could follow to deter Tehran’s use of a nuclear bomb or its transfer to non-state actors, like Hezbollah, and persuade regional states not to develop their own nuclear arms capabilities.

In addition, Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst at the Brookings Institution whose 2002 book, “The Threatening Storm” helped persuade many liberals and Democrats to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, will publish a new book, “Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy”, that is also expected to argue for a containment strategy if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon.

Because both Brookings and CNAS are regarded as close to the administration, some neo-conservative commentators have expressed alarm that these reports are “trial balloons” designed to set the stage for Obama’s abandonment of the prevention strategy in favour of containment, albeit by another name.

It is likely that Nader’s study – coming as it does from RAND, a think tank with historically close ties to the Pentagon – will be seen in a similar light.

His report concedes that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would lead to greater tension with the Gulf Arab monarchies and thus to greater instability in the region. Moreover, an inadvertent or accidental nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran would be a “dangerous possibility”, according to Nader who also notes that the “cascade effect”, while outside the scope of his study, warrants “careful consideration”.

Despite Iran’s strong ideological antipathy toward Israel, the report does not argue that Tehran would attack the Jewish state with nuclear weapons, as that would almost certainly lead to the regime’s destruction.

Israel, in Nader’s view, fears that Iran’s nuclear capability could serve as an “umbrella” for Tehran’s allies that could significantly hamper Israel’s military operations in the Palestinian territories, the Levant, and the wider region.

But the report concludes that Tehran is unlikely to extend its nuclear deterrent to its allies, including Hezbollah, noting that the interests of those groups do not always – or even often – co-incide with Iran’s.  Iran would also be highly unlikely to transfer nuclear weapons to them in any event, according to the report.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

While preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is preferable, the United States could successfully contain a nuclear Iran, according to a new report released here Monday by the Center for a New American Security, an influential think tank close to the administration of President Barack Obama.

The report, “If All Else Fails: The Challenges of Containing a Nuclear-Armed Iran,” outlines a detailed “containment strategy” designed to deter Tehran’s use of a nuclear bomb or its transfer to non-state actors, and persuade other regional states not to develop their own nuclear arms capabilities."We have to consider the possibility that prevention efforts - including the use of force - could fail." -- CNAS' Colin Kahl

“The United States should do everything in its power to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, and no option should be left off the table,” said Colin Kahl, the lead author of the 80-page report and the Pentagon’s top Middle East policy official during most of Obama’s first term.

“But we also have to consider the possibility that prevention efforts – including the use of force – could fail,” he added in an email to IPS. “In that case, we’d need a strategy for managing and mitigating the threats a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to vital U.S. interests and allies. That’s what we’re focusing on.”

The administration, according to the report, has so firmly committed itself to a prevention policy – including threatening military action if diplomatic efforts and economic pressure fail – that cannot explicitly endorse a different approach “without damaging the very credibility it needs to effectively address the Iranian nuclear challenge,” according to the report.

At the same time, however, Tehran may be able to achieve “an unstoppable breakout capability” or build a weapon in secret before preventive measures have been exhausted. In addition, a U.S. or Israeli military strike may inflict only minimal damage to Iran’s nuclear programme while strengthening hard-liners in the regime who believe a nuclear deterrent is the only way to ensure its survival.

“Under any of these scenarios, Washington would likely be forced to shift toward containment regardless of current preferences,” the report notes, arguing that Washington needs to think through the requirements for an effective strategy.

The new report adds to a growing literature about U.S. options in dealing with Iran, which has itself repeatedly denied that its nuclear programme is designed to develop nuclear weapons.

The U.S. intelligence community has also reported consistently over the last six years that Iran’s leadership has not yet decided to build a weapon, although the increasing sophistication and infrastructure of its nuclear programme will make it possible to build one more quickly if such a decision is made. U.S. intelligence agencies have expressed confidence that they will be able to detect any effort by Iran to achieve a “break-out” capacity.

Since coming to office in 2009, the Obama administration has described its efforts to dissuade Iran from developing a nuclear weapon as a “dual-track” approach involving both diplomatic outreach through the so-called P5+1 process of negotiations between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany, and economic pressure exerted primarily through the imposition of harsh economic sanctions – some multilateral, most unilateral – designed to “cripple” the Iranian economy.

While the sanctions have clearly damaged Iran’s troubled economy, Tehran has so far rejected far-reaching concessions demanded by the Western members of the P5+1, such as suspending all operations at its underground Fordo enrichment facility and shipping most of its 20-percent enriched-uranium stockpile out of the country.

While there have been some exchanges between the P5+1 and Iran since their last meeting in Almaty, Kazakhstan last month, the diplomatic process appears to have been put on hold pending next month’s presidential elections in the Islamic Republic.

The lack of progress on the diplomatic front combined with technological advances in Iran’s nuclear programme – with estimates that Tehran will have likely enough enriched uranium to build a bomb within a very short period by next spring or summer — has provoked a simmering conflict here.

It revolves around pro-Israel and proliferation hawks pushing for yet more draconian sanctions and “credible threats of force” by the administration on the one hand and more dovish forces who are calling for more emphasis on the diplomatic track.

Much of the foreign policy establishment, including former senior military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials, lean to the latter camp; recent reports by blue-ribbon task forces of The Iran Project, the Atlantic Council, the Carnegie Endowment, and the Center for the National Interest have shown a developing elite consensus in favour of greater U.S. flexibility at the negotiating table.

In Congress, where the Israel lobby enjoys its greatest influence, however, the emphasis remains on the pressure track. Measures currently being circulated in both houses of Congress target foreign companies and banks in ways that, if enforced, would impose a virtual trade embargo against Iran.

The new report, the latest in a series by CNAS on Iran policy, does not address either strategy, although Kahl has in the past argued for greater U.S. flexibility in negotiations.  It is likely, however, to fuel the ongoing debates between the hawks and doves on whether Washington can indeed live with a nuclear-armed Iran if its “prevention” strategy fails.

A containment strategy, according Kahl and his two-co-authors, Raj Pattani and Jacob Stokes, would integrate five key components: deterrence, defence, disruption, de-escalation and de-nuclearisation.

Deterrence would involve, among other steps, strengthening Washington’s threat to retaliate in kind if Iran uses nuclear weapons and extending the U.S. nuclear umbrella to other regional states in exchange for their commitment not to pursue independent nuclear capabilities.

Defence would aim to deny Iran any benefit from its nuclear weapons by building up U.S. missile-defence capabilities and naval deployments in the region and increasing security co-operation with Gulf countries and Israel.

Disruption would include “shap(ing) a regional environment resistant to Iranian influence” by, among other steps, building up Egypt and Iraq as strategic counterweights; “promoting evolutionary political reform” in the Gulf; and increasing aid to moderate elements among Syrian rebels and the Lebanese Army as a counter to Hezbollah.

De-escalation would be designed to prevent any Iran-related crisis from spiralling to nuclear war “persuading Israel to eschew preemptive nuclear doctrine and other destabilizing nuclear postures,” creating crisis-communication mechanisms and exploring confidence-building measures with Iran; assuring Tehran that “regime change” is not Washington’s goal, and providing it with “’face-saving’ exit ramps” during crises.

Finally, de-nuclearisation would try to constrain Iran’s nuclear programme and limit broader damage to the non-proliferation regime by maintaining and tightening sanctions against Iran and strengthening interdiction efforts.

The report stressed that such a strategy would entail major costs, including “doubling down on U.S. security commitments to the Middle East,” making the administration’s military “rebalancing” to the Asia/Pacfic more difficult; “greatly complicate efforts to promote reform” allied Arab states; and “increase the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy at the very time the Obama administration hopes to move in the opposite direction.”

The CNAS report was immediately assailed by several prominent neo-conservatives who have long been warning that Obama, given his clear reluctance to risk war in another predominantly Muslim country, would himself eschew his prevention strategy in favour of “containment by another name.”

But, as noted by Kahl, the hard-line neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute published a paper 18 months ago that concluded that “containing and deterring” a nuclear-armed Iran could be the “least-bad choice” for U.S. policy if Washington can “demonstrate that it can deter both Iran’s use of nuclear weapons and aggression by Tehran’s network of partners and terrorist proxies.”

Kahl’s position on containment is also expected to be echoed with the anticipated publication by Ken Pollack, a former CIA analyst at the Brookings Institution, of his new book, “Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy’. Pollack’s 2002 book, “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq,” helped persuade many liberals and Democrats to back the invasion.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.