Thresholds: Iran, Nuclear Latency, and Escalation

We tend to treat military strikes on nuclear infrastructure as a way of solving the problem, but historically they seem to delay programs rather than eliminate them.

So in cases like Iran, what does military action actually achieve in counterproliferation and where does it hit its limits?

Yeah, so the use of military force is a counterproliferation tool is not necessarily new.

There have been other historic instances where states that were concerned by another state's and adversary's nuclear program have resorted to

military means to try to address that concern.

So, for instance, I think the kind of the most well-known cases of that are the Israeli attacks on the nuclear facilities, the Iraqi nuclear facilities at al-Tawaita, so the Osirak reactors in Iraq, the Israeli attacks on the al-Kibar nuclear reactor in Syria, as we found out later that it was a nuclear reactor that was being constructed.

So this isn't the first time that states have resorted to the use of military force for counterproliferation efforts.

And again, even those two instances were not, historic instances were not the only ones.

But there are limitations to the use of military force as a counterproliferation strategy, and there are limitations to its effectiveness.

the effectiveness of the use of military force for counterproliferation is really dependent on a number of different factors.

And I would say I think of greatest relevance to the Iranian case, and perhaps comparing it to past historical cases, is the extent of the program, both geographically and in the number of facilities, but also how entrenched nuclear program and nuclear knowledge is in the country of concerns on this case iran so again if we look at historical cases whether that be the azraq reactors in iraq or the al-kibar facility in in syria that were targeted by the israelis in both those instances the programs were relatively speaking and in syria more so than than in iraq but they were relatively speaking quite limited programs.

Um, again, both in terms of kind of geographic scope.

So in the case of, um, of Iraq, there were a number of various facilities, but kind of the key one that was of concern was again, the, the Ozark, um, the Ozark reactors at Al Tuwaitha.

And then in the case of Syria, it was really just the Al Kibar facility.

As far as we know, that was again, of main concern.

Um, so, um, The use of military force in that instance was, again, relatively effective because, you know, there's a limited number of facilities that you had to target.

At the same time, those programs had in large part been the result of imported expertise, right? So in the case of Iraq, it was the French that were building the Osirak reactors.

In the case of Syria and the al-Kibar reactor, that was being constructed by the North Koreans, right? So this is expertise that the countries had imported.

So once those facilities were destroyed, it was that much harder domestically for the targeted states to actually reconstruct those programs.

So military force, again, can set a program back quite significantly, but it has its limitations even in instances when a program is imported from abroad when it's not domestic expertise and when it's quite limited in scope.

So when we look at the Iranian case, we really have in terms of kind of the ease or the effectiveness of the use of military force for counterproliferation purposes, we have in the case of Iran really the hardest challenge of all, right? This is a program that has been immensely dispersed, right? So there's dozens of facilities across the country that are relevant to the nuclear program in Iran.

many of those facilities have been hardened.

They're underground.

They have active and passive defenses around them, military defenses around them.

And additionally, and most importantly, I would argue, is the fact that this program is decades old, right? So the program goes back to really the 1950s.