Feature Article

Into the age of uncertainty

In 1981 Israel destroyed a newly built Iraqi nuclear reactor. Now Iran is the perceived nuclear threat, and in recent weeks the Jewish and Islamic states have engaged in alarming sabre-rattling. Today the stakes are even higher than in 1981, but the constraints on conflict are not the same

After the "Clash of Civilisations" we have the "Clash of Theologies". The Dominican theologian and orientalist, Emilio Platti, coined the latter term to characterise the times we live in, and the shift in emphasis since Samuel Huntington's phrase entered the language in 1993 is obvious. The world is split, Platti's phrase suggests, along religious fault lines.

In a political sense such a description seems to encapsulate the encounter between the Jewish state of Israel and the Shia state of the Islamic Republic of Iran. These two key contemporary states, which are unique representatives of Judaism and Shia Islam in the Middle East, seem to be moving towards a conflict marked by that particular sign of modernity: nuclear power as a weapon.

Nuclear proliferation, along with climate change, is one of the most acute threats to global security and stability. The threat of nuclear confrontation, which was thought to have come to an end with the Cold War, has now become again a "strategic possibility": witness the sabre-rattling between India and Pakistan some years ago. The stand-off between Israel and Iran can be seen in this context but with caveats. Israel views nuclear proliferation in the Middle East as a threat to its survival. The bombing of Iraq's newly constructed reactor in 1981 ushered in, arguably, a new doctrine (which has deep roots in the political and military culture of Israel) that hostile nations would not be allowed to acquire the means to destroy the Jewish state, accompanied by the world's first pre-emptive strike against a rival's nuclear capabilities. The essentials of this strategic doctrine would still seem to apply.

The US is deeply concerned by the nuclear proliferation aspect of the Iranian problem. To accept a nuclear-armed Iran would mean the failure of a long-term policy. We might also add to this troubling context the hostile state of relations between the state of Israel and the Islamic Republic in Iran since 1979, the emergence of a new "frontline" since the 1980s with the ascendancy of Hezbollah as the dominant political voice for the Shia community in Lebanon, Iran's strategic alliance with Israel's enemy Syria, the Shia political and religious resurgence across the region which challenges traditional Sunni dominance, the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the military stand-off between Hezbollah and the Israeli military in southern Lebanon since 2006.

Iran's desire to acquire nuclear weapons has been a strategic goal for many decades, both under the Pahlavi rule of the Shah and it would seem latterly under the Islamic Republic. This trajectory was temporarily halted under Ayatollah Khomeini, who on return from exile to Tehran on 1 February 1979 ushered in an "anti-modernist and anti-Western" period. At this juncture, the new regime rejected the Shah's plans to finance the rapid modernisation of society and the military with Iran's oil revenues. Anything Western was rejected and the nuclear projects were no exception.

However, most analysts speculate that Khomeini's reservations were overcome some time in the early 1980s, as a result of the war with Baathist Iraq. It is often suggested that the new Islamic Republic quickly realised that if it had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capability the West and Arab regional states would think twice before obstructing its war efforts or interfering in its affairs.

But in reality, a decision to go nuclear is a leap into the dark, and one that is bound to be taken at the highest political levels. It will therefore be influenced by a leader's views about what difference nuclear weapons might make to a nation's international position.

Nuclear weapons are also often associated for Iran not just with the threat perceived from other states with nuclear capability in the region - Israel to the west, Pakistan, India and China to the east and Russia and the Central Asian states to the north - but to the state's aspiration to be a regional power. The origins of Iran's nuclear programme were not located solely in the Shah's personal desire but in the encouragement given him by the US President Richard Nixon to embark on a large- scale nuclear energy programme.

What is asserted here by all involved in viewing the modern history of Iran's nuclear programme is the importance of the transfer of technology - Western in the initial stages, Asian (and maybe Russian) in the middle period, until today it is claimed that Iran has acquired a certain self-sufficiency. Historically, however, it would seem that Iran obtained much of the technology, machine tools, laboratory equipment and instrumentation from Europe. The Israelis have been angered by this trade and often cast it as a moral betrayal.

The emergence of a nuclear-armed Iran is changing the context of political and strategic thought in the region. But the perceived Iranian threat presents opportunities for Israeli diplomacy. Some Arab capitals see Israeli nuclear capability as a constraint on Tehran as it seeks to gain influence in the Arab world. Could Saudi Arabia, with its Shia minority and regime fragility, survive a confident and ambitious nuclear-armed Iran? Iran might be a Middle Eastern and Persian Gulf state but its geographical frontiers take it to the borders of the axial points of Asian political and economic ferment, which is increasingly associated with shifts in global economic power from the West to East Asia. Vali Nasr, the influential thinker on the Shia revival and Iranian politics, based in North America, has suggested we should imagine the Iranian state as similar to the Japan of the 1930s - "militaristic, ultra-nationalistic, self-confident and seeing itself very clearly as a regional power". From this perspective this issue of Iranian nuclear proliferation is not solely Israel's problem. It has implications for the EU, the US and the Arab Middle East that are equally, or more, far-reaching. Despite its small size (a population of just over 7 million compared with Iran's of 70 million) Israel's formidable military capabilities place it as a mid-level power in the global context and as the pre-eminent power in the Middle East.

The basis for Israel's military superiority over the other regional actors is a well-developed military technical base whose capabilities far exceed those of any of Israel's potential adversaries. Israel entered the decade before the new millennium with its regional monopoly intact and as the only regional power with a coherent nuclear strategy.

During the Gulf War of 1991 Israeli perceptions of the threat posed to their nation by regional actors apparently evolved from a focus on the superiority in conventional weaponry of their neighbours to the acquisition of WMDs by the nations of their periphery. Some scholars have even suggested that Israel felt so threatened by the possible direction of the 1991 Gulf war with Baathist Iraq that it contemplated a nuclear strike over which it would have been beyond the ability of the US to exert control.

After this period it is suggested a clearer consensus emerged regarding the role of nuclear weapons in Israel's security strategy. The proliferation of WMDs in the Middle East, especially the question of Iranian nuclear capacity, would have heightened this understanding. If, as it would seem, Israel and Iran are on a collision course, if not now then in the future when Iran crosses a nuclear threshold, what might be the calculations associated with the architecture of a military strike and its attendant political fallout? It is obvious that a unilateral Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities would be more difficult than the 1981 action in Iraq.

Iranian defence strategists will have learnt from that episode and gone to great lengths to safeguard, by dispersion or protection underground, its nuclear capabilities. The wellbeing of Jewish communities in Tehran and Shiraz might also inform Israel's decision-making process. If Israel's military action was successful and Iran's nuclear capabilities were significantly impaired in such an attack the political and security ramifications for Israel and its allies and for regional stability are likely to be much more costly then was ever contemplated in 1981. The Iran of 2008 is not the Iraq of 1981.

However, external and regional players might consider that a confrontation over this issue is inevitable and calculate that they will take military action when it suits and seek to manage the political fallout. Despite the eschatological context for some contemporary Shia religious thinkers, combined with the Iranian national reassertion in politics, survival is important and Iran's leadership will not launch a war that will lead to their own destruction. The presence of the Jewish people in Iran and their contribution to its culture is ancient, while the relationship between the state of Israel and the modern Iranian state is very recent and uncertain. Leadership was key in the political decision to acquire nuclear weapons in the Middle East region and the future of the relationship between Israel and Iran might turn on the quality of the leaders and their ability to manage the power that comes from WMD capacity. Will they have the political (and religious) understanding that the acquisition of that power demands? Ongoing tensions between Israel and Iran will continue, but their outcome is uncertain.