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Graham Allison on Iran and Nuclear Policy

Iran has emerged as a central challenge for the U.S. and the international community in the Middle East. The country's new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks of a 'new Islamic revolution' taking hold. Iran's nuclear ambitions have also provoked alarm from the international community and have been the focus of intense diplomatic efforts in recent months. Graham Allison is Douglas Dillon professor of government and director of the Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a former U.S. assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton Administration.

Q: You have referred to the current situation in Iran as a 'Cuban missile crisis in slow motion.' How slow is the situation moving, and how quickly must the U.S. and the international community act in order to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons?

Allison: In 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, over a period of thirteen days President Kennedy found himself at a crossroads in which he had to choose between acquiescing in Soviet weapons in Cuba and attacking. Over the next thirteen months, perhaps, President Bush will come to a showdown in which he will to have to choose between two options-acquiescing in a nuclear-armed Iran on the one hand, and attacking Iran to prevent that from happening on the other.

Q: Why is it so critically important that Iran be prevented from developing a nuclear weapons program? How would it shift the balance of power in the region if the program were to proceed?

Allison: I think there are a half-dozen reasons why an Iranian nuclear bomb is a bad idea. At the top of the list is the prospect that an Iranian nuclear bomb will provoke what the U.N. High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change calls 'a cascade of proliferation' in the region. An Iranian nuclear bomb will lead to an Egyptian nuclear program pretty quickly; to the Saudis acquiring a weapon, probably by buying rather than making; to stirring in Syria. If you unleash a multi-party nuclear arms race in the Middle East, the chances of nuclear weapons being used are very high. Secondly, a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, from where we get our oil and where our ally Israel is located, would lead to a great deal of insecurity with respect to the issues about which we care deeply. Thirdly, with this particular regime, you could imagine a nuclear weapon finding its way into the hands of terrorists, and the terrorists using the nuclear bomb against a city in the region or a U.S. base, or, God forbid, bringing it to an American city.

Q: What is at stake for Iran in this dispute? Can its motivations be addressed and assuaged through diplomatic channels?

Allison: I think that the Iranians believe that they can have a nuclear bomb and have all the other things that they care about as well. The challenge for American diplomacy is to force them to choose between confident survival of the regime and prosperity, on the one hand, and having a nuclear bomb, on the other. The diplomacy so far has been rather poor. On the U.S. and international front, we've lost almost five years as the Iranians have gotten closer and closer to their goal line. But the game's not over yet, and I'm looking forward over the next months to the U.S. playing its hand more effectively. If it does, I think there is a better than even chance that Iran can be persuaded to postpone its nuclear ambitions. If it would postpone enrichment of uranium for another five years as an initial down payment, the international community is prepared to provide a lot of benefits, and Iran can escape the prospect of an attack, which they also fear.

Q: The U.S. and Iran have not had formal diplomatic ties since the revolution in 1979. How can and should the United States engage President Ahmadinejad?

Allison: The US has broken with 27 years of official policy and agreed to join the Europeans in negotiating directly with Iran-conditional on Iran suspending uranium enrichment activities that could lead to a bomb. European Union High Representative Javier Solana presented Tehran with a package of carrots coupled with the threat of sticks. The specifics of the offer, not yet public, are likely to include international nuclear fuel assurances including five years worth of nuclear fuel in Iran, the ability to buy new Airbus or even Boeing aircraft, the lifting of specific U.S. sanctions, co-operation between the EU and Iran in the nuclear and high technology fields, WTO membership, and a regional security guarantee.

If after several further rounds of negotiation, agreement is possible, the core of the agreement on the nuclear issue will reaffirm Iran's right to all the benefits of peaceful nuclear energy in return for Tehran postponing actual enrichment for a specified period-for example, five years. The agreement will almost certainly include a face-saver for Iran, the most promising version of which is joint Iranian-Russian ownership of an enrichment facility in Siberia, where Russian scientists would enrich Iranian uranium.

I think the administration has rightly identified Iran as the most urgent danger for the U.S. in the year ahead. I think we are going to run over the next thirteen months or so to a showdown in which the administration's going to have to choose between acquiescing to a nuclear armed Iran or attacking. I think if we examined that situation today and realized that that's what the options are likely to be at the end of the road, we would have a lot more energy, a lot more imagination, in the search for options outside that box, outside those two options, because each of those options is terrible for American national interests.

Answers to questions submitted via e-mail:

Questions submitted to Graham Allison via e-mail:

Q: What will it take for the United States to cooperate and perhaps more importantly, Russia to join them in stopping the Iranian nuclear weapons development? President Bush is leaving for Europe tomorrow and this is one of his main subjects. Is there enough political will in Europe at all to stand up to anyone?

I agree with you that we must stop the development. Unfortunately, South Africa proved in the early 70's that it can be done secretly.

Chip Lagdon, Harvard KSG SEF '02
Chief of Nuclear Safety
Energy, Science and Environment
Office of the Under Secretary
U. S. Department of Energy


Allison: Great questions. In answer to your first question, the United States has already taken a big first step by breaking with 27 years of official policy and offering to join the Europeans in formal negotiations with the Iranians. Although I advocate broader, bilateral talks that could result in a 'grand bargain' for a denuclearized Iran-including, perhaps, a security guarantee-I nevertheless praise Secretary Rice's willingness to engage in multilateral diplomacy after years of foundering with no clear Iran policy.

President Bush can help President Putin feel two things in his gut. The first is that the promising future of nuclear power may become hostage to dangerous atoms. Russia's lucrative nuclear services industry will depend upon setting a precedent of enriching uranium and reprocessing plutonium in a secure and proliferation resistant location, like the international enrichment center Russia has proposed to Iran. The second is that if Iran gets the bomb, there is no guarantee that rogue elements within Iran's nuclear or security establishment would not divert nuclear weapons or nuclear materials to other nations or to terrorists. If Chechen terrorists succeeded in capturing, stealing, or buying a nuclear weapon (or material from which they could make a nuclear weapon), their first target would surely be Moscow, not New York or Washington DC.

On your South African point, I agree that finding a covert Iranian nuclear program would be very difficult. Indeed, the South African case study from the 1970's is a good one because it demonstrates how 'mission creep' can influence an ostensibly peaceful nuclear program. Although its nuclear program was initiated in 1969 to investigate peaceful nuclear uses for the mining industry, by the end of the 1970's, South Africa had six nuclear weapons. The world would be wise to heed that lesson today when dealing with Iran.