Iran's bellicose rhetoric and Gulf wargames in recent days have given rise to the question of whether Tehran could close the Strait of Hormuz. As many analysts have observed, the answer is no -- not for a meaningful period of time. Less frequently addressed, however, is whether Iran would even try. The answer to that question is also "no" -- even the attempt would have devastating strategic consequences for Iran.

The presumable target of an Iranian effort to close the Strait would be the United States. However, while we would of course be affected by any resulting rise in global oil prices, the U.S. gets little of our petroleum from the Gulf. The U.S. imports only about 49 percent of the petroleum we consume, and over half of those imports come from the Western Hemisphere. Less than 25 percent of U.S. imports came from all the Gulf countries combined in October 2011 -- far less than is available in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, were Gulf supplies to be interrupted.  

China, on the other hand, would find its oil supplies significantly threatened by an Iranian move against the Strait. China's most significant oil supplier is Saudi Arabia. China also happens, however, to be Iran's primary oil customer and perhaps its most important ally: Beijing provides Iran with its most sophisticated weaponry and with diplomatic cover at the United Nations. Thus a move to close the Strait would backfire strategically by harming the interests of -- and likely alienating -- Iran's most important patron and cutting off Iran's own economic lifeline, while doing little to imperil U.S. supplies of crude.

It is perhaps no coincidence, then, that China quickly dispatched Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun to Tehran in the wake of Iran's bellicose statements. In typically opaque fashion, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said only that "China hopes that peace and stability can be maintained in the Strait;" this is essentially diplo-speak for "Cool it."

Even if Iran ignored these considerations and proceeded with an effort to close the Strait, the U.S. and others would move to keep it open, and would be unlikely to stop there. As Iran has crept closer to a nuclear weapons capability, the possibility of military action against Iran has also become more imminent. President Obama has been reluctant to threaten Iran militarily, and any U.S. president would think long and hard before engaging in another armed conflict in the Middle East. 

An effort by Iran to shut down the oil trade in the Gulf, however, would make such a decision straightforward. The U.S. would react with force, and once engaged in hostilities with Iran, would likely take the opportunity to target Iran's nuclear facilities and other military targets. It is difficult to envision any scenario beginning with an Iranian effort to close the Strait of Hormuz that does not end in a serious strategic setback for the Iranian regime.

Recognizing that Iran is neither able nor likely to try to close the Strait, the U.S. could simply sit back, confident in our superior firepower. This would be a mistake. The real danger in the Gulf is lower-level activity by Iran to harass shipping and confront the U.S. Navy. Iranian commanders in the area are increasingly brazen. If not deterred, Iran's sense of impunity -- rather than its nuclear progress -- may be the spark that ignites a conflict in the region. 

Iran's navy -- especially the naval arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards -- has invested in vessels and armaments that are well-suited to asymmetric warfare, rather than the sort of ship-to-ship conflict which Iran would surely lose. Thus, they have purchased, with Chinese and Russian help, increasingly sophisticated mines, midget submarines, mobile anti-ship cruise missiles, and a fleet of small, fast boats. In addition, they have reportedly sought to develop a naval special warfare, or frogman, capability.

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The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) circulated its latest report on Iran's nuclear program to member states yesterday, in preparation for an upcoming meeting in Vienna. We learned several important things from the leaked report and the immediate reactions to it.

If the information cited by the IAEA is correct (and the IAEA rarely errs by commission), two points are inescapable:

1. "Iran has carried out activities relevant to development of a nuclear explosive device."

Prior to the end of 2003, Iran pursued a "structured program" of these activities and there are indications that some of them "continued after 2003" and "may still be ongoing."

The report details specific examples including, procurement of equipment and materials by individuals and organizations associated with Iran's military, efforts to develop undeclared means to produce nuclear material, acquisition of weapons development information from a clandestine network, and work on an indigenous nuclear weapon design, "including testing of components." The reported detail extends to fast-acting detonator development useful for fabricating an implosion device, efforts at hydrodynamic tests to evaluate weapons designs without fissile material, and work to manufacture neutron initiators.

2. The report discredits Iran's protestations that its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful.

The IAEA released the additional details on Iran's program, which had long been known to the Agency, out of frustration that Iran has been stonewalling. Repeated requests for more information, clarification, or explanation have been ignored by Tehran for years. Now Iran is confronted publicly with details that it can neither persuasively explain away nor ignore.

At least provisionally, we learned two additional points from the reaction to the IAEA report:

1. Russia is intent on shielding Iran from any additional pressure to halt its nuclear weapons-related activities

The immediate Russian reaction was not to criticize Iran, but rather to scuttle the notion of additional sanctions. According to the New York Times, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennadi Gatilov said "This approach is unacceptable to us, and the Russian side does not intend to consider such a proposal." Russia can enforce its position by wielding its United Nations Security Council veto. Absent action by the Council, Russia, China, and others will be free to relieve Iran from whatever additional pressures the United States and the European Union might attempt to apply.

2. Iran is intent on its current course, and shows little interest in a negotiated solution.

Iran's reaction to the report, offered by its president and its representative to the IAEA, was to criticize furiously the Agency and its director. The former reportedly said, "The Iranian nation does not fear you if it wants to make a bomb, but it does not need a bomb."

Dismal is the product of these lessons. Iran is proceeding along the path to a nuclear weapons capability. Russia will block any attempts to pressure Iran to desist. Tehran evinces little interest in negotiation. As others have observed before, Iran is a land of bad and worse options, and even those options are dwindling with the passage of time and the spinning of centrifuges.

The past two months have witnessed a series of revelations regarding China's growing military power. In December 2010, Admiral Robert Willard, Commander of U.S. Pacific Command, declared that the aircraft carrier-killing DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile had achieved initial operating capability. Last month, photographs and video of the J-20 fifth-generation stealth aircraft, a plane considerably more advanced than observers expected of China, appeared on the internet.

On Monday, Ross Babbage, the founder of Australia's respected think tank, the Kokoda Foundation, issued a monograph, Australia's Strategic Edge in 2030 that examined the changing military balance in the Western Pacific and its implications for Australia. It is a report that demands the attention of policy makers in Washington.

Babbage argued that China's aggressive military modernization is rapidly undermining the pillars that have supported American presence in the Western Pacific for more than half a century. As he puts it, "China is for the first time close to achieving a military capability to deny United States and allied forces access to much of the Western Pacific rim." He catalogues China's anti-access efforts, which include cruise and ballistic missiles that can attack ships and fixed targets; a massive investment in cyber-warfare capabilities, with reports of tens of thousands of Chinese cyber intrusions daily; new classes of both nuclear and conventionally powered submarines; a substantial increase in the Chinese nuclear stockpile; a huge investment in space warfare; and a massive increase in fighter bomber and other airborne strike capabilities.

Babbage argued that Australia will need to take drastic action in order to protect its interests in a region increasingly dominated by China. These include acquiring a fleet of 12 nuclear-powered attack submarines (the report hinted at leasing or purchasing Virginia-class SSNs from the United States), developing conventionally armed ballistic and cruise missiles, increasing Australia's investment in cyber warfare, and hosting American forces on Australian soil.

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Yesterday, an agreement -- originally negotiated under the Bush administration -- allowing for civil nuclear cooperation between the United States and Russia passed its final milestone before taking effect.  Such agreements are required under section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act before any significant cooperation involving nuclear technology may take place, and are already in force with some 50 other nations and entities.  Given that the United States and Russia have two of the largest nuclear industries in the world, the absence of such an agreement was an anomaly. 

The agreement does not require any specific actions.  Rather it serves as a framework that will enable cooperation on projects established under later deals.  A recently concluded joint study by Harvard's Managing the Atom Project and Russia's Kurchatov Institute (in which I participated), concluded that promising areas for future work include:  commercial cooperation on new reactor designs, including factory-built reactors with high levels of inherent safety, security, and proliferation-resistance; establishing "cradle-to-grave" fuel services to address waste disposition and nuclear weapons proliferation issues associated with atomic energy; and, use by U.S. firms of Russia's more extensive base of experimental facilities.  None of these activities are guaranteed by the "123 Agreement," but none are possible without it.

In the long run, the "123 Agreement" with Russia may prove to be even more significant than the far more controversial New START Treaty.  It focuses on future areas of cooperation, rather than on Cold War nuclear arsenals, which both nations were reducing with or without an agreement.  It can facilitate new approaches to energy production that will make nuclear power safer, more secure, and less susceptible to abuse by would-be nuclear weapons proliferators.  Finally, it is one of the few points of genuine intersection between the U.S. and Russian economies. 

Some have criticized the deal because of Russia's nuclear proliferation track record.  There is no doubt that Russia's proliferation record has not been good, but it has improved in recent years, perhaps in part because of the far larger opportunities offered by legitimate nuclear commerce that could otherwise be put at risk.  Indeed, the "123 Agreement" actually creates more leverage to stem proliferation, because valuable cooperation could be cut off, whereas prior to the Agreement, it simply was not possible. 

As leading nuclear states, Russia and the United States should be working together to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation, while addressing the world's energy needs.  The new "123 Agreement" will help to advance these vital and common interests.

According to the New York Times, the Obama administration is resisting Beijing's call to respond to the latest crisis on the Korean peninsula by launching another round of the six-party talks. The administration is wise to resist the temptation to put the short-term desire to respond to heightened tensions ahead of the long-term need to resolve the North Korean problem once and for all.

As Mike Green explained, this is a temptation to which previous Administrations, including the Bush administration, fell prey. When all of the options look bad, sitting down and talking with North Korea can seem, on the surface at least, to be a least-bad way of "doing something." But it has not worked in the past and is unlikely to work this time.

The theory behind the six-party talks was plausible, and many people (including myself) endorsed the approach as a way of breaking a regional impasse that derived from several structural conditions.

• Condition 1: North Korea favors regime preservation above all else and viewed nuclear weapons as its best guarantor of regime survival. Only if its possession of nuclear weapons could be seen as threatening its own survival is it plausible that the regime would agree to an adequate diplomatic solution.
• Condition 2: Given decades of economic sanctions, U.S. non-military leverage over North Korea is limited. Not zero, as we found out when we started deploying new financial sanctions, but substantially less than the leverage China wielded. Only if we can get China to wield that leverage would North Korea begin to feel sufficient pressure that might alter condition one.
• Condition 3: The United States and China have fundamentally different preference orderings regarding the various possible outcomes. While both might prefer a nuclear-free peninsula above all, China next prefers living with a North Korea with nuclear weapons to living next door to a collapsed North Korean regime. The United States, by contrast, clearly prefers North Korean regime collapse to living with a nuclear-armed North Korea. Nothing either side can say to the other will change this preference ranking. Only if other costs and benefits are applied can the strategic calculus change.
• Condition 4: Given that the status quo trajectory defaults in its favor (i.e., reinforces condition three), China is happy to free-ride off of U.S. diplomatic efforts, even fruitless efforts. Only if China has more of a stake in the success of the diplomacy will they be likely to shoulder any actual burden.

The six-party talks were a plausible way to change these conditions. The idea was to give China an equity stake in the success of the non-proliferation effort. As host and co-leader, failure of the six-party talks would become China's failure. North Korea's belligerence would, of necessity, be directed at all of the six-party members, including China. Few people thought the six-party talks would by themselves yield a diplomatic solution. More people, myself included, thought that the collapse of the six-party talks, if demonstrably North Korea's fault and demonstrably China's problem, might adjust the incentives sufficiently to elicit more responsible Chinese leadership on the security issue.

That theory was tested and found wanting. As expected, North Korea repeatedly demonstrated bad faith. Yet the hoped-for response from China never materialized. Instead of ratcheting up pressure on North Korea, China has responded to North Korean belligerence with successive rounds of concessions and cover-ups. The situation rather resembles a weak parent seeking to excuse the public misbehavior of a spoiled child.

The Obama administration is wise not to rush in to rescue China from this latest embarrassment, and it is wise not to make other concessions that China is demanding -- for instance, restricting U.S. naval activity in the Yellow Sea. Instead, the United States should take visible steps to deepen cooperation with our regional treaty allies. And we should insist that China take similarly responsible steps to reign in North Korea.

The six-party talks only make sense if China is willing to shoulder its regional security responsibilities. Until that is demonstrated, there is not much to talk about.

Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of [nuclear] weapons.

-President Obama, Prague, April 5, 2009

Iran has not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the Agency to confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities. Iran is not implementing the requirements contained in the relevant resolutions of the Board of Governors and the Security Council, including implementation of the Additional Protocol, which are essential to building confidence in the exclusively peaceful purpose of its nuclear program.

-International Atomic Energy Agency, September 6, 2010

The latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran's nuclear program is circulating in Vienna among governments, but has not yet been released officially. Media reports have highlighted Iran's conflict with inspectors, but other developments are more troubling. While couched in the calm tones of international civil servants, the report's message is unmistakable: Iran continues its steady march towards nuclear weapon capabilities, and no recent progress has been made in halting it. 

Since the current U.S. administration took office, extending its hand to the leaders in Tehran, Iran has: continued to violate a series of U.N. Security Council Resolutions, now numbering six; increased its declared capacity to enrich uranium by about one-third -- despite U.N. Security Council Resolutions requiring that it halt enrichment; nearly tripled its stocks of low-enriched uranium; begun production of small quantities of uranium enriched to 20 percent, versus earlier production at 3.5 percent; revealed a secret, underground enrichment facility near Qom, while announcing plans for several more; and continued to chip away at the IAEA's ability to monitor nuclear developments. 

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The ceremony on Saturday marking the beginning of the fueling of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor was preceded by much commentary about the implications of the move for Iran’s nuclear program and international efforts to halt Iran’s steady progress toward a nuclear weapon.

Under construction for decades, it was only a matter of time before Bushehr went live, especially after the Bush administration agreed in 2007 not to object to the project, hoping that a Russian-fueled Iranian reactor producing electricity would obviate Iran’s claimed need for indigenous production of nuclear fuel.

While Bushehr could eventually produce plutonium that Iran could use in a nuclear weapon, this would be a different path to a weapon than the uranium enrichment route that Tehran has thus far pursued. Plus, under Moscow’s agreement with Tehran, Russia will retain the spent fuel, which will be transported back to Russia. All aspects of the reactor’s operations, including the fuel, will be under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. 

These arrangements, are of course not completely foolproof, but are about as close as it gets. Even if Iran wanted a confrontation, and kicked out the Russians and IAEA from Bushehr, Iran does not appear to possess the reprocessing technology required to produce weapons grade plutonium from the spent fuel. Regardless, an international confrontation of this sort would be a green light for Israeli or perhaps even U.S. military action, an action one would assume the Iranians would not risk.

Another concern cited by critics is that now that the reactor is operational, any military action taken against the facility becomes much more difficult given the likelihood of a Chernobyl-style dispersion of radiation. Given the reported continuing Russian presence at the site, military action already is already unlikely, given that the last thing Israel would likely want to do is kill Russian scientists and technicians that are working on a project that has been blessed by successive U.S. administrations of both political parties. Also, if Israel or the United States became convinced that Bushehr was being used as part of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, it is likely that either country could find a suitable way to disable the reactor without contaminating a large geographic area.

Despite the fact that Bushehr thus fails to meet the hype swirling around the weekend’s events, there are several lessons to be learned from the plant going online.

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The Obama administration is already gearing up its push for Senate ratification of the recently signed New START agreement between the United States and Russia, with hearings that began yesterday and a vote possible by the end of the year. As senior administration officials make their case around town at various think tanks and before Congress, they need to do a better job of refining their message to make sure it stands up to scrutiny.

In a speech last week at the Atlantic Council, undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher stated three times that the New START agreement "does not constrain U.S. missile defense programs." Despite the repetition, Tauscher's claim, like that of other Administration officials, is simply not accurate.

Article V, Section 3 of the text states: "Each Party shall not convert and shall not use ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) launchers and SLBM (submarine-launched ballistic missile) launchers for placement of missile defense interceptors therein. Each Party further shall not convert and shall not use launchers of missile defense interceptors for placement of ICBMs and SLBMs therein. This provision shall not apply to ICBM launchers that were converted prior to signature of this Treaty for placement of missile defense interceptors therein." This section makes clear that the treaty does indeed constrain one possible way for the U.S. to develop missile defense capabilities. This may not be the way the current administration envisions developing its missile defense system, but that isn't what Tauscher claimed. (A White House fact sheet issued March 26 is more accurate in stating, "The Treaty does not contain any constraints on testing, development or deployment of current or planned U.S. missile defense programs..." [emphasis added].)

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This week's bad news on nuclear proliferation far outweighed the pleasant production values surrounding the Washington Nuclear Security Summit. But let's look at the good news first.

Representatives of 47 nations declared this week that nuclear terrorism is a bad possibility. They issued a communiqué to that effect and provided a non-binding work plan to counter "one of the most challenging threats to international security," as the communiqué characterized it. The White House blog was stronger, calling nuclear terrorism "the most dire threat of our time." The fact that the administration recognizes this is very welcome.

But such declarations are not new. The United States saw the problem immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union and, under President Clinton, worked with Russia to safeguard nuclear material. The United Nations recognized the danger and in 2005 adopted by consensus the Convention for the Suppression of the Acts of Nuclear Terrorism. That extensive set of measures entered into force in 2007 and, by the end of last year, had been ratified and agreed by 59 nations, more than attended this summit. Both this week's communiqué and work plan recall that convention and call for its implementation.

Nothing in the work plan is binding beyond agreement to meet again in South Korea in 2012. The tentative wording of the plan often betrays its own ineffectual outcome. For example, it says:

Participating States encourage nuclear operators and architect/engineering firms to take into account and incorporate, where appropriate [emphasis added], effective measures of physical protection and security culture into the planning, construction, and operation of civilian nuclear facilities and provide technical assistance, upon request, to other States in doing so."

Is there somewhere it would be inappropriate to incorporate physical protection and safety culture into nuclear facilities? But at least the participants were able to agree that, for the most part, this is a good idea.

The other outcomes of the summit -- reiteration of a 2000 agreement between the United States and Russia on plutonium disposal, a fuzzy but positive step forward on Ukraine's disposal of nuclear materials, closure of a Russian nuclear facility that ceased production last year -- were all useful. They are, however, unlikely to achieve any real reduction in the risk of proliferation and nuclear terrorism.

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After a very long and tortuous process, the Obama administration has started to roll out the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) -- a comprehensive statement of the role of nuclear weapons in providing for American national security. The New York Times obliged the administration for an apparent exclusive presidential interview by hyping the NPR as "a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation's nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China." The Washington Post, playing catch-up, offered a much more measured lede: "A year after his groundbreaking pledge to move toward a "world without nuclear weapons," President Obama on Tuesday will unveil a policy that constrains the weapons' role but appears more cautious than what many supporters had hoped, with the president opting for a middle course in many key areas."

For my money, I think the Post's take will prove to be the more accurate one, and the New York Times's own reporting seems to bear this out. Despite the extraordinary pressure President Obama faced from his left flank to live up to his Nobel prize-winning post-nuclear/anti-nuclear rhetoric, in fact the NPR steers for the middle ground.  

The Times/White House claim that the NPR is a "sharp shift" that focuses the arsenal for the first time on rogue proliferators rather than the major nuclear powers is belied by the fact that the Bush administration's 2002 NPR did the very same thing. Moreover, as the Times story notes:

In shifting the nuclear deterrent toward combating proliferation and the sale or transfer of nuclear material to terrorists or nonnuclear states, Mr. Obama seized on language developed in the last years of the Bush administration. It had warned North Korea that it would be held "fully accountable" for any transfer of weapons or technology."

To be sure, the NPR shaves a little bit of the wiggle room that post-Cold War presidents had carved out concerning the conditions under which the United States would use its nuclear arsenal weapon.  But it did not chisel into stone an unambiguous "no first use" policy. On the contrary, the President reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first against states that are not in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty -- and presumably it is the President of the United States and not the IAEA or some other international body that gets to determine whether a state is in compliance.  

Similarly, while the Times story relays a White House talking point -- "For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack" --  it goes on to show that the White House was careful to walk that point back a bit: "White House officials said the new strategy would include the option of reconsidering the use of nuclear retaliation against a biological attack, if the development of such weapons reached a level that made the United States vulnerable to a devastating strike."  

The novelty of the new policy apparently resides in the difference between a "crippling" and a "devastating" attack and I do not expect the Obama administration to split that hair to anyone's satisfaction. In any case, the United States always has the option of reconsidering a no-first use policy (or any national security policy) if circumstances change.  The only reason for explicitly flagging that option in advance is to buy back some of the very deterrence that comes from the strategic ambiguity that the new declaratory policy was surrendering.  In other words, seeking a middle course of trying to have one's cake and eat it too.

The NPR left unresolved some thorny issues like the disposition of NATO's remaining tactical nuclear weapons. And while the NPR made it clear that the United States would not build a new nuclear weapon now, anti-nuclear activists noted that the NPR "will leave the door open to that option, essentially kicking that can down the road." The NPR calls for substantial investments in the nuclear weapons complex (the national laboratories and weapons storage facilities), making clear that the administration believes the president's vision of a post-nuclear world is many decades away from fruition.

On balance, the NPR seems to be a split-the-difference compromise between different factions among Obama's advisors. In this respect, it resembles the most important national security decisions President Obama has made thus far on Iraq and Afghanistan. Critics may complain that this results in a lack of strategic clarity -- and some of the confusion that has attended the Iraq and Afghanistan policies shows that this danger is a real one -- but perhaps it will come to be seen as a politically deft balance of competing desiderata. It is unmistakably a step away from the compromises struck during the Bush era, but I don't see much evidence that this is the bold leap that wins plaudits in academic seminar rooms, activist think-tanks, and Norwegian parliaments.

As Politico has pointed out, the Obama administration has a tendency to describe their every action as "unprecedented." In the case of the U.S.-Russia Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, this is actually true. Theoretically, the treaty agreed to by the Obama administration limits each side to 1,550 strategic nuclear weapons. In practice, it will allow least 200 nuclear weapons in excess of the U.S. and Russian stockpiles permitted under the 2002 treaty signed by the Bush administration. The administration is laying claim to a 30 percent reduction in strategic nuclear weapons while actually permitting an increase in the force. This is unprecedented. 

The discrepancy comes from what each treaty actually limits.  The earliest treaties (SALT I and II) limited but did not reduce stockpiles, and established "counting rules" on the basis of how many warheads each system could deliver. The 1992 START Treaty was structured to give the Russians incentives to shift from fast-flying missiles to bombers. In the theology of nuclear deterrence, it is believed that "slow-flying" bombers are more stabilizing because a leader could reconsider the decision after launching, and the target country would have greater warning of an impending attack. So the 1992 Treaty gave generous discounts to bombers, counting the newer B-1 and B-2 bombers as a single weapon although they have the capacity to carry up to 20 warheads. The older B-52s that carry air-launched cruise missiles were counted at half their true capacity, so tallied as 10 warheads each. The Obama administration's new START treaty counts all bombers as a single nuclear weapon, leading the Federation of American Scientists to conclude that 450 U.S. warheads and 860 Russian warheads will be excluded from the count.

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On Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden clearly articulated the contradiction that lies at the heart of the Obama administration's nuclear weapons policy in an address to the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. On the one hand, President Obama has advocated nuclear disarmament; on the other, his administration has just requested $7 billion to maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal and modernize the U.S. nuclear infrastructure. In Biden's words, "We will take concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons, while retaining a safe, secure, and effective arsenal as long as we still need it." 

The United States has greatly reduced its reliance on nuclear weapons in recent years, and it has drastically cut the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal: Today's nuclear force is roughly one-quarter the size it was at the end of the Cold War. Precision-guided conventional munitions are today able to perform many of the missions that in years past would have required nuclear weapons. Moreover, ballistic missile defenses today offer options to enhance deterrence without threatening nuclear retaliation.

Although the utility of nuclear weapons has decreased for the United States, their value for potential adversaries, and those of our allies and friends, has grown. The U.S. nuclear arsenal remains the ultimate guarantee of U.S. security against a nuclear attack. Similarly, U.S. nuclear commitments have dissuaded allies such as Japan from acquiring their own nuclear arsenals. Nuclear weapons have served as a brake on war; eliminating them would once again make the world safe for large-scale conventional war.

Given the enduring importance of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security, the administration's request for additional funding for the U.S. nuclear weapons infrastructure is a welcome development. Unfortunately, the Bush administration's efforts to fund the nuclear complex offer a cautionary tale. Under Bush, Congressional Democrats cut a Senate-approved funding increase for the National Nuclear Security Administration and cut or eliminated a number of Bush administration nuclear programs and initiatives. One hopes that the Obama administration will fare better.

In the end, however, the administration's budget request is but a partial solution. The United States is the only nuclear power that is not modernizing its arsenal, and neither the administration nor Congress shows any inclination to change that fact. The newest weapons on the U.S. arsenal were designed decades ago, and the expertise to design new ones represents a critical shortfall. Absent modernization, the United States will eventually face the prospect of unilateral nuclear disarmament.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the surprising assertion yesterday in Doha that an Iranian nuclear weapon would not directly threaten the United States:

“[P]art of the goal -- not the only goal, but part of the goal -- that we were pursuing was to try to influence the Iranian decision regarding whether or not to pursue a nuclear weapon. And, as I said in my speech, you know, the evidence is accumulating that that's exactly what they are trying to do, which is deeply concerning, because it doesn't directly threaten the United States, but it directly threatens a lot of our friends, allies, and partners here in this region and beyond.”

Secretary Clinton is surely correct about the threat faced by U.S. allies in the region, but her assessment of the potential threat to the U.S. does not comport with the evidence on Iran’s ballistic missile programs. Many U.S. facilities and thousands of American personnel are of course already within range of Iran’s short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, which Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair recently testified (pdf) are “inherently capable of delivering WMD.”

Furthermore, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency reported (pdf) this month that “Iran continue[s] to develop long-range ballistic missiles that will be threatening to the United States,” and the U.S. intelligence community has judged in the past that Iran may test an ICBM by 2015 (see here [pdf] for a full discussion of this issue). Iran last year demonstrated progress by successfully placing a satellite into orbit. At that time, the State Department spokesman issued a statement of “deep concern,” noting:

“Recently, Iran's development of a space launch vehicle (SLV) capable of putting a satellite into orbit establishes the technical basis from which Iran could develop long-range ballistic missile systems. Many of the technological building blocks involved in SLVs are the same as those required to develop long-range ballistic missiles.”

The Pentagon spokesman also noted the U.S. concerns over the development:

“It is certainly a reason for us to be concerned about Iran and its continued attempts to develop a ballistic missile program of increasingly long range. Although this would appear just to be the launch of a satellite, their first, obviously there are dual-use capabilities in the technology here which could be applied toward the development of a long-range ballistic missile.”

The spokesmen’s concerns were well-founded. Given the available facts, it is difficult to support the view that an Iranian nuclear weapon would not pose a direct threat to the United States.

By Michael Singh

As engagement with Iran gained political momentum in the United States during the 2008 presidential campaign, some of its advocates were quick to cite the analogy of Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China in portraying outreach to Tehran as a similarly bold policy stroke. The experience of the past year, which has seen Iran's leaders crack down at home and spurn outreach from the West, has exposed the superficiality of this comparison. As political scientist Michael Mandelbaum has observed, Chairman Mao was motivated, after all, not by American charm but by Soviet belligerence. China in the early 1970s had recently lost a border war to the USSR and faced a Soviet army massing on its border, pushing it into Washington's arms. The Iranian regime, on the other hand, has been eager to keep America at arm's length.

With negotiations with Iran making frustratingly little progress and hopes for strong international sanctions restrained by the reality of Chinese and Russian reluctance, a new analogy is gaining traction in U.S. national security circles -- containment. Its enthusiasts liken America's Cold War containment of the Soviet Union to the hypothetical containment of a nuclear Iran in the future. Just like the Nixon-to-China comparison, however, the containment analogy is fatally flawed.

Those who argue in favor of containment generally have in mind nuclear deterrence -- that is, preventing Iran from actually using a nuclear weapon. And history suggests that they have a point -- no nuclear power besides the United States has ever employed the bomb, and a combination of missile defenses and a declaratory policy promising retaliation could prove powerful deterrents to Iran doing so. While we should not count too heavily on the Iranian regime's rationality -- its officials have, after all, mused about destroying Israel -- neither should we exaggerate the likelihood that Iran would initiate a nuclear conflict that would prove its own demise.

The possibility that it would use a nuclear weapon is, however, only the beginning of the dangers that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose. Of perhaps greater concern is that Iran would transfer its nuclear know-how to other countries or, far more alarming, to terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. This scenario is not far-fetched -- nuclear powers have regularly transferred their technology to others, and Iran in particular has been generous in sharing advanced military hardware with its proxies, like the advanced rocketry employed by Hezbollah against Israel or IEDs used by Iraqi insurgents against American troops. Even if they were denied the ultimate weapons by Tehran, these groups would surely feel emboldened under its nuclear umbrella to step up their activities against Western and Arab interests.

Added to this danger is the likelihood that Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons would fundamentally change the security landscape in the Middle East. Iran's neighbors would be faced with a grim choice -- pursue a nuclear weapons capability of their own, or resign themselves to Iranian hegemony for the foreseeable future. Given their longstanding mistrust of Tehran, it is likely that those which could pursue the nuclear path would do so. Such a development would leave the United States not simply to contain a nuclear-armed Iran, but to manage a broadly nuclearized Middle East and its implications for the already-shaky global nonproliferation regime. These are threats against which even the most advanced missile defense or the strongest declaratory policy afford no protection.

The victory of the United States and its allies over the Soviet Union was a historic success, but not an unqualified one, and certainly not a costless one. The containment of the Soviets required massive overseas military deployments and two major military conflicts. While the USSR did not use nuclear weapons, it transferred nuclear technology to other states, the consequences of which trouble us greatly to this day. What's more, the United States and Western Europe were left with little recourse as the Eastern bloc fell under Soviet sway and human rights and economic progress were stamped out for five decades.

This is not the sort of success we should hope for against Iran. As the Obama administration weighs how best to respond to Iran's continued nuclear defiance and its repression of a courageous opposition, "containment" should be crossed off the list of policy options.