US Military Official: We Would Need to Occupy Iran to End Its Nuclear Program

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today, Wednesday, April 21, 2010:

US Weighs Iran Military Option - BBC News [link]

• If Iran decides to go for nuclear weapons, the US may not be able to permanently stop this from happening unless it is willing to occupy the country.
• This is the candid conclusion of one army general testifying in front of the Senate but one that seems to have gone mostly unnoticed amid a flurry of statements on Iran over the past few days in Washington.
• Gen James Cartwright, one of America's top uniformed officers, slowly edged towards that conclusion during a Senate testimony last week, underscoring the difficult choices facing the Obama administration as it weighs what do about Iran.
• Senator Reed prodded further, getting the general to agree that a military strike would only delay Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon if Tehran decided to go nuclear.
• The senator then went further, asking whether the only way to absolutely end any potential Iranian nuclear weapon programme "was to physically occupy their country and disestablish their nuclear facilities?"
• The general answered: "Absent some other unknown calculus that would go on, that's a fair conclusion."

U.S. Report: Iran's Chief Military Goal is Regime Survival - Laura Rozen in Politico [link]

• The report assesses that the chief goal of Iran’s military strategy is regime survival. And it describes Iran’s military power as being largely deterrent in nature.
• “To ensure regime survival, Iran’s security strategy is based first on deterring an attack,” the report says. “Iran’s principles of military strategy include deterrence, asymmetrical retaliation and attrition warfare.”
• “Iran’s nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy,” it says.
• Iran also seeks “to become the strongest and most influential country in the Middle East and to influence world affairs,” the report says. Interestingly, the report says, “in recent years, Iran’s ideological goals have taken a back seat to pragmatic considerations.”

New START Treaty Won't Limit a Better Missile Defense - General James Jones Letter to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal [link]

• The treaty restrains neither our program for missile defense of the U.S. (at bases in California and Alaska) nor the new phased adaptive approach for missile defense in Europe.
• As Gen. Patrick O'Reilly, the head of the Missile Defense Agency, explained to Congress on April 15, we have no plans to convert any additional ICBM silos. In fact, it would be less expensive to build a new silo rather than convert an old one. In other words, if we were to ever need more missile defense silos in California, we would simply dig new holes, which is not proscribed by the treaty (nor are we barred from building new missile defense silos anywhere else).
• In short, by adopting this treaty we give up nothing, and gain additional strategic stability between the world's two great nuclear powers. Moreover, compared to the expired START treaty, the new treaty reduces constraints on missile defense testing, because the prior treaty limited the types of targets we could use.

The Case for New START Ratification - Under Secretary of State Ellen Tauscher Remarks at the Atlantic Council [link]

• In my experience, [bipartisan] agreements enhance our national security and that is what the New START Treaty will do. It will ensure and maintain the strategic balance between the United States and Russia at lower weapons levels. And it will promote strategic stability by ensuring transparency and predictability over the life of the Treaty. Meanwhile, the United States will sustain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear force to protect ourselves and our allies.
• I want to say a word about missile defense because that is where the most vocal critics have focused their energy. While the Treaty’s preamble acknowledges the interrelationship between offensive and defensive systems, that is nothing new. The New START Treaty is about strategic offensive arms.
• The New START Treaty does not constrain U.S. missile defense programs. 
• Beyond what’s in the treaty, getting the United States Senate’s advice and consent would allow us to build upon a more constructive partnership with Russia. We have already reaped some diplomatic gains, notably improving relations with Russia. Disagreements over issues, like missile defense, remain. But we are now talking with each other as opposed to just talking past one another.

Obama's Gambit - James Kitfield in the National Journal [link]

• For two days, the capital was gridlocked by VIP convoys and the whooping wail of police escorts marking the largest gathering of world leaders in more than half a century.
• "So with this well-coordinated package of nuclear policy initiatives of the past week, we've learned that Obama sees the connections between these various initiatives, and that he is serious about making nonproliferation a top priority and legacy item on his foreign-policy agenda," said Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund.
• Largely lost in the media glare of two weeks of summitry and signing ceremonies was an exclusive screening at the White House of the documentary film Nuclear Tipping Point on April 6. Narrated by Michael Douglas [a Ploughshares Fund board member], with a prologue by Colin Powell, the film traces the intellectual journeys of the four esteemed American Cold Warriors from both sides of the political aisle.
• [Former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn] no longer hold official position, but the "four horsemen of the anti-apocalypse" are the intellectual fathers of the nonproliferation milestones achieved in the past few weeks.
• "By making these issues more public and less opaque, we are also accomplishing something else important," [Tauscher] said. "In the end, the kind of transformational change we're contemplating will require the will not only of the American public but of people around the world. So President Obama has taken us pretty far in a short period of time, but he clearly has ambitions to take us much further."