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Iran: U.S. Strategic Options
Iran: U.S. Strategic Options — Introduction
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Dealing with Iran will be a key challenge for the United States in the coming years. The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is therefore hosting a series of four discussions on alternative strategies for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program called Iran: U.S. Strategic Options. CNAS convened about 30 high-level national security, foreign policy, Iran, and Middle East experts, as well as select members of the press and representatives from Capitol Hill and the presidential campaigns, to launch this program on January 31, 2008, with an event focused on intensified diplomacy. Other discussions in the Iran: U.S. Strategic Options series will focus on military strike options and their ramifications, a U.S. policy of living with a nuclear Iran, and possible Iranian reactions to a U.S. diplomatic strategy. For the final event, the group of experts will also discuss proposed findings and outreach recommendations. CNAS commissioned experts to draft short reports and guide the dialogues for each of these topics, including Dennis Ross, Vali Nasr, Ashton Carter, Richard Haass, and Suzanne Maloney. At the conclusion of this series, CNAS scholars will recommend a path forward for the United States on Iran. Please check back for this forthcoming (Summer 2008) CNAS report and each of the commissioned papers, which we will post on this site as they become available.
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Contributing Authors: Dennis Ross, Suzanne Maloney, Ashton B. Carter, Vali Nasr, and Richard N. Haass
Dealing with Iran and its nuclear program will be an urgent priority for the next president. In order to evaluate U.S. policy options, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) convened a bipartisan group of experts on foreign policy and national security, retired military personnel, former diplomats and other government officials, and specialists on Iran and the region. Ambassador Dennis Ross presented a paper on diplomatic strategies for dealing with Iran, and Dr. Suzanne Maloney wrote on potential Iranian responses. Dr. Ashton Carter evaluated various U.S. military options, and Dr. Vali Nasr described likely Iranian reactions and other potential impacts. Ambassador Richard Haass considered the challenges of living with a nuclear Iran. Each of these papers represents an important contribution to a much-needed national discussion on U.S. policy toward Iran. Based on these papers and expert group discussion, as well as additional research and analysis, three CNAS authors (Dr. James Miller, Christine Parthemore, and Dr. Kurt Campbell) proposed that the next administration pursue “game-changing diplomacy” with Iran. While both Iran and the international community would be better off if Iran plays ball, game-changing diplomacy is designed to improve prospects for the United States and the international community irrespective of how Iran responds.
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CNAS Iran Strategy Papers
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Diplomatic Strategies for Dealing with Iran: How Tehran Might Respond
By: Suzanne Maloney
In a world marked by change and transformation, the three-decades-long antagonism between Washington and Tehran seems curiously impervious to amelioration or mitigation. The durability of this conflict – which has outlasted all of America’s other old enmities with the exception of Cuba – as well as its perpetual urgency has generated a rich library of official and unofficial policy studies, academic analyses, and high-level task force recommendations. Each has attempted to answer the same question that confronts U.S. policymakers every day: what can be done about Iran? In the final paper of this CNAS series, the author looks to current and historical evidence to analyze Tehran might react to a U.S. diplomatic options on Iran.
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Diplomatic Strategies for Dealing with Iran:
Where Are We? How Did We Get To This Point? And What Should We Do Now?
By Ambassador Dennis Ross
Counselor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow, The Washington Institute
Published: March 2008
Since the Iranian revolution in 1979, American administrations have struggled to find the right diplomatic strategy for affecting Iran’s leadership and the choices it makes. The Carter administration tried pressure, isolation, and engagement to resolve the hostage crisis. Ultimately, only indirect mediation was possible using the Algerians. The Reagan administration, seeing great danger in the possible spread of Khomeini’s revolutionary ideology, drew closer to the regime of Saddam Hussein and supported Iraq in the war it initiated with Iran. But the Reagan administration also pursued covert engagement in its bizarre effort to trade arms to gain Iranian help to release American hostages held in Lebanon. The sordid nature of the Iran-contra affair, as well as the perception that there were no reliable or authoritative Iranian representatives to deal with, led the Bush 41 administration to use pressures and unilateral sanctions to try to alter Iranian behavior. The Clinton administration largely followed suit, emphasizing a similar policy of containment rather than engagement as the means of dealing with threatening Iranian behaviors.
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The Implications of Military Confrontation with Iran
By Vali Nasr
Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, Council on Foreign Relations and Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University
Published: April 2008
War has been an important component of the Bush administration’s Iran policy. The administration began its tenure with a call for regime change in Iran, and since it became public knowledge that Iran was pursuing a nuclear capability and was supporting Shia militias in Iraq, Washington has considered veiled military threats as a realistic option to end Iran’s ambitions and to persuade it to change course. Talk of war has intimately shaped U.S.-Iran relations during the course of the past five years. Influential voices close to the administration have depicted Iran as an apocalyptic version of Nazism, looking for nuclear Armageddon and world domination. Until a recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report weakened the administration’s case for war, the potential for a military conflict was real. The NIE has only put into question a war to stop Iran’s nuclear program. But as will be discussed below, although it is the most obvious and urgent casus belli, Iran’s nuclear program is by no means the only cause of war, nor the one that could lead to the most grave and prolonged conflict.
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Military Elements in a Strategy to Deal with Iran's Nuclear Program
By Ashton B. Carter
Harvard-Stanford Preventive Defense Project
Published: May 2008
In the third paper for the CNAS series on Iran, Carter notes that "Military action must be viewed as a component of a comprehensive strategy rather than a stand-alone option for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program. But it is an element of any true option. A true option is a complete strategy integrating political, economic, and military elements and seeing the matter through to a defined and achievable end. For any military element, the sequel to action must be part of the strategy because the military action by itself will not finish the problem of Iran’s nuclear ambitions once and for all. Airstrikes on the Iranian nuclear program or other targets could conceivably reset the diplomatic table in pursuit of a negotiated end to the nuclear program, but they could also easily overturn the diplomatic table. The alternative to the diplomatic table, broadly speaking, is a strategy of containment and punishment of an Iran that ultimately proceeds with its nuclear program. A variety of military measures – air assault, blockade, encirclement, deterrence – could be elements of such a containment strategy."
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By Richard N. Haass
President, Council on Foreign Relations
Published: May 2008
In this fourth paper on U.S. strategies toward Iran, Haass notes that "Current U.S. policy toward Iran’s nuclear-related activities mostly falls under the rubric of non-proliferation (i.e., working through various forms of denial as well as diplomacy) to prevent Iran from gaining access to the materials and technologies required to advance in the nuclear realm. The problem with this approach is that history suggests that denial strategies tend to slow but not stop governments that are determined to gain a nuclear weapons option or actual weapon and who possess the basic technical and industrial prerequisites to proceeding." He later adds that "the United States and others who are rightfully concerned about Iran developing the ability to enrich uranium on a large scale – and possibly produce nuclear weapons as well – must choose" from among several options, "including whether they can manage – in other words, live with – an Iranian nuclear capability and take steps to limit its consequences."
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CNAS experts and analysts are available for media interviews on the topic of Iran. To interview our experts listed below, please contact Price Floyd, CNAS Director of External Relations:
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 Carter _ Military Elements _ Iran.pdf 219.32 KB (219320 bytes) Haass_Nuclear_ Iran.pdf 202.3 KB (202300 bytes) Nasr _ Military Confrontation _ Iran.pdf 277.01 KB (277010 bytes) Ross _ Diplomatic _ Iran.pdf 282.177 KB (282177 bytes)
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