Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From Adam Garfinkle

As President Obama decides how to proceed in the Afghan war, he needs to add one more variable that is rarely mentioned: Iranian determination to acquire nuclear weapons. An ongoing Afghanistan campaign means that resort to force against Iran would be tantamount to starting a second war. The politics being what they are, that will knock the military option against Iran off the table, with negative implications for an empowered diplomacy toward Iran.

Consider the timelines of the Afghan and Iranian policy portfolios, as President Obama must. Whether or not Iran parts with some of its fissile material in coming months in accord with the recent Geneva deal, it will still have enough nuclear “stuff” for one at least bomb within 18 months. (It may have more than that if, as looks increasingly likely, the recent Qom revelation displayed the tail end of a significant and protracted effort.) It will probably have overcome its weaponization and delivery-system challenges within 36-48 months. In 36-48 months U.S. and NATO forces will probably still be fighting in Afghanistan, whether Obama decides on a minimalist, counterterrorism-plus approach or General Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency-minus one.

The logic and overlapping timetables of the Afghan-Iran linkage suggest a need to choose. How should we think about that choice?

Both problems are consequential, but an Iranian nuclear breakout poses more serious long-term security dangers to the region and to the United States than any likely fallout from the Afghan war. Losing in Afghanistan could boost the morale of Islamist extremists worldwide, harm NATO and possibly exacerbate the situation in Pakistan. But acquiescing to an Iranian nuclear capability would spell the collapse of the Non-Proliferation Treaty regime and likely set off a proliferation race in and around the region that could catalyze a regional nuclear war. Unlike the Cold War deterrence relationship many of us remember, which involved just two sides with mostly secure weapons and command-and-control systems, a multifaceted nuclear Middle East without stable second-strike arsenals would be extremely crisis unstable and accident-prone, and could “leak” dangerous materiel to terrorists, as well. It is facile to assert that a deterrence relationship which worked in one context will also work in others; that assumption with respect to Iran is a textbook example of the “lesser-included case” fallacy.

If American interests require the prevention of an Iranian bomb, then major combat operations in Afghanistan must end before the moment to decide on Iran is at hand. That’s not the track we’re now on. General McChrystal’s plan is a stop-loss effort that cannot achieve a level playing field upon which to drive a new Afghan diplomacy, let alone achieve anything remotely resembling victory in three years or less.

There are only two alternatives to preserve a credible military option, and hence a credible diplomacy, with regard to Iran: accept defeat in Afghanistan, whatever we may call it, and leave; or surge militarily to reverse the perception of Taliban ascendancy, and then drive a new political arrangement there to end the war within the next 18-24 months.

Either option is preferable to a protracted and inconclusive bloodletting, but the latter option—depending more on air power and avoiding the massive (and counterproductive) garrisoning of the country with foreign forces—is preferable. It would avoid the optic of defeat. A new Afghan coalition government, blessed by a Loya Jirga within and supported by high-level contact-group diplomacy from without, would have at least a chance of creating a stable environment over the longer run—something that cannot reliably be said about the current regime in Kabul.

A success in Afghanistan also would lift the admittedly modest prospects that diplomacy can persuade the Iranians to step back from the nuclear precipice, just as failure to turn the tide would likely tempt them forward. And if the Iranians do not step back, a success in Afghanistan will better undergird the diplomacy that must accompany any military operation directed toward them.

Clearly, however, no McChrystal-plus option is on the table. This suggests that, barring some major out-of-the-blue event, like the collapse of the Iranian regime, the administration will be unable to consider using force against Iran when the time comes to decide, even if it might wish to do so. And Tehran’s knowledge that all U.S. military options are off the table is not liable to be helpful.

If U.S. policy eventually founders in Afghanistan and fails to prevent an Iranian nuclear breakout, and Iraq’s relative stability begins to crumble—not a far-fetched possibility, regrettably—then we will face a trifecta of real trouble in the Muslim world and beyond. To avoid that debacle, the beginning of wisdom is to recognize that when President Obama finally decides on Afghanistan, he will be constraining or expanding his options on Iran.

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