Is Michael Rubin Pivoting Toward War?

I’m on vacation, so I’m making this very short. But I noticed today on the AEI website an article by Michael Rubin, the Richard Perle protege who, if I recall correctly, (Michael, please let me know if I’m wrong, as you have in the past) has been among the rare hard-line neo-conservatives who have opposed a military strike on Iran — either by the U.S. or Israel — on the grounds that it would fatally undermine the opposition there. But this op-ed by him in the New York Daily News suggests that he may be pivoting toward supporting a U.S. attack, at the least.

How Nukes Will Transform Iran
Why Possession of Ultimate Weapon Will Strengthen Revolutionary Guard
By Michael Rubin | New York Daily News
Sunday, August 15, 2010

President Obama says Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is “unacceptable,” but he appears resigned to the eventuality that the Islamic Republic will build a bomb. Iranian leaders are defiant in the face of sanctions. On Aug. 8, for example, the Kayhan newspaper, mouthpiece for the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, declared, “Iran does not consider any cost higher than the loss of prestige of capitulating to the West and does not consider any benefit higher than the benefit of becoming nuclear.”

Arab and Israeli newspapers both report that visiting U.S. officials suggest they could extend a nuclear umbrella should Iran develop a bomb, de facto acknowledgment that Obama favors containment over military force.

Today, strategic debate revolves around how a nuclear Iran would behave: Would it bomb Israel? Would it supply terrorist groups? Would Iran become more aggressive in the region? Seldom discussed, however, is how nuclear weapons might change Iran itself. That could be the most profound transformation of all.

The worst case scenario, however, is that with regime survival a moot point, true believers might use their last moments to launch the bomb to fulfill objectives of destroying Israel or wounding America.

When Iran develops nuclear weapons, determining their command-and-control will become America’s overriding intelligence objective. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s genocidal rhetoric shocks the West. Would he control the bomb? Not likely. In the Islamic Republic, the president is subordinate to the supreme leader. Khamenei may be the ultimate political authority in Iran, but will an aide carrying launch codes generated daily shadow him day and night? Equally unlikely; the ayatollah allows no aide so close.

Possession is 90% of the law. And in that sense, on a day-to-day basis, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–which will “own” the arsenal–will control it. This is no comfort: Not only do the Revolutionary Guards contain Iran’s most radical ideologues, but they also remain effectively a big, black box to Western analysts.

While professors speak knowingly of hardliners, reformers and pragmatists along the Islamic republic’s political spectrum, no one knows much about factions within Iran’s ideological army. No American official knows with certainty whether the Iranian general controlling the bomb is a pragmatist who seeks only to defend Iran, or whether he believes the key to the Hidden Imam’s return is just one button away.

Most critical is this question: What happens when the 71-year-old Khamenei, who many times before has been rumored to be gravely ill, dies? In theory, the Assembly of Experts, a deliberative body of 86 religious scholars, chooses the new supreme leader. But when the Islamic republic has a nuclear arsenal, these elderly men will no longer be kingmakers; whoever controls Iran’s nuclear weapons will be. This means the Assembly will not elect any leader to whom the arsenal keeper’s loyalty is uncertain, for that would risk exposing the emperor as having no clothes.

A nuclear bomb, therefore, cements the Revolutionary Guards as kingmakers. The second the first Iranian nuclear bomb rolls off the assembly line, power shifts fundamentally, unleashing an endless cycle with the most radical elements in Iranian society determining leadership and appointing men in their image to determine the next generation of leadership.

Finally, there’s this profound concern: What happens to the democracy and youth movement within Iran? Last summer, Iranians flooding the streets to protest election fraud sparked Western imagination. While some in the Green Movement might embrace nuclear weapons as tightly as the current regime, chants cursing the supreme leader hinted at fundamental change.

What the American public cheered, however, might turn into a nightmare if Iranians rise up after their regime possesses nuclear weapons.

In such a situation–if a newly nuclear Revolutionary Guard suddenly feels its existence threatened from within the country–three scenarios are possible. The idea that the regime is not suicidal, the mantra of those who embrace deterrence, transforms into a force for fear: The Revolutionary Guards could blackmail the world to ensure its own survival. It might also flee, selling the weapons to finance their exile.

The worst case scenario, however, is that with regime survival a moot point, true believers might use their last moments to launch the bomb to fulfill objectives of destroying Israel or wounding America. After all, they know the world will not retaliate against a new Iran if the culpable regime is already destroyed.

Denying Iran nuclear capability requires tough choices. The Obama administration appears willing to embrace containment and deterrence in order to avoid them. Avoiding decisions is not leadership, however, and may prove deadly.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.

I should clarify that I always believed that Rubin would support a strike and that his opposition to one following the June 2009 elections was mainly tactical, and his co-authorship of the September 2008 Bipartisan Policy Commission Report (which obviously preceded the elections) showed him to be an architect of what I called at the time a (“Roadmap to War.”) It was the timing of his pivot toward war that interested me.

I should also stress that this article by itself clearly does not explicitly call for the use of force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons. But the implicit argument, of course, gets you there.

Jim Lobe

Jim Lobe served for some 30 years as the Washington DC bureau chief for Inter Press Service and is best known for his coverage of U.S. foreign policy and the influence of the neoconservative movement.

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5 Comments

  1. “Not only do the Revolutionary Guards contain Iran’s most radical ideologues, but they also remain effectively a big, black box to Western analysts.” Wooo, Boo Radley! How does he know what is not known?

    “no one knows much about factions within Iran’s ideological army. No American official knows with certainty…”

  2. What a crock! Take this by Mr. Rubin, for example: “Arab and Israeli newspapers both report that visiting U.S. officials suggest they could extend a nuclear umbrella should Iran develop a bomb, de facto acknowledgment that Obama favors containment over military force.”
    Exactly how is that “de facto acknowledgement that Obama favors containment over military force?” By what LOGIC, Mr. Michael Rubin? Show me the deductive reasoning, “por favor”!
    However, Rubin does inadvertently raise one interesting point. Who has control of Israel’s nukes? Is it possible that in the not too distant future the “settlers” and their “mad rabbis” will control Israel’s nukes? That’s a scary thought!

  3. RE: …Is it possible that in the not too distant future the “settlers” and their “mad rabbis” will control Israel’s nukes? – me (above)
    SEE: “Those noisy barbarians” ~ By Noam Ben Ze’ev, Haaretz, 08/23/10
    (excerpt) Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba and Hebron, head of the rabbinical committee in the territories and a power broker in the halls of government, is this country’s real prime minister, writer Sefi Rachlevsky said in an op-ed in Haaretz’s Hebrew edition last week. Some of Lior’s doctrines, whic…
    ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/those-noisy-barbarians-1.309629

  4. RE: the “settlers” and their “mad rabbis” – me (above)
    SEE: ‘Sinner’ singer given 39 lashes by rabbis ~ By Jerusalem Post Staff, 08/27/10
    (excerpts) A singer who performed in front of a “mixed audience” of men and women was lashed 39 times to make him “repent,” after a ruling by a self-described rabbinic court on Wednesday. Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak, founder of the Shofar organization aimed at bringing Jews “back to religion” (hazara betshuva), has made it his recent mission to fight against musical performances for both men and women…
    …He displayed a leather strip he said was made by his father from ass and bull skin, with which Yechiel was to have been whipped…
    ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=186154

  5. RE: the “settlers” and their “mad rabbis” – me (above)
    SEE: “Israeli Rabbis Defend Book’s Shocking Religious Defense of Killing Non-Jews” (with Video) ~ By Max Blumenthal, AlterNet, 08/30/10
    A rabbinical guidebook for killing non-Jews has sparked an uproar in Israel and exposed the power a bunch of genocidal theocrats wield over the government.
    LINK – http://www.alternet.org/world/148016/?page=entire

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