A fourth factor—the intense revulsion over war following the devastation of World War I—is also instructive for Western nations looking towards the Middle East today. The failure to control arms during battle led to attempts to control arms via diplomacy, and to an international organization, the League of Nations, charged with keeping peace. Those attempts were trampled under the jackboots of totalitarian Axis tyrants who armed for and ultimately started wars, while the memories of modern war’s grisly toll paralyzed the leaders of the free world.
1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis
The most worrisome problem posed by hostile states—Islamic or otherwise—is the mental state of their leaders and the fear that deterrence may not work against millenarian zealots. During the Cold War the Soviet leaders were, in the main, rational calculators. While ruthless adversaries, they were acutely cognizant of the potential consequences of starting a nuclear war. Even Joseph Stalin, paranoid mass murderer of tens of millions, confined his strategic goal to victory without fighting a war.
Later Soviet leaders were similarly deterred. Leonid Brezhnev seriously considered a preemptive nuclear strike against China in 1969, when the two countries engaged in a series of bloody clashes along their Ussuri River border. At the time Russia’s arsenal vastly exceeded that of China, whose nascent program had produced perhaps 25 to 40 bombs. But Brezhnev decided to pass. Had Brezhnev struck China first, his chance to get a strategic arms pact with America would have evaporated. America’s immense arsenal troubled him more than China’s relatively puny one at the time.18
Once indeed the world did come to the very brink of a shooting nuclear war, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Let us return to 1962, and see what context this story can give us to apply to Iran today. That August, U.S. reconnaissance planes discovered that Russian construction teams were placing intermediate-range ballistic missiles at bases in the Cuban countryside. In response, the Kennedy administration imposed a naval “quarantine” (blockading contraband supplies only) around the island.
On October 15, Kennedy convened an executive committee of 13 “wise men” to suggest ways to resolve the crisis. Their firmly shared belief was that it was unacceptable to have Russian missiles armed with nuclear warheads sitting 90 miles south of Florida. One of them, Paul Nitze, wrote later that at the outset nearly all “ExComm” members—including the president and his brother Robert—believed that military action to remove the missiles was almost inevitable. In his Cuban Missile Crisis history, Nine Minutes to Midnight, Michael Dobbs superbly described what happened next.
On October 27, which the White House dubbed “Black Saturday,” things nearly spun out of control. A U.S. U-2 spy plane was downed and its space-suited pilot killed, by a Soviet surface-to-air missile at Castro’s orders. Another U-2 pilot on an Arctic surveillance mission was tricked by an intense aurora borealis (“Northern Lights”) into taking a wrong turn, penetrating 300 miles into Soviet airspace. That spy plane eluded Russian interceptors and by a major miracle made it back to friendly territory. This was not a true fail-safe scenario (inability to recall in time a hostile plane carrying bombs), as the plane was unarmed, but a shoot down would hardly have helped resolve the crisis.
Meanwhile, a U.S. destroyer was dropping depth charges to force a quarantine-breaking Russian diesel submarine to surface. Unbeknownst to the destroyer crew, the sub was armed with a 10-kiloton nuclear-tipped torpedo, some 70 percent as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. Its commander was under strict orders not to fire a nuclear device without direct authorization from Moscow, but only by surfacing could the sub exchange messages with the authorities. But after being tracked by U.S. ships continuously—and being forced to stay below despite tropical conditions inside the sub—the Soviet commander was ready to fire his nuclear torpedo. His crew prevailed upon him to surface instead, noting the lack of authorization from Moscow. The sub surfaced to find itself in the midst of four U.S. destroyers. Moscow ordered the sub to depart the area, and the U.S. did not try to stop its departure. Had the submarine commander used his nuclear torpedo in 1962, it is inconceivable that Kennedy would have responded with an all-out attack over the loss of one of four small ships. It is hard to credit assertions that the USSR would have chosen mutual annihilation either.
Unknown to Kennedy and his advisers then was how many nuclear warheads and types of nuclear-capable delivery systems were on the island, or what command and control arrangements were in place between the Soviet and Cuban strategic forces. Dobbs writes (surely accurately) that Cuba’s nuclear arsenal “far exceeded the worst nightmares of anyone in Washington.” Specifically, deployed or en route to Cuba by ship were no less than 158 warheads. Ninety were already on the island, including 36 one-megaton warheads that could be hurled almost 1,300 miles and 36 14-kiloton warheads (Hiroshima-size) mounted on small tactical nuclear missiles. An estimated 150,000 American troops were to be sent to take the island, and 1,397 separate targets had been marked for destruction as part of the invasion. The Russians were prepared to send tactical bombers carrying Hiroshima-size A-bombs to annihilate any major invasion force.
Even without nuclear missile strikes on American soil, the instant carnage that would have been inflicted by the invasion force alone—by some 45,000 Soviets armed with atomic weapons, plus a much larger volunteer Cuban contingent—would have been the worst in American military history. The invasion force had the potential to suffer in a single day the death toll of Americans killed by enemy fire in the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.
En route on ships were 68 warheads, including two dozen for ballistic missiles, which could deliver one megaton 2,800 miles away (roughly the distance from Havana to Seattle). Khrushchev recalled these to Russia—weapon security on Cuba was dicey. The island heat made storage hotter than was safe for the warheads; accidental megaton-level ground detonation was a serious possibility. Without trigger locks, most nuclear weapons on Cuba could be released by the local commander—in some cases, a lieutenant—ignoring orders to the contrary from Moscow. Had an invasion come, as one Russian former soldier stationed in Cuba then put it, “You have to understand the psychology of the military person. If you are being attacked, why shouldn’t you reciprocate?” Ironically, the minimal level of perimeter and site security at the Bejucal nuclear storage bunker led CIA analysts to conclude that the facility did not house nuclear weapons.
Things were better, but far from secure, on the U.S. side. Pilots had unilateral release discretion for nuclear-armed air-to-air missiles, designed to vaporize strategic bomber squadrons. During the course of the 1950s and 1960s, several nuclear-armed strategic bombers crashed. One was carrying a pair of hydrogen bombs, each able to wipe out a major city. A crash cannot detonate a modern nuclear bomb, but such events are extremely dangerous nonetheless, in that any explosion can scatter highly radioactive nuclear material.
America’s fighter jets also could carry nuclear bombs. A nuclear-armed F-106 interceptor, armed with the MB-1 Genie air-to-air missile (a one-kiloton device that could be armed and fired at the pilot’s sole discretion), had a near mishap taking off. Designed to destroy all enemy planes within a quarter-mile radius, it was called by one pilot “the dumbest weapons system ever purchased.” F-102 interceptors had similar armament, and F-100 Super Sabres based in Europe carried hydrogen bombs to drop inside Russia. A young Navy pilot named John McCain sat in his A-4D Skyhawk jet on the aircraft carrier Enterprise, awaiting orders to drop A-bombs on selected Cuban targets.
Slow communications made matters worse. Both sides sent signals over broadcast television, sacrificing privacy for celerity. The Russian ambassador in Washington sent telegrams via Western Union, complete with pick-up via bicycle messenger. Informed by this potentially catastrophic infirmity, the superpowers established the Washington-Moscow Hot Line in 1963.
The Cuban Missile Crisis ended without millions perishing because at crucial moments Kennedy and Khrushchev chose caution. On October 24, three days before the crisis ended, Russian
ships sailed away from the American “quarantine” line, avoiding what could have been a catastrophic confrontation at sea. As Secretary of State Dean Rusk said upon hearing the news, “We were eyeball to eyeball and the other fellow just blinked.” In reality, Khrushchev had ordered the missile-carrying ships to turn back a day earlier, and only a few minor ships had proceeded to the quarantine line. But newspapers printed and broadcasters printed the legend.
The Twenty-first Century Mideast: Cuban Crisis Revisited?
THE DANGER in the twenty-first century Mideast with a nuclear-armed Iran would be vastly greater than that posed by Cuba and the USSR in 1962 for four reasons:
1. Greater vulnerability of geographically small states to nuclear strikes.
2. Inability to absorb a blow and retaliate due to short warning times.
3. A near-complete lack of rapid communication channels.
4. Leaders who have no experience in managing nuclear crises, and thus may either overestimate their chances of success with a surprise attack, or in extreme cases may succumb to an apocalyptic impulse to bring about the end of days.
Vulnerability. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the two superpowers faced each other with strategic forces that were primarily above ground and small in number. But missiles were not nearly accurate enough then to threaten them, and bombers alone could not ensure success. Furthermore, their vast size and widely dispersed populations made only a large-area attack capable of ending national life.
Today, missiles are frighteningly accurate, but the Gulf states cannot yet build such weapons. If one of them had a nuclear bomb, it would have to use military aircraft as a delivery system. (The advanced jets that the Gulf states purchase from the United States can carry nuclear bombs.) Such planes are vulnerable to a first strike. Given far fewer military installations and few cities with populations above 100,000 in the tiny kingdoms of the Gulf, countries could face devastation beyond recovery if caught in a surprise salvo of Hiroshima-sized bombs.
Short Warning Times. A Russian ICBM, launched from the Ural Mountains and hurtling through space at four miles per second, will travel the roughly 6,000 miles to America’s Atlantic coast in about 30 minutes. With flight distances between potential targets in the Mid-east often less than 1,000 miles, a high-speed jet can cover the distance in little more time than an ICBM can traverse oceans. Factor in missiles that fly at “merely” several times the speed of sound; in some cases, times from launch to impact within the Mideast would be less than 10 minutes. Iran has solid-fuel rockets, which use a gel fuel that (unlike liquid rocket fuel) is highly stable. Once loaded it can sit indefinitely and launch quickly.
Nor are jets the only Gulf state assets. In 1986 China sold 36 CSS-2 intermediate-range ballistic missiles to the Saudis. With a one metric-ton conventional warhead and 1,750-mile range they can easily reach Iran. But the Saudis may elect to purchase nuclear warheads for the CSS-2, or try to buy newer, more accurate models complete with nuclear warheads.
Communications Confusion. Between Washington and Moscow in 1962 there was only one functioning private communications channel, commercial telegraphy. Imagine a Mideast with a nuclear Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, Egypt, and Israel. With six nations there are 64 possible two-way interactions, with all the attendant prospects for misunderstandings during a crisis. Israel has used hot-line telephonic communications with adversaries, including the Palestinians, with mixed results. If with a single channel results are mixed, how will the result be with many diplomatic channels, and only hours—perhaps minutes—to Mideast Armageddon? Add in that these countries do not trust each other, making communication problematic at best. Assurance that a single unintended missile launch was in fact accidental may easily fail to convince a nervous target’s leaders.
Less Stable Leaders. Perhaps the most important personality of the 1962 crisis, one whose impulse control was, to put it charitably, weak, was Fidel Castro. He was flush with his improbable revolutionary triumph and seething with rage at the United States—rage that stemmed partly from ideological Marxist fervor and partly from the efforts of the Kennedy administration to get rid of him. Fidel wanted the Russians to incinerate the United States and was willing to sacrifice his 6 million subjects in a nuclear holocaust.
It is today’s Islamic version of Castro who should worry us the most. Religious messianism and secular militarism can be as lethal as romantic revolutionary fervor. Both partake of the “monstrous self-confidence” that Henry Kissinger saw as characterizing the “true revolutionary.”19
The region’s combination of religious zealotry and nuclear capability offers a clear recipe for accidental nuclear war. Fidel’s reckless abandon may well be the augury of nuclear wars to come.
One Iranian Castro candidate is, of course, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He has infamously said that Israel should be wiped off the map. And consider a 2001 statement by former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, still in 2012 a major Iranian power broker, as to nuclear war against Israel:
If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.
This comes from an Iranian leader often called by Western analysts a moderate. Rafsanjani has also been quoted as saying in 2001 that if Iran lost 15 million people in a nuclear exchange with Israel but killed 5 million Israelis, Iran would survive but Israel would be extinguished.
As for Israel, though it has been a nuclear power (albeit undeclared) for over 40 years, its status has not ignited a Mideast arms race. When Israel took out the North Korea–supplied nuclear plant in Iran-backed Syria in September 2007, the silence that followed in the Mideast was deafening. American diplomatic cable traffic published online by WikiLeaks showed repeated expression of intense anxiety by America’s Arab allies, who fear a nuclear Iran, not a nuclear Israel.
These problems of a century ago menace the Middle East today. Many statesmen and much of the public seem to think nuclear conflict is unlikely because they assume traditional Cold War deterrence will again prevail. But dangers are growing as time passes, especially as regional instability worsens.
The Resurgence of Militant Islam
LET US be clear about in whose hands a Mideast bomb would be. When the Ayatollah Khomeini took power in Iran in 1979, Western analysts were unaware that Khomenei had published a collection of speeches, under the title Islamic Government, because the volume was then available only in Persian and Arabic editions. According to the great historian Bernard Lewis, the book “made it very clear who he was and what his aims were; and the popular idea that this was going to mean the establishment of a liberal, open, modern society in place of the reactionary Shah was utter nonsense.”
Hailed as Imam (“priest”), Khomeini openly declared an intention to go back 1,400 years to the days of the Prophet—first in Iran and, ultimately all over the world. He imposed a political version of Twelver Shi’ism (the apocalyptic mainstream of the Shia faith; Twelvers await a child imam, who disappeared circa 873 and who will return and bring Judgment Day to the world).
In the 1980s and 1990s Iran was the world’s leading sponsor of global terrorism. Indeed, Iran’s Islamist regime had a role in the planning and logistical support behind the September 11, 2001 attacks, according to findings of fact made by a federal district judge in New York in a lawsuit filed against al-Qaeda. Iran also midwifed Hezbollah (Party of God), which took root in Lebanon, aided by the secular fascist Syrian regime. Hezbollah carried out the October 1983 truck-bomb attack that killed 241 Marine peacekeepers, the worst single-day loss for the Marines since the closing battles of World War II. It also launched a six-week war against Israel in 2006, firing thousands of rockets into northern Israel and virtually paralyzing one-third of the Jewish state’s population.
Followers of Khomeini’s creed include t
he current leader of Iran, Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei, and Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—who speaks of an apocalyptic Judgment Day. Of course Iran is just part of a broader global resurgence in Islamism. Among Islamist countries, Pakistan has achieved nuclear weapons status. Now Iran stands at the front of the Islamist queue, with potentially fateful consequences for global stability.
Compounding the problem of Iran’s radical Shi’ism is a parallel resurgence of militant Sunni Islam. Eighty-five percent of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims are Sunnis—including most of the Muslims the West considers allies. Yet the Sunni turning point in 1979 was little noticed in the West. Fundamentalists that year seized Saudi Arabia’s Great Mosque of Mecca and demanded that the Saudi regime return to a more fundamentalist creed. The Saudi rulers had to summon French commandos in order to retake the symbolic heart of Islam. Paradoxically, the agenda of those vanquished became the agenda of Saudi Arabia in the Muslim world. The back story to this episode was to prove of fateful significance after 1979.
By 1979 Saudi Arabia’s rulers—members of the al-Saud family—were living lavish lives and cavorting with other jet setters. Resentments among fundamentalists grew, and led in time to the seizure of the Great Mosque. The fundamentalists—members of the Wahhabi movement who were mostly Bedouin students and ex-National Guard, following a charismatic Wahhabi zealot—could be dislodged only if the most senior Wahhabi clerics gave consent to the al-Saud to storm the immense Great Mosque, something the Prophet had specifically prohibited. The clerics gave their consent, but for a fateful price: the al-Saud would fund with petrodollars the global spread of militant Sunni Islam. Then they would be permitted to live with one foot, so to speak, in the modern world and the other in the world of Islamic piety. Thereafter Saudi money spread the militant Wahhabist creed to mosques and madrassas (religious schools) around the world.
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