Fear a Mideast Conventional Arms Race, Too

James Jay Carafano discussed the likelihood of a conventional arms race breaking out over a nuclear Iran, among other possible repercussions of the nuclear deal, on today’s Secure Freedom Radio.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Welcome back. We’re joined by Jim Carafano. He is one of the country’s preeminent figures in the national security arena. Certainly in Washington, D.C. He comes by that as a result of his distinguished service in the United States Army, finishing up as a Lieutenant Colonel. He is also a man who has spent years now, honing his skills and making a real contribution to the public policy debate at the Heritage Foundation, where today he is the Vice President for the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy. Jim, welcome back. It’s always good to have you with us, my friend.

JIM CARAFANO: It’s good to be with you.

FG: Well, this is Iran Day. We’re still trying to dissect what has been done by the President and his minions. It doesn’t seem as though it’s getting more appealing the more we’re able to study the details. What do you make, Jim, of the deal broadly defined, and specifically looked at from your perspective as a military man what it means militarily and strategically.

JC: In full disclosure, I was never against negotiating to begin with, and here’s why: I believe that Iran sees having a nuclear breakout capability as fundamentally a vital interest. You never negotiate away vital interests. You think back to the Paris Peace Accords in 1973: the only thing we wanted from North Vietnam was a recognition that an independent South Vietnam would be okay. For one thing, the North never was going to negotiate away, and we all know that, now that it’s the 40^th anniversary of the North Vietnamese Army marching into Saigon.

If the one thing we know they’re not going to turn away is the capability to be a nuclear weapons power, then there’s no way these negotiations could ever get to a reasonable end, and that’s exactly what we saw. The President stood up and declared we have blocked every pathway to them getting a bomb. We know that’s not true. And that is the core of concern about the deal in the Congress, in the countries in the region, which are much more afraid now than they were before the deal was signed.

FG: Jim, we have in addition to concerns about the nuclear weapons program—which I couldn’t agree with you more is going forward apace under this deal—but also new reason to be concerned that this negotiation has led to, or will shortly lead to, an easing of Iranian access to conventional weapons. And of course vast amounts of money that they can spend on it among other purposes. How serious a problem does that represent?

JC: That’s a very underrated part of this problem, here. We all complain that “Oh no, there’s going to be a nuclear arms race.” People are afraid Iran’s going to get a nuclear weapon, then Turkey’s going to want one, Saudi Arabia’s going to want one, Egypt’s going to want one. Everyone believes that now. Even the Administration recognizes it that that’s a real concern. But what we’re seeing is we’re seeing a conventional arms race. Countries are racing to arm themselves out of concern of the rising Iranian power. In turn, the Iranians are amassing massive, massive amounts of cash as a result of this sanctions relief. And when you add that on top of other economic activity, we could be talking about three to four hundred billion dollars being dumped into these countries. And then once they have access to the conventional arms market unrestrained, you’re going to see a massive conventional arms race. This is an incredibly dangerous situation: conventional weapons pouring in to the region on top of multiple nuclear armed countries in the region.

That would be okay if we didn’t care, but they call it the Middle East for a reason: it’s in the middle of everything. It’s the lynchpin between Asia and Europe and the United States, not just for energy, but for finance. It’s the movement of people—we worry, for example, about migrants flowing into Western Europe. Destabilizing this part of the world is a prescription for global disaster. Ebola is the thing where “Oh my God, wouldn’t it be terrible if Ebola was everywhere?” Here is the contagion of war and violence that could potentially grow everywhere. That’s what’s at stake here. When you sign a deal which is supposed to bring peace, and the next day people are frantically worrying about everything getting worse, that’s not a comforting, hopeful sign.

FG: No it’s not, especially as you say in a region that is as fraught with the instabilities and dynamics of danger that this one is.

Jim, let me ask you to respond quite pointedly and directly to the principle argument—strip everything else away—the principle argument now being made by President Obama and his supporters, or apologists, and that is, “Well, if not this deal, we will have war.” How do you respond to that?

JC: First of all, I think it’s this deal and war. Once you sign this deal you’re actually accelerating the likelihood of regional conflict. I think that’s a fact. And it’s a lie, right? It’s not this deal or war. I actually think if we went back to the status quo of just heavily sanctioning the regime–I mean that was actually working pretty effectively in terms of, not solving the problem of Tehran, but in terms of keeping the regime on the defensive. The status quo, in my lights, would be much, much more preferable to this.

FG: I couldn’t agree with you more. Jim, you have been working for a long time, and the Heritage Foundation as well, on one particular facet of this that I think is now really coming to the forefront, or should. And that is that the Iranian nuclear weapons program will give Tehran in due course, for sure, maybe later, maybe sooner, the option of exercising what apparently their doctrine calls for, according to Congressman Trent Franks in more than twenty places as a matter of fact. Namely, an electromagnetic pulse attack against this country, designed to devastate our electric grid and therefore our country. How serious a threat do you regard that as being? And, if it were to eventuate, what might the consequences be?

JC: Look, here’s why you worry about that: first of all, what would it mean. There’s a very interesting study just out from a research center in London.

FG: Sponsored, by the way, by Lloyd’s of London.

JC: Lloyd’s of London, it’s an insurance company.

FG: They know something about risk!

JC: Right. Estimated costs of a loss of the electric grid in the United States: $1 trillion dollars. So think about if you had a trillion dollars, you could save the Greek economy. You could save an entire country.

FG: You could make a substantial dent on ours as well, now that I think about it.

JC: So just the economic loss, I mean, that’s with all the other human things that would go on with that. Just the economic loss is unbelievably massive. So we know it’s incredibly dangerous to lose the grid. We just know that.

We also know for a fact that EMP can take a grid out. That’s just physics, we know that. And if you were a country like Iran and you want to threaten the United States, it would take you a long time and a lot of money to have a comparable nuclear arsenal, to having hundreds or thousands of weapons that you can deploy. But a handful of weapons which essentially can do the same amount of damage, is going to hold America just as effectively at risk as having a thousand nuclear warheads. From an Iranian perspective, that strategy makes sense.

FG: Yeah, Jim, that’s even if they don’t actually mean what they say, which is “Death to America.” That is, they’re not just interested in holding us at risk and deterring us from interfering with them, but they’re actually interested in destroying us.

Our guest is Jim Carafano. He’s the Vice President for National Security and Foreign Policy at the highly regarded Heritage Foundation here in Washington, and a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army, now retired. And the author, most recently I believe, of “Wiki at War: Conflict in a Socially Networked World.”

Jim, let me turn to one other thing you’ve been musing about, and that is parallels between what the North Koreans did when we were led to believe that we had successfully negotiated them out of having nuclear weapons, and what their friends and allies and partners in crime, the Iranians, are likely to do. Talk a little bit about the parallels here.

JC: Right, so, actually both the President and government said yesterday, “We have blocked every path to a nuclear weapon.” When you look at the nuclear and missile infrastructure that Iran has today—not what they might have two or three years from now, but what they have today—and you look at what North Korea had before it did a breakout, and you look at what countries like Pakistan had before they did a breakout, they have that same capability. So it’s already there. We’re not preventing them from having a nuclear breakout capability. They’re already there. And if North Korea and Pakistan are any example, then the notion that somehow we’ve blocked them, that statement is already overcome by events.

FG: So in your professional judgment, James Carafano, you believe that when the President says this deal will assure—and set aside this question of blocking the path and so on—but at the very least he’s giving us the assurance that it will be at least a year before the Iranians can break out. Do you discount that?

JC: Well the Iranians have no reason to breakout in the next year, because they’re going to get $150 billion dollars in cash. I wouldn’t break out either if you were going to give me $150 billion dollars in cash. I’d take the $150 billion dollars and then I’d break out.

FG: But is it a year that they will buy through this mechanism, or do you think it’s far less?

JC: I think if they’re lucky they’ll buy two years. But here’s why the President isn’t lying to us: the President’s looking at the piece of paper in front of him and saying if everything in the world unfolds exactly as written in this piece of paper, Iran won’t get a nuclear weapon.

FG: “On my watch.”

JC: For ten years, right. But what you have to weigh against that is Iran’s record. They’ve never abided by any piece of paper that they signed. They didn’t abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. If they did we wouldn’t be doing this today. And the fundamental goal is to have a weapon.

FG: It is, and that has been their abiding purpose, as you know so well. Jim Carafano of the Heritage Foundation, thanks again as always for what you do there, and your past service to our country, as well. Keep it up, and come back to us again very soon.