by Louis René Beres (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971), Emeritus Professor of International Law, Purdue University
Abstract
Israel and Iran remain poised for a multi-level war. Such conflict could become nuclear even if Iran were to remain non-nuclear. This generally-overlooked observation owes to an inevitably ensuing competition in risk-taking. To wit, any war between Israel and Iran will unleash an unpredictable struggle for “escalation dominance.”
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In extremis, Israel could decide to fire some of its nuclear weapons and escalate to an “asymmetrical nuclear war.” But if Iran should become operationally nuclear during its conflict with Israel, any subsequent launch of nuclear weapons could become bilateral. In such an unprecedented exchange, even one in which there would be conspicuous differences in nuclear power position, the region would experience a “symmetrical nuclear war.”
In the end, what happens regarding such synergistic and potentially existential harms to Israel would depend significantly on the “Westphalian” structure of world politics. By definition, this signifies an anarchic context wherein (per Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan) there would be “no common power” above states “to keep them in awe.” In such an unalterably decentralized setting – the “state of nations” is not about to depart from the “state of nature” – credible nuclear deterrence would represent Israel’s last decipherable chance for survival.
“Where there is no common Power, there is no Law.”
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), Ch. XIII
Even today, world politics and international law operate in a seventeenth-century “Westphalian” context. In essence, this signifies an anarchicsetting, one without any war-controlling benefits of a centralized global authority. Leaving aside nuclear weapons (Israel is already nuclear; Iran is almost nuclear), the extant “state of nations” remains basically the same setting famously identified by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan (1651).
What does this rigid continuance mean for Israel and the wider Middle East? How shall Israel best prepare for credible nuclear deterrence where there is “no common power”? If Israel should decide that it no longer maintains any reasonable self-defense alternative to launching military attacks against selected Iranian hard targets, those preemptive strikes would require justification in both strategic andlegal terms. How should such justification be explained?
There are many sides to a coherent answer. Israel’s residual options include a peremptory national right to act in “anticipatory self-defense” against a determinedly hostilenear-nuclear adversary. On multiple and well-documented occasions, Iran has expressed openly genocidal intentions toward the Jewish State. For those who might not yet know, Israel is literally half the size of America’s Lake Michigan.
There are variously pertinent particulars. Though identifiable legal rules can allow imperiled states to strike first in self-defense when the dangers posed are prospectively existential and “imminent in point of time,” the permissible parameters for launching such strikes must always remain subjective. The following assessment focuses on the relevant, binding and intersecting rules of “Justice of War” (Jus ad bellum) and “Justice in War” (Jus in bello), and: (1) explains if and when Israel could lawfully resort to acts of “anticipatory self-defense” and (2) considers what such presumptively indispensable attacks might actually look like. Of logical necessity, this assessment further considers more-or-less plausible military alternatives to anticipatory self-defense, notably longer-term strategies of credible nuclear deterrence.
There is much more to introduce. All elements are presented from determinably intellectual standpoints of strategy and law. In no circumstances should such elements be interpreted ipso facto as derivative recommendations for any general or specific Israeli preemption. In reading and evaluating this comprehensive analytic argument, policy-centered readers should bear in mind that any Israeli defensive military strike ought always to remain a last-resort security option but also that Israel is rapidly nearing an irreversible last resort.
As should be expected in such a time-urgent exegesis, the particulars will accumulate. In principle, at least, world politics and world law operate together, in tandem, as a system. Accordingly, nuclear weapons-related developments in other parts of the world could affect the prospects of a nuclear conflict arising in the Middle East. A current example could center on any escalating geo-strategic crisis between Russia and the United States concerning Vladimir Putin’s multiplying aggressions against Ukraine. Another example would be nuclear crisis developments (whether anticipated or unanticipated) in North Korea, China, India or Pakistan.
In a still manageable world legal order, nuclear weapons will serve Israel via reason-based non-use. This broadly underlying argument goes back to Sun-Tzu’s classic Art of War: “The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.” The ancient Chinese strategist’s maxim is palpably more urgent today than it was in Sun-Tzu’s own time.
Strategic Decision-Making in the Global “State of Nature”
In setting the stage for a coherent understanding of world politics, Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan argues deductively that there can be no law in a “state of nature.” A more accurate assessment would stipulate that law and anarchycan coexist (at least by definition), but that decentralized law enforcement has traditionally had to rely on perilous stratagems of “self-help.” Moreover, within this condition of continuous decentralization – a bellum omnium contra omnes or “war of all against all” – international law necessarily represents a “vigilante” system of global power management.
As the “safety of the people” must always represent “the highest law” (per Cicero, De republica/The Republic), global rules can never call upon individual nation-states to accept their own destruction. An expressly nuclear variant of this binding conclusion can be discovered at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling of July 8, 1996. This advisory opinion merely reinforces expectations and allowances of pre-existing Natural Law.
Contextually for Israel and Iran, that is the “big picture.” But there are also abundant and nuanced details to be considered. Though codified norms do not normally allow states to strike first in self-protection, the Law of Nations does permit particular acts of “anticipatory self-defense” under customary international law. In extremis, defensive first strikes or “preemption” could be considered permissible.
Legal and strategic criteria should always remain separate or discrete. Even if a particular resort to anticipatory self-defense could be deemed lawful, it might still be unreasonably dangerous or tangibly ineffectual. Understood in the context of the present argument, this means that assorted Israeli strategies of preemption against Iran should always represent a stratagem of last resort but nonetheless be considered with appropriate urgency and seriousness.
What are the most salient implications of these considerations for Israel, a nuclear mini-state imperiled by a near-nuclear Iran? To begin, before Israel could ever decide rationally to invoke a strategy of preemption, its designated policy makers and strategists would need to understand that their judgments concerning the expected probability of success would necessarily be based on dialectically-reasoned logical deductions Because the circumstances in question would be unique or unprecedented, there could be no properly objective or scientific assessments of probability.
Ultimately, such points concerning philosophy of science or scientific method will be all-important to understand. Why exactly? The answer is plain: For clarifying examples, there would exist no previous events for Israeli decision-makers to draw upon. The considered action would essentially be sui generis.
The “rules” in such daunting matters are always unassailable. In science, the task of rendering predictive statements about event likelihood or probability can never be advanced ex nihilo. Rather, this task must be based on the determinable frequency of relevant past events. Israel did launch preemptive strikes against prospective nuclear targets in Iraq and Syria (1981 and 2007 respectively), but in neither case did these defensive measures involve potentially existential retaliations.
Iran is not yet operationally nuclear. Still, that adversary does maintain an evident capacity to aggregate significant military operations against Israel. This capacity includes force-multiplying proxy assaults by Hezbollah. Among other things, such strikes could be synergistic. Here, the “whole” of any expectedly destructive effects would be greater than the calculable sum of its constituent “parts.” From a philosophy of science standpoint, this is not a hypothesis, but rather an analytic assumption that is true by definition.
Foreseeable Implications of Time-Delay
For Israel, a delayed preemption could prove lethal. One danger of “waiting too long” is that Tehran could implement protective measures that would then pose additional military hazards. Deigned to guard against an Israeli preemption, these measures could involve the attachment of “hair trigger” launch mechanisms to Iranian nuclear weapon systems and/or the adoption of “launch on warning” policies (ones possibly coupled with variously fragile pre-delegations of launch authority.) All such Iranian enemy activity would signify still-increasing dangers to Israel and could represent the result of steps taken by a nearly-nuclear Iran to prevent Israeli defensive-strikes.
Optimally, Israel, in part because of corollary risks of accidental or unauthorized attacks against its armaments and/or civilian populations, would do everything possible to prevent certain enemy protective measures. Still, if such steps were to become a fait accompli, Jerusalem might calculate that a preemptive strike would be lawful and gainful. This precarious calculus would obtain because the expected Iranian retaliation, however damaging, could still appear more tolerable than the expected consequences of Iranian first-strikes.
Going forward, Israel will take into careful account the prospects of an Iranian enemy equipped with hypersonic weapons and the corollary difficulties of defending against such weapons with ballistic missile defense. Depending upon the determinable velocity and capabilities of such enemy prospects (hypersonic missiles travel at least five times the speed of sound), even Israel’s impressively capable Arrow-based system of layered active defenses could sometime be reduced in life-saving effectiveness. The tangible consequences of any such reduction would vary according to whether the adversarial hypersonic missile(s) had been armed with nuclear or non-nuclear warheads. If ever facing Iranian nuclear-tipped missiles, anything less than a 100% reliability of intercept could be inadequate. At the same time, any such “rate of intercept” would be unachievable.
There are further attendant hazards. A space-based system of defenses against hypersonic missile attack would inevitably have “leakage.” This liability might prove tolerable contra Iran’s conventional warheads, but not against this enemy’s nuclear armed missiles.
What about “peremptory” legal standards? Despite philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ dismissal of law “where there is no common power,” Israel coexists with all other states in a vigilante-centered or “Westphalian” system of international law. In this universal system, of global power management, any last resort tactics of self-defensive force could be lawful or even law-enforcing.
In Jewish-historical terms, the First Temple and Commonwealth were destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC/BCE. The Second Temple Commonwealth ended with a total Roman victory in the year 70 AD/CE. In its present political and jurisprudentially-recognized form, which began in 1948, Israel will last only as long as its leaders remain aptly attentive to Cicero’s primal warning about national “safety.”
“The safety of the People shall be the highest law,” says Cicero in The Laws. Though seemingly counter-intuitive, such attentiveness could be indispensable and still be consistent with the authoritative expectations of decentralized international law. These expectations are partially deducible from always-binding Natural Law.
There is more. International law is never a suicide pact. Very soon, Israel’s existential security problems with Iran could compel Jerusalem to decide between waiting for Tehran to strike first and striking first itself. Judged from a strategic and tactical perspective, the choice of a preemption option could appear plausibly rational and calculably cost-effective, yet still be the result of erroneous information, miscalculation and/or strategic self-deception.
Israel’s Bewildering Task: How to Calculate a Defensive First-Strike
What does the ascertainable convergence of strategic and jurisprudential assessments of preemption suggest about Israel’s eleventh-hour calculations on striking first? It should suggest, among other things, that Israel need not be deterred from undertaking appropriately defensive forms of preemption solely out of fear that its actions would be described as criminal. Though a substantial number of nation-states would condemn Israel for “aggression” under any circumstances, this particular charge – so long as Israel’s preemptive strikes were to meet the expectations of jus ad bellum (justice of war) and jus in bello (justice in war) – could be countered authoritatively and effectively.
In complex jurisprudence, as in certain other matters, history deserves an evident pride of place, The right of self defense by forestalling an attack appears in Hugo Grotius’ Book II of The Law of War and Peace in 1625. Recognizing the need for “present danger” and threatening behavior that is “imminent in a point of time,” Grotius indicates that self defense is to be permitted not only after an attack has been suffered, but also in advance, that is, “where the deed may be anticipated.” Or, as he explains a bit further on in the same chapter, “It be lawful to kill him who is preparing to kill….”
A similar position was taken by legal philosopher Emmerich de Vattel. In Book II of The Law of Nations (1758), Vattel argues: “The safest plan is to prevent evil, where that is possible. A Nation has the right to resist the injury another seeks to inflict upon it, and to use force and every other just means of resistance against the aggressor. It may even anticipate the other’s design, being careful, however, not to act upon vague and doubtful suspicions, lest it should run the risk of becoming itself the aggressor.”
Appropriately, in view of present concerns, Grotius and Vattel parallel the Jewish interpreters, although the latter speak more generally of interpersonal relations than of international relations. Additionally, the Torah contains a prominent provision exonerating from guilt a potential victim of robbery with possible violence if, in self defense, he struck down and if necessary even killed the attacker before he committed any crime. (Ex. 22:1). In the words of the rabbis, “If a man comes to slay you, forestall by slaying him!” (Rashi; Sanhedrin 72a).
Both Grotius and Vattel caution against abusing the right of anticipatory self defense as a pretext for aggression. Nonetheless, this is an abuse that Israel, in its current relationship with Iran, could not plausibly commit. As Iran seemingly considers itself in a “state of war” with Israel, any Israeli preemption against this nuclearizing adversary would not represent an authentic act of anticipatory self-defense, but rather one more military operation in an already-ongoing war. It follows that such an operation’s legality would have to be appraised solely in terms of its conformance with the authoritative laws of war of international law (Jus in bello). To identify any defensive military operation as “aggression” when it is launched against a state that openly considers itself “at war” with Israel would express jurisprudential nonsense.
Israeli Preemption as Law-Enforcing Self-Defense
Even if Iran were not in a verifiably formal condition of belligerence Israel, a condition amplified by Teheran’s recurrent calls for Israel’s literal destruction, Jerusalem’s preemptive action could still be law-enforcing. In the fashion of every state in world politics, Israel is peremptorily entitled to existential self-defense. In an age of increasingly destructive weaponry, international law does not require Israel or any other state to expose its citizens to otherwise-avoidable atomic annihilation.
On its face, the right of national self-defense, we may learn from Vattel, gives rise to the “right to resist injustice.” According to the writer’s argument at Chapter V of the Law of Nations, or the Principles of Natural Law (1758), on “The Observance of Justice Between Nations:”
Justice is the foundation of all social life and the secure bond of all civil intercourse. Human society, instead of being an interchange of friendly assistance, would be no more than a vast system of robbery if no respect were shown for the virtue which gives to each his own. Its observance is even more necessary between Nations than between individuals, because injustice between Nations may be followed by the terrible consequences involved in an affray between powerful political bodies, and because it is more difficult to obtain redress…. An intentional act of injustice is certainly an injury. A Nation has, therefore, the right to punish it…. The right to resist injustice is derived from the right of self-protection.
The customary right of anticipatory self defense has its modern origins in the Caroline incident, an event that concerned the unsuccessful rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada against British rule (a rebellion that aroused sympathy and support in the American border states). Following this landmark event, even the serious threat of armed attack can be taken to justify a fearful state’s militarily defensive action. Then, in an exchange of diplomatic notes between the governments of the United States and Great Britain, then U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster outlined a framework for self defense which did not require an actual attack. In this case, military response to a threat was judged permissible so long as the danger posed was “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation.”
In limited and residual circumstances, certain permissible forms of anticipatory self-defense could be expressed via assassination/targeted killing (although classical philosophical and jurisprudential arguments supporting assassination are usually cast more narrowly in terms of the tyrannicide motif). Representing either a distinct alternative or an addition to standard military forms of preemption, such targeted killing, in order to be consistent with authoritative international norms/expectations, would need to be undertaken when the danger posed to Israel met the specific legal test of the Caroline. If the targeted killings were undertaken only to destroy the potential threat of a designated enemy, i.e., as a preventive action, it could not qualify as permissible in law. If, however, the assassination were undertaken in anticipation of some immediate enemy aggression, i.e., as a preemptive action, it could conceivably qualify as a correct instance of anticipatory self-defense.
Several antecedent questions should now arise. First, in the “real world,” judgments concerning the immediacy of anticipated aggression are exceedingly difficult to calculate. Second, even where such judgments are reasonably ventured, it can never by altogether clear whether the degree of immediacy is sufficient to invoke preemption rather than prevention. Third, in meeting the legal requirements of “defensive intent,” a state may have to act preventively rather than preemptively, because waiting to allow a threat to become more immediate could have decisively or even intolerably negative strategic/tactical consequences. And fourth, the actual state-preserving benefits that might accrue from the assassination of enemy leaders are apt to be contingent upon not waiting until the danger posed (per The Caroline)is “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation.”
Some scholars have argued tenaciously that the customary right of anticipatory self defense articulated by the Caroline has been overridden by the specific language of Article 51 of the UN Charter. In this view, Article 51 fashions a new and more restrictive statement of self defense, one that relies on the literal qualification contained at Article 51, “….if an armed attack occurs.” Still, this particular interpretation ignores that international law cannot compel a state to wait until it absorbs a devastating or lethal first strike before acting to protect itself. Reminds Cicero: “The safety of the people shall be the highest law.”
There is more. The clarifying arguments against a more restrictive view of self-defense are reinforced by variously evident weaknesses and partisan prejudices of the United Nations regarding collective security operations against an aggressor. Both the UN Security Council and General Assembly refused to censure Israel for its 1967 preemptive attack against certain belligerent Arab states. This refusal signified implicit approval by the United Nations of Israel’s 1967 resort to anticipatory self-defense.
Before Israel could argue persuasively for any future instances of anticipatory self defense under international law, a strong case should first be made that Jerusalem had sought to exhaust all available remedies of peaceful settlement. Even a very broad view of anticipatory self-defense can never relieve any state of its peremptory obligations codified at Article 1 and at Article 2(3) of the UN Charter. Strictly speaking, these obligations ought not be binding on Israel because of the de facto and de jure condition of belligerency created by Iran, but the global community seems generally to have ignored this Iran-generated “state of war.”
In part, the origins of any such advice could have verifiable roots in ancient Israel. According to Grotius, citing to Deuteronomy in The Law of Prize and Booty, the Israelites were exempted from the issuance of warning announcements when dealing with previous enemies (what we might reference today as an ongoing or protracted war, precisely the condition that currently obtains between Israel and Iran.) The Israelites recounts Grotius, had been commanded by God to “refrain from making an armed attack against any people without first inviting that people, by formal notification, to establish peaceful relations ….” “Yet,” he continues, “the Israelites…
thought that this prohibition was inapplicable to many of the Canaanite tribes, inasmuch as they themselves had previously been attacked in war by the Canaanites.”
“Hence,” says Grotius, “we arrive at the following deduction”:
Once the formality of rerum repetitio [request for restitution or reparations] has been observed, and a decree on the case in question has been issued, no further proclamation or sentence is required for the establishment of that right which arises in the actual process of execution. For [and this is especially relevant to modern Israel] in such circumstances, one is not undertaking a new war but merely carrying forward a war already undertaken. Thus the fact that justice has once been demanded and not obtained, suffices to justify a return to natural law….
Looking over the many years of conflict between Israel and Arab states, Israel has generally defended its resorts to military force as measures of self help short of war. For the most part, such legal defense has had the effect of shifting the burden of jurisprudential responsibility for lawful behavior from the Arab states to Israel – an unreasonable shift, because it focuses blame unfairly upon the Jewish state. On occasion, Israel has also had to identify its resorts to military force as “reprisals,” a problematic concept under formal international law.
Israel and the Right of Reprisal
Under the prevailing Charter system of international law, the right of reprisal is normally contingent upon linked obligations of presumptive self-defense. So long as it chooses to ignore or downplay the declared condition of war announced by certain of its enemies as grounds for different legal justifications for resort to armed force, Israel would be well-advised to confine its legal rationale for all its military operations to “self-defense.” Ultimately, Israel must guard against not “only” aggression, but also genocide.
Genocide is a word with precise jurisprudential meaning. Codified at the Genocide Convention, a treaty that entered into force on January 12, 1951, it means any of a series of stipulated acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such….” The key to understanding and identifying genocide lies in the phrase, “intent to destroy.” This phrase, of course, is a variant of the wider mens rea or “criminal intent.” In the current matter of indispensable Israeli retaliations for egregious Hamas crimes (crimes mentored and supported by Iran), all Palestinian casualties are the legal result of Palestinian “human shields” or “perfidy.”
Today, Iran prepares for an all-or-nothing war with Israel, one it seemingly hopes will send the Jewish State “into oblivion.” This is much more than a matter of a clever negotiating stance or over-heated rhetoric, but it does not necessarily mean Iranian irrationality or abnormality. Though Tehran’s ongoing nuclear preparations are designed with “intent to destroy” Israel altogether, these preparations are unlikely to be guided by barbarism or malice per se.
Iranian “intent” is also substantially more tangible than “just” a matter of perceived geopolitical necessity. It is, in essence, a profoundlyreligious expectation. In Islam, the Prophet is said to have called for a Final Battle to annihilate the Jews. “The Hour,” [salvation] Mohammed is reported to have said, “will not come until you fight against the Jews; and the stone would say, `O Muslim! There is a Jew behind me; come and kill him.'”
Outside of non-Arab Iran, open support in the Arab world for genocide against “the Jews” remains a matter of historical record and planned policy. Even before establishment of the State of Israel, such support was displayed enthusiastically and unambiguously during the Holocaust. On November 28, 1941, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin, met in Berlin with Adolph Hitler. The purpose of this meeting, which followed Haj Amin’s organization of SS troops in Bosnia, was to ensure operational cooperation on “The Jewish Question.” It was essential, Haj Amin insisted, that all Jews be sent to countries “where they would find themselves under active control, for example, in Poland, in order thereby to protect oneself from their menace and avoid the consequent damage.”
Palestinian Arabs, Arab states and Iran have never publicly criticized the Mufti’s complicity in the Holocaust. During the 1950s and 1960s, Hitler remained an enormously popular figure in the Islamic world. Responses in this world to the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (1961) treated the Nazi mass murderer as a “martyr,” and congratulated him often for having “conferred a real blessing on humanity” by enacting a “final solution.”
Overall, the complex security situation is fraught not only with unprecedented danger, but also with considerable irony. Before Israel could ever begin to move seriously toward Palestinian sovereignty and independence, toward a “two-state solution,” any Iranian regime preparing for major war against Israel would have to reverse such annihilationist aims. But even without expressed Iranian genocidal intent, Israel could not possibly afford to confront the risks of a determinedly irredentist Islamic state carved from its own still living body. Always, as we have already learned from Cicero, “The safety of the people shall be the highest law.”
Israeli Preemption and “Palestine”
What if there is no near-term Israeli preemption against Iranian nuclear targets? Then, any UN codification of Palestine could affect Israel’s still-considered inclination to preempt. Because of Israel’s small size and corresponding lack of “strategic depth,” Jerusalem’s inclination to strike first at Iranian nuclear-related targets could become especially high.
Foer the immediate future, Israel should concentrate on shifting from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure. But how would Israel’s leadership know that taking the bomb out of the “basement” had actually improved its deterrence posture? To a certain extent, the credibility of Jerusalem’s nuclear threats would be contingent on the perceived severity of different provocations. It might be believable if Israel were to threaten nuclear reprisals for provocations that endanger the physical survival of the Jewish state, but it would almost certainly not be believable to threaten such reprisals for relatively minor territorial infringements or terrorist incursions.
For Israel there will be other problems. To function successfully, Israel’s nuclear deterrent, even after being removed from the “basement,” would have to remain secure from Iranian first strikes. Israel must also remain wary of “decapitation,” of losing the “head” of its military command and control system because of calculated Iranian aggressions. Should Iran be unpersuaded by Jerusalem’s conspicuous move away from deliberate nuclear ambiguity, it might initiate such strikes as could effectively immobilize Israel’s “order of battle.”
A Counter-force or Counter-value Nuclear Strategy
As opposed to a counter-value posture, an Israeli counter-force strategy would require a larger number of more accurate weapons, ordnance that could destroy even the most hardened Iranian targets. To a certain extent, if “selectively disclosed,” tilting toward counter-force could render Israeli nuclear threats more credible. This argument is based on the assumption that because the effects of such war-fighting weapons would be more precise and better controlled than counter-value options, they would also be more amenable to actual use. Though this particular trade-off would presumptively enhance Israel’s nuclear deterrence posture, it would also likely enlarge risks of a nuclear war.
Any increasingly open war-fighting Iranian postures are apt to encourage prompt Israeli preemption. If Israeli counterforce-targeted nuclear weapons are actually fired, the resultant escalation could produce extensive counter-value exchanges. Even if such escalation were averted, the “collateral” effects of counterforce detonations could also prove devastating.
In making its con tenuous nuclear choices, Israel will have to confront a paradox. Credible nuclear deterrence will always require “usable” nuclear weapons. If, after all, these weapons were patently inappropriate for achieving credible strategic objectives, they would not deter.
The more usable the weapons become in order to enhance nuclear deterrence, the more likely it is that they will sometimes be fired. While this extrapolation would seem to suggest the rationality of deploying the least-harmful forms of usable nuclear weapons, the likelihood that there would be no coordinated agreements with Iran on deployable nuclear weapons points to a different conclusion: Unless Israel calculates that the more harmful weapons would produce greater hazards for its own population as well as for target state Iran, there would exist no tactical benefit to opting for the least injurious usable weapons.
Moving Beyond Israel’s “Bomb in the Basement”
More than anything else, Jerusalem should have good reason to believe that its Iranian adversary already acknowledges Israel’s full-range nuclear capability. Currently, the most critical questions about Israel’s nuclear deterrent are not about capability, but willingness. In brief, how likely is it that Israel, after launching non-nuclear preemptive strikes against Iranian hard targets, would respond to enemy reprisals with a nuclear counter-retaliation?
To answer such a bewildering question, Israel’s decision-makers would first have to put themselves into the shoes of various enemy leaders. Will these leaders calculate that they can afford to retaliate against Israel, i.e., that such retaliation would not produce nuclear counter-retaliation? In asking this question, they would assume a non-nuclear retaliation against Israel. A nuclear retaliation, should it become technically possible, would invite a nuclear counter-retaliatory blow.
What should Israel conclude? This depends upon its decision-makers’ view of Iranian reciprocal judgments about Israel’s pertinent leaders. Do these judgments suggest a leadership that believes it can gain the upper hand with nuclear counter-retaliation? Or do they suggest a leadership that believes such counter-retaliation would plausibly bring upon Israel variously intolerable levels of destruction?
Depending upon the way in which the Iranian decision-makers interpret Israel’s authoritative perceptions, they will accept or reject the cost-effectiveness of a non-nuclear retaliation against Israel. This means that it is in Israel’s best interest to communicate the following strategic assumption to its enemies in Tehran: Israel would be acting rationally by responding to enemy non-nuclear reprisals to Israeli preemptive attacks with a nuclear counter-retaliation. The persuasiveness of this assumption could be enhanced if Iranian reprisals were to involve chemical and/or biological weapons.
Israeli Nuclear Deterrence and a Limited Nuclear War
In a world system that continues to lack any centralized structure, credible nuclear deterrence will be integral to Israel’s security posture. Here, Jerusalem should pay close attention to links between such deterrence and a perceived Israeli willingness to escalate to a “limited nuclear war,” Such attention would be indicated whether or not Israel managed to remain the sole nuclear adversary in this unique conflict dyad.
A limited nuclear war would contain two principal variants: (1) asymmetrical nuclear warfare, a variant wherein only Israel is nuclear; and (2) symmetrical nuclear warfare, a variant in which both Israel and Iran are nuclear but where (a) one side is presumptively “more powerful” and (b) one or both sides opt for discernible nuclear war limitations. Expectedly, regarding 2(a), the more powerful nuclear state would be Israel.
For # 1, the questions for Israel would concern the applicability of nuclear weapons and strategy to Iranian non-nuclear threats. A good place for working Israeli strategists to operationalize their refined strategic dialectic would be Iranian threats that are non-nuclear but unconventional. Most obvious here would be ascertainably credible threats of biological warfare, biological terrorism and/or electromagnet pulse (EMP) attack. Also included in the category of Iranian non-nuclear threats would be massive conventional missile attacks launched by Hezbollah or Houthi proxies.
Though non-nuclear, biological attacks could still produce grievously injurious or near-existential event outcomes for Israel. An EMP attack, even if severely disruptive for Israel, would not likely qualify by itself as rationale for an “ordinary” Israeli nuclear reprisal. On the other hand, it is not inherently unreasonable that Israel would use “limited nuclear war” ordnance and strategy to render such a reprisal believable and cost-effective.
Israeli policies of “limited” nuclear reprisal for biological terror attacks could exhibit compelling deterrent effectiveness against Iran. Still, such policies could be inapplicable to threats issuing from proxy terror groups that function without determinable state-sponsorship. In such more-or-less residual cases, Israel – lacking operationally suitable targets for calibrated nuclear targeting – would need to “fall back” on the more usual arsenals of counter-terrorist methods. Such tactical retrogressions could be required even if the particular terror group involved had autonomous nuclear capabilities. As to threats issuing from terror groups with tangible state support (e.g., Sunni Hamas; Shiite Hezbollah; Shiite Houthi), Israel could direct its nuclear deterrent threats directly to Iran,
There is more. Because jihadist terrorists could identify personal death in “holy war” as an expression of religious martyrdom, Israeli planners would have to draw upon continuously challenging psychological investigations. For Israel, an absolutely worst-case scenario would link martyrdom thinking to Iranian foreign policies.
What about Iranian conventional threats that would involve neither nuclear nor biological hazards, but were still prospectively massive enough to produce existential or near-existential harms to Israel? On its face, in such all-too-credible cases, ones which would likely include EMP ordnance, a prospective conventional aggressor in Tehran could reasonably calculate that Jerusalem would make good on some of its expressly “limited” nuclear threats. Here, however, Israel’s nuclear deterrent threat credibility would prove dependent upon previously-referenced doctrinal shifts away from the “bomb in the basement.”
Why? Any correct answer must hinge on Israel’s operational flexibility. In the absence of a prior shift away from deliberate nuclear ambiguity, Iran might not understand or accept that the State of Israel maintains a sufficiently broad array of measured and graduated nuclear retaliatory responses. Without such a confirmable array, Israeli nuclear deterrence could be sorely diminished and fatally degraded.
Additional nuances would surface. As a direct consequence of any presumptively diminished nuclear ambiguity, Jerusalem could signal its Iranian adversary that Israel would wittingly cross the nuclear retaliatory threshold to punish allacts of existential or near-existential aggressions. Using more explicitly military parlance, Israel’s shift to apt forms of “selective nuclear disclosure” would bolster Jerusalem’s success in “escalation dominance.”
Limited Nuclear War as a Law-Based Strategic Option
International law is not a suicide pact. No state, including Israel, is under any legal obligation to renounce access to nuclear weapons. In certain residual or last-resort circumstances, even actual use of nuclear weapons could be lawful, but only to the extent that it was consistent with codified and customary expectations of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity.
On July 8, 1996, the International Court of Justice at The Hague handed down its Advisory Opinion on “The Legality of the Threat or Use of Force of Nuclear Weapons.” The final paragraph of this Opinion concludes: “The threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law. However, in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of the state would be at stake.”
Symmetries and Asymmetries of Limited Nuclear War
For the immediate future, any onset of a limited nuclear war between Israel and Iran would be of “asymmetrical” form. At that relatively favorable point, Jerusalem would have no occasion to concern itself with Iranian achievement of “escalation dominance,” but only by its successful use of “limited nuclear war” threats to keep Iran non-nuclear. Because such use could also impact assorted non-nuclear threats from Iran, Jerusalem will need to continuously assess the potential nuclear deterrence advantages regarding (1) biological war or terror; (2) EMP attacks on major Israeli cities; and (3) massive conventional attacks.
In a manifestly worst case of “asymmetrical nuclear war,” Iran’s already-nuclear North Korean ally would engage the Jewish State in direct nuclear warfare. Though still “asymmetrical” in terms of war origin, such a scenario could come to represent de facto equivalence between actual nuclear fighting forces of Israel and North Korea or even de facto nuclear superiority of Pyongyang.
For Israel’s military intelligence directorates, there could be no science-based assessment of relevant probabilities. Any such assessment would lack historical precedent. In science, authentic statements of probability must always be drawn from the determinable frequency of relevant past events.
Finally, at some point and for diverse reasons, a nuclear war involving Israel and Iran could be “symmetrical.” Though it is certainly in Jerusalem’s best interest to prevent such a unique existential threat at almost any bearable cost, there is no logically irrefutable way to absolutely ensure such prevention. It follows that Israel will need to plan systematically for “escalation dominance” with an already-nuclear state adversary (including Iran’s increasingly capable terrorist surrogates), a process that should include selected “limited nuclear war” options.
With informed intellectual reliability, Israeli planners will need to establish Iran’s expected nuclear “firebreaks.” As helpful analogue, these planners will want to study differences between the United States and Russia regarding “triggers” for crossing from one military threshold to another. Extrapolating from Vladimir Putin’s recent and unambiguous declarations on nuclear warfighting, Moscow still views tactical or theater nuclear weapons merely as incrementally continuous with conventional, chemical and biological ordnance, not as the critical firebreak between conventional and nuclear weapons.
Historically, Putin’s current nuclear posture closely resembles that of the former Soviet Union. From this recognizable standpoint, any Israeli or Iranian resort to nuclear warfighting would be “limited” as long as it remained non-strategic. Conceptually, however, the United States has always taken a contrary position that the critical military firebreak exists between conventional weapons in any form and any level of nuclear ordnance, tactical or “theatre” as well as strategic.
Summing up, Israel’s calculations concerning a prospective nuclear war with Iran will be stunningly complex and largely unprecedented. Nonetheless, such calculations are indispensable to Israel’s physical survival, and should be undertaken with conspicuously conscientious note of nuclear war options. Candidly, this is not a task for politicians of any ideological stripe or for the authoritative professional class of “official” military planners. In essence, it could be grasped only by a tiny number of “high thinkers” (a term that goes back to the manifestly non–military and pre-nuclear genre of American Transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson), specially gifted scholars of “Manhattan Project” stature.
There is of course a key difference. This time, the objective would not be to build a spectacularly advanced weapon, but rather to figure out how a perpetually beleaguered mini-state could best adapt an extant “ultimate weapon” to deterrence-based strategies of self-preservation. Extending Proverbs, “wise counsel” will be needed by Israel not to “make thy war” (a manifestly “second-choice” option), but to prevent or limit an already-foreseeable nuclear war.
The bottom-line question is plain: Can threats of a limited nuclear war enhance Israel’s overall strategic deterrence? At first hearing, it would seem to make sense that a limited nuclear war would flow more-or-less seamlessly from any Israeli use of a Samson Option, and that any such use would necessarily stem from Jerusalem’s prior shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity.” At the same time, estimating probabilities of unique events is an inherently non-scientific enterprise, and a limited nuclear war would be without historical precedent. No frequencies of limited nuclear war are presently known or knowable, and no related systems of nuclear deterrence could be tested without inviting catastrophe ipso facto.
A related problem for Israeli thinkers and planners will have to do with variable notions of “victory.” Though it is certainly correct that such notions always assume great importance in the political sphere, they become far more problematic in the analytic or intellectual sphere. Histories of warfare generally confirm that winning is not always well-defined or readily discernible. Israel’s Iranian enemy, in the fashion of most states (both adversarial and friendly) has plural strategic goals which could sometimes be mutually exclusive or change during the course of a particular conflict.
All things considered, the tangible deterrence benefits of limited nuclear war threats by Israel are not logically or mathematically calculable. Nonetheless, in a strategic context of continuous uncertainty, these threats could still prove cost-effective. This means that they would be “net-gainful.”
Furthermore, it is possible that Israel could be “too successful” in its resort to “Samson threats” of a limited nuclear war. By rendering such threats increasingly believable, Jerusalem would be making more likely an actual limited nuclear war. Though ironic, this paradoxical argument assuredly “makes sense.”
What are pertinent final specifics of this Israeli deterrence issue? Following an imperative and prompt shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure,” Jerusalem should proceed to clarify its (1) Samson Option as an adjunct to strategic deterrence (not as a last-resort spasm of visceral revenge); and (2) Samson-derived preparations for a limited nuclear war. For the moment, at least, (3) any such war would be “asymmetrical” and (4) Israel would represent the sole nuclear combatant. Here, Jerusalem’s threats of a limited nuclear war would not be designed to produce “victory” through nuclear war fighting, but to (5) ensure Israel’s intra-war advantage by supporting “escalation dominance” and (6) keep Iran verifiably non-nuclear.
For Israel, the primary “battlefield” will always be intellectual or analytical. This challenging observation is even truer today than in the mini-state’s persistently difficult past. Authoritative decision-makers in Jerusalem will now need to seek out “wise counsel” on the potential deterrence benefits stemming from threat-dynamics of a limited nuclear war. This obligation is exceptionally time-urgent.
Rationality and Non-Rationality in Strategic Decision-Making
All these referenced calculations assume rationality. In the absence of calculations that compare the costs and benefits of strategic alternatives, what will happen in the Middle East must remain only a matter of conjecture. The prospect of non-rational strategic judgments in the region is always present, especially as the influence of Islamist/Jihadist ideology remains determinative among Iranian decisional elites.
To the extent that Israel might one day believe itself confronted with non-rational enemies, particularly ones with highly destructive weapons in their arsenals, its incentive to preempt could sometime become overwhelming. Should such enemies be believed to hold nuclear weapons, Israel might even decide, rationally, to launch a nuclear preemption against these enemy weapons. This would appear to be the only plausible circumstance in which a rational Israeli preemptive strike could be nuclear.
Iran should understand from all this that there are conditions wherein Jerusalem might decide to use its nuclear weapons. These conditions concern the warding off intolerable prospects of total defeat. Faced with imminent collective destruction, Israel’s leaders would do whatever is needed to survive as a Jewish state, including a resort to nuclear retaliation, nuclear counter-retaliation, nuclear preemption, or nuclear war-fighting.
Understanding Nuclear War Risks
What exactly would a nuclear war “mean”? In short, even the most limited nuclear war would signal catastrophe. The immediate effects of atomic explosion, thermal radiation, nuclear radiation, and blast damage would create intolerably wide swaths of death and devastation. In this connection, informed observers should remember the early prediction of theorist Herman Kahn in Thinking about the Unthinkable (1962): “The survivors would envy the dead.”
Ex hypothesi, victims would suffer flash and flame burns. Retinal burns could occur in the eyes of persons at distances of several hundred miles from the explosion. People could be crushed by collapsing buildings or torn by flying glass. Others would fall victim to raging firestorms and conflagrations. Fall-out injuries would include whole-body radiation injury, produced by penetrating, hard gamma radiation, superficial radiation burns produced by soft radiations, and injuries produced by deposits of radioactive substances within the body.
In the aftermath, medical facilities that might still exist would be stressed beyond endurance. Water supplies would become unusable as a result of all-out contamination. Housing and shelter could be unavailable for survivors. Transportation and communication could break down to almost prehistoric levels. Overwhelming food shortages could become the rule, even for years.
As the countries involved would have entered into war as modern industrial economies, their networks of highly interlocking and interdependent exchange systems would now be shattered. Emergency fire and police services could be decimated altogether. Systems dependent upon electrical power might cease to function. Severe trauma would occasion widespread disorientation and psychological disorders for which there would be no therapeutic services.
With the passage of time, many of the survivors could expect an increased incidence of degenerative diseases and various kinds of cancer. They might also expect premature death, impairment of vision and high probabilities of sterility. Among the survivors of Hiroshima, for example, an increased incidence of leukemia and cancer of the lung, stomach, breast, ovary, and uterine cervix was widely documented.
None of this is meant to suggest that an Israeli defensive first-strike would necessarily give rise to a nuclear war. In certain conceivable circumstances, Israel’s resort to a non-nuclear preemption might even represent the optimal way to prevent a nuclear war.
Plus, ca change, plus c’est la même chose. “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” Despite heroic steps to preserve the “Third Temple Commonwealth,” the current State of Israel remains subject to incessantly grave threats of harm. At some now foreseeable point, Israel, notwithstanding international law’s formal presumption of juridical solidarity between states, could have to face a fully nuclear and possibly non-rational Iran. Yet, even a fully-nuclear rational Iran would present Israel with wholly unacceptable hazards.
Israeli Diplomacy and Ballistic Missile Defense at the Eleventh Hour
At this late stage, especially during an already ongoing pre-nuclear war, realistic defensive actions by Israel against Iran may not require any “bolt-from-the-blue” resort to anticipatory self-defense. But Jerusalem will need to clarify and enhance its nuclear deterrence policy with special attention to a recognizably survivable and penetration-capable strategic retaliatory force. It will also be important to convincingly communicate to Tehran that Israeli nuclear forces are operationally usable and would be used as a complement to (not as an alternative) to BMD interceptions. This core communication should follow a prior shift to “selective nuclear disclosure” and a previously clarified “Samson Option.”
In the volatile Middle East, strategic deterrence is a “game” that sane national leaders may have to play, but it ought always to be a game of strategy, not merely one of chance. In Jerusalem, this means, among other things, a continuing willingness to respect the full range of doctrinal complexity – both its own military doctrines and those of Iran – and a conspicuous willingness to forge ahead with reciprocally complex security policies. Inevitably, to successfully influence the choices that prospectively fearsome adversaries could make vis-à-vis Israel, Jerusalem will immediately need to underscore that (a) its conventional and nuclear deterrence are seamlessly intersecting, and that (b) Israel stands ready to counter enemy attacks at every conceivable level of military confrontation.
There remain some important and closely-related inferences.
Whether Israel’s intersecting and overlapping deterrent processes are geared primarily toward conventional or nuclear threats, their success will ultimately depend on the expected rationality of its Iranian enemies. In those residual cases where decisional rationality appears implausible, Jerusalem could find itself under considerable pressure to strike preemptively. If Jerusalem’s expected responses were to be judged rational in themselves, they might then need to include a conclusive and operationally-reliable option for anticipatory self-defense.
For Israel, regional conflict prospects should be curtailed at the very lowest possible levels of controlled engagement and be governed by defensible considerations of “military necessity.” Under no circumstances should Israel ever find itself having to preempt an already-nuclear Iranian adversary. To prevent such unacceptable but imaginable circumstances should express Jerusalem’s absolutely overriding security obligation.
There is more. Even the most meticulous plans for preventing a deliberately-inflicted nuclear conflict would not automatically remove all attendant dangers of an inadvertent or accidental nuclear war. While an accidental nuclear war would necessarily be inadvertent, there are certain forms of inadvertent nuclear war that would not necessarily be caused by mechanical, electrical or computer accident. These particular but still-consequential forms of unintentional nuclear conflict could represent the unexpected result of sheer misjudgment or simple miscalculation, whether created as singular error by one or both sides to a particular two-party nuclear crisis escalation, or by still unforeseen “synergies” arising between singular miscalculations.
Israel’s Epistemological Security Challenge: Relentless Unpredictability
It follows from all this that the only predictable aspect of a forthcoming nuclear conflict crisis involving Israel will be its unpredictability. This ironic conclusion implies a relentless Israeli obligation to remain comprehensively vigilant about Iranian capabilities/intentions and suitably cautious about Jerusalem’s capacity to manage variously interrelated existential challenges. Though Iran is not yet nuclear, it remains altogether conceivable that a major security crisis with that nuclearizing adversary could soon involve the explicit threat or actual use of Israeli nuclear armaments. The tangible results of such unprecedented involvement would depend in part on the precise extent of any prior Israeli nuclear disclosure.
What is already required is an aptly far-reaching Israeli appreciation of decisional complexity and, correspondingly, a willingness to approach all intersecting issues from the standpoint of capable intellectual analysis. For Israel, as for the United States, there should be no acceptable place for shallow political theatre or empty political witticism. In the best of all possible worlds there would be no need for any considerations of preemption/anticipatory self-defense, but such a rational and harmonious world remains a long way off.
For Israel, the prime inheritor of Genesis, global chaos augurs severe and paradoxical kinds of fragility. Potentially, despite its relative power position, Israel could become the principal victim of rampant regional disorder. In view of the far-reaching interrelatedness of all world politics – everything here is “system” – this victimization could arise even if the verifiably precipitating events of major war or terror were to occur in other geographic regions.
“Spill-Overs” from Accelerated Superpower Arms Racing
There remains one final observation concerning Israel-Iran nuclear interactions. In one scenario, the destabilizing effects of an accelerating US-Russia arms race could “spill over” to the Middle East. More specifically, in such a worrisome narrative, still-growing disagreements between Washington and Moscow over Ukraine could spark a nuclear confrontation or actual nuclear exchange.
Though not directly related to Israel or Iran, certain systemic elements of either outcome could lower the operational threshold of bilateral nuclear engagement in the Middle East. Should these systemic interactions prove synergistic – interactions, where the “whole” discoverable effect must be greater than the sum of its “parts” – such lowering, could be dramatic and far-reaching. For designated Israeli decision-makers, the core conclusion is this: In figuring its optimal defense strategies vis-à-vis Iran – strategies that are both cost-effective and realistically compliant with international law – Jerusalem’s analytic attention should be systemic, not just be directed within the Middle East.
Strategic interactions between Israel and Iran should never be analyzed in vacuo. In our persistently Hobbesian “state of nature,” superpower arms racing (now exacerbated by ongoing Russian crimes against Ukraine) could impact both Iranian nuclear weapons development and Israeli responses. Whatever the calculable particulars of any such impact, the overriding strategic and jurisprudential watchword for Israel should remain constant. This word is intellect or mind. It ought never to be politics, whether domestic or international.
In a summarizing analysis, all aspects of Israeli nuclear deterrence, especially the potentially existential threat from Iran, will be affected by “Westphalian” anarchy. In the continuing absence of a “common power” (this means the centralizing power of collective security or world government), Jerusalem will need to make uniquely complex determinations and critical policy decisions. Acknowledging that the most prudent national defense assumptions should anticipate world-system enlargements of “centrifugal forces ,”Jerusalem should move promptly to security postures of (1) “selective nuclear disclosure” and (2) “Samson Option” enhancements.
Indispensable Israeli policy shifts away from “bomb in the basement” (“deliberate nuclear ambiguity”) postures could be undertaken via various back-channel communications with Iran. But this nuanced orientation would ignore a prospectively vital understanding: In the untested arenas of nuclear deterrence, Israel’s threat credibility vis-à-vis Iran could depend as much on intended public visibility as on plausibly expected harms.
Whatever its planned nuclear deterrence considerations, Jerusalem will have to base its contextual assumptions on the seventeenth-century insights of English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. By definition, in a world political system founded on Realpolitik, there is “no common power.” Above all else, this means basing Israel’s national survival decisions on strategic self-reliance. This does not mean refusing the tangible assistance of reliable and powerful allies (most obviously the United States), but ensuring that all final war judgments concerning Iran support the Jewish State’s undiluted existential requirements.
Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971), and is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue. His twelfth book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy, was published in 2016. His other writings have been published in Harvard National Security Journal; Yale Global Online; World Politics (Princeton); Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; Israel Defense; Parameters: Journal of the US Army War College; Special Warfare; Oxford University Press; The Jerusalem Post; Infinity Journal; BESA Perspectives; US News & World Report; The Hill; and The Atlantic.
His Terrorism and Global Security: The Nuclear Threat (Westview, first edition, 1979) was one of the first scholarly books to deal specifically with nuclear
