Frederic Wehrey

A Nuclear Iran: The Reactions of Neighbours

The consequences of the apparent Iranian drive to acquire a nuclear-weapons capability depend, in large measure, on the reactions of its neighbours.1 Such reactions could span a broad spectrum: fro...

Containing Iran?: Avoiding a Two-Dimensional Strategy in a Four-Dimensional Region

One of the most significant effects of the Iraq war is Iran’s seemingly unprecedented influence and freedom of action in regional affairs, presenting new strategic challenges for the United States and its regional allies. Although Middle Eastern governments and the United States are in general agreement about diagnosing Tehran’s activism as the war’s most alarming consequence, they disagree on how to respond. The conventional U.S. view suggests that a new Arab consensus has been prompted to neutralize and counter Tehran’s rising influence across the region in Gaza, the Gulf, Iraq, and Lebanon. Parallels to Cold War containment are clear. Indeed, whether consciously or unwittingly, U.S. policy has been replicating features of the Cold War model by trying to build a ‘‘moderate’’ Sunni Arab front to bolster U.S. efforts to counter Iranian influence. Despite signals that the Obama administration intends to expand U.S. engagement with Iran, the foundations of containment are deeply rooted and engender bipartisan backing from Congress. Even if the Obama administration desires to shift U.S. policy toward Iran, containment policies will be difficult to overturn quickly; if engagement with Iran fails, reliance on containment will only increase. The containment strategy seems to be founded on what many U.S. officials and analysts perceive as one of the Iraq war’s few silver linings: the removal of

Coping with a Nuclearizing Iran

Abstract : Although Iran poses one of the most-significant foreign policy challenges to U.S. interests in the Middle East, there are surprisingly few analyses of Iran that integrate the different facets of this challenge and formulate a comprehensive strategy toward this critical country. Although a plethora of studies have examined the nuclear issue or a particular policy instrument for dealing with it (e.g., engagement, sanctions, deterrence, or a military strike),1 other aspects of the Iranian challenge, as well as the broader regional context, are often ignored. Comprehensive studies of Iran exist, including several by RAND authors, but none offers an integrative strategy that considers critical trade-offs and necessary sequencing. Moreover, many studies on the subject are either long term, assuming a world with a nuclear-armed Iran,2 or extremely short term, focusing almost exclusively on how to stop Iran from acquiring such weapons.3 Thus, a real gap exists in formulating a comprehensive U.S. strategy toward Iran in the medium term that is, over the next five to ten years one that does not begin or end when Iran acquires a nuclear weapon capability, that seeks to advance all the main U.S. interests, and seeks to harness all possible regional and global forces in its support.