Defence Now: Europe Learns Intentions Require Capabilities

The spectacular raid on Fordow nuclear complex showed Europe the limits of multilateral diplomacy when confronted with irreconcilable demands. Almost a quarter century of negotiations failed to find a compromise between Iran’s determination to enrich uranium far beyond the needs of a civilian nuclear power programme and the desire of the EU-3 — France, Germany and the UK — to halt such enrichment. Continued negotiations only served to suspend the prospect of military action against Iran, with the added bonus of regular infusions of cash and sanctions relief. Deals announced in 2004, 2009, 2012 and 2015 never substantially interfered with Iranian objectives, but did unlock billions of dollars in relief, including the notorious $400 million in used notes airlifted on pallets to the Islamic Republic. There weren’t many good reasons to give the mullahs $400 million in cash, but there were plenty of bad ones, Hezbollah and Hamas being two. 

Europe vested its hopes in what might be termed the “debutante party” school of diplomacy: that bringing a rogue state into the club of respectable nations and showering it with all the benefits of trade and aid could fundamentally change the nature of the regime. After all, didn’t all the luscious material goods of post-war prosperity and economic integration banish the demons of European militarism? Why yes they did, but only because of the unspoken capacity of an American occupation army to remove the possibility of military aggression between its subordinate allies. The debutante party approach works only if there is the live prospect of a devastating “cooperate or else” solution looming over the proceedings.

Intentions require capabilities if they are to be animated in a useful way. The mullahs knew full well that the EU-3 had no military capacity to thwart their nuclear ambitions, and that therefore their circumvention of the successive agreements brokered by the Europeans would result only in frosty diplomatic communiques. Those B-2 stealth bombers sitting quietly at Whiteman Air Force Base in rural Missouri represented a latent capacity to end Teheran’s enrichment objectives, but one that the mullahs wagered would never be used. Hadn’t they watched successive American presidents shy away from military action? Hadn’t they managed to snooker Obama into an agreement that barred inspectors from military sites and placed no limits on their ballistic missile program? Why yes they had, and so betting that even a bombastic second term Trump would decline to use awesome means at his disposal seemed reasonable. Ayatollah Khamenei can now contemplate his bad bet amid the smoking rubble of Fordow and Nantanz.