Even if Iran's nukes never get slipped--through design or error--to terrorists who would use one against us in a heart beat, Iran with nukes is a threat to us.
How do we deter nuts with nukes when they already engage in terrorism against us and our allies when we have nukes (and conventional superiority) already?
Ponder this future:
This doesn't mean that regional adversaries will be spoiling for a fight with their neighbors or the United States once they acquire a nuclear arsenal. The risks of taking on the world's most powerful state will remain substantial. So the military superiority that the United States enjoys, in both conventional and nuclear forces, will remain valuable as a deterrent to aggression.
That said, these new nuclear adversaries may be more likely to challenge U.S. interests and probe the limits of U.S. tolerance. Thus, should conflict occur, it would carry costs and risks for the United States and its allies that are exponentially greater than those associated with conflicts that have occurred since 1990. This reality will limit U.S. freedom of action: Military operations that have become mainstays of the U.S. military repertoire, such as large-scale invasions leading to regime change or intensive air campaigns aimed at crippling the adversary, are likely to be off the table.
Instead, U.S. policy makers will be compelled to reacquaint themselves with stratagems that were prevalent during the Cold War: limited war and escalation management. In doing so, U.S. and allied decision makers in regional crises should seek to devise policy options that avoid putting the enemy leadership in a position where nuclear use seems to them to be the least bad option available.
We'll deter "aggression" by nuclear-armed nut regimes but we'll face foes who will "challenge U.S. interests and probe the limits of U.S. tolerance?"
Good grief, the latter is aggression.
The Iranians are already willing to kill American troops in Iraq (and Afghanistan to a lesser extent) and take on the task of attacking our allies from the Gulf to Egypt (and don't leave out Israel). Right now they need to consider the limits of our tolerance when all we have to calculate is the price of a conventional tangle with them.
What will Iran be willing to do when our calculation has to consider a nuclear exchange? Even a nuclear exhange we technically win (we lose Charleston and Los Angeles but wipe out all of Iran--we "win"?)?
Right now we actually place some limits on Iranian terrorism because they know if they go too far we will invade. Two examples on their border back up this threat.
But what happens to the limits of American tolerance when Iran has nukes and an invasion of Iran to overthrow their regime is no longer on the table except for after Iran already uses nuclear weapons?
A nuclear attack is not the only bad thing that can plague us if Iran gets atomic weapons.
What a wonderful decade we're having. And what a wonderful one the next decade will be.
