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ABSTRACT
This paper examines the covert campaign against Iran’s nuclear program and the implications it holds for both the theory and the practice of counterproliferation. The paper evaluates the degree to which covert action succeeded in producing meaningful delays and disruptions to Iran’s nuclear progress, in enhancing U.S. diplomatic leverage, and in helping to compel Iranian leaders to accept limits and restrictions on their country’s nuclear activities. More broadly, the paper analyzes the merits and viability of covert counterproliferation strategies, including how to define and measure the effectiveness of covert counterproliferation activity and how and under what conditions covert counterproliferation can be effective.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Stefano Recchia and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 For the main text of the July 2015 agreement, see http://iranmatters.belfercenter.org/files/iranproject/files/jcpoa.pdf. In May 2018, the United States withdrew from the agreement.
2 David E. Sanger, ‘Diplomacy and Sanctions, Yes. Left Unspoken on Iran? Sabotage’, New York Times, 20 January 2016. On Israel’s sabotage and covert campaign against Iraq’s nuclear program, see Uri Sadot, ‘Osirak and the Counter-Proliferation Puzzle’, Security Studies 25/4 (2016), 646–76. Sabotage and covert action have not traditionally been central features of U.S. nonproliferation policy. Compare, for example, Nicholas L. Miller, Stopping the Bomb: The Sources and Effectiveness of US Nonproliferation Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2018).
3 For a discussion of the ‘quasi-war’ with Iran, see David Crist, The Twilight War: The Secret History of America’s Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (New York: Penguin 2012), Ch. 26; Jay Solomon, The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals That Reshaped the Middle East (New York: Random House 2016). For a review of some books that examine various aspects of the covert campaign against Iran’s nuclear program, see David Vielhaber and Philipp C. Bleek, ‘Shadow Wars: Covert Operations Against Iran’s Nuclear Program’, The Nonproliferation Review 19/3 (November 2012), 481–91.
4 On the use of covert counterproliferation in recent years beyond Iran, see David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, ‘Trump Inherits Secret Cyberwar on North Korea’, New York Times, 5 March 2017.
5 On the attack against the Osirak nuclear reactor, see Dan Reiter, ‘Preventive Attacks against Nuclear Programs and the “Success” at Osiraq’, The Nonproliferation Review 12/2 (July 2005), 355–71; Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer, ‘Revisiting Osirak: Preventive Attacks and Nuclear Proliferation Risks’, International Security, 36/1 (Summer 2011), 101–32. For recent work on the connection between secrecy and coercion, see Austin Long, ‘Intelligence and Coercion: A Neglected Connection’, in Kelly M. Greenhill and Peter Krause (eds.), Coercion: The Power to Hurt in International Politics (New York: OUP 2018), 33–52.
6 Bruce D. Berkowitz and Allan E. Goodman, ‘The Logic of Covert Action’, The National Interest 51 (1998), 38–46.
7 On the strengths and weaknesses of covert action in general, see William J. Daugherty, ‘Covert Action: Strengths and Weaknesses’, in Loch K. Johnson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence (Oxford: OUP 2010), 608–28.
8 Scott Shane, ‘Adversaries of Iran Said to Be Stepping Up Covert Actions’, New York Times, 11 January 2012; David E. Sanger, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power (New York: Crown 2012), Ch. 6; Yaakov Katz and Yoaz Hendel, Israel vs. Iran: The Shadow Wars (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books 2012); Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, Spies against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars (Sea Cliff, NY: Levant Books 2014), Ch. 1; Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations (New York: Random House 2018), Ch. 34.
9 Ronen Bergman, ‘Will Israel Attack Iran?’ New York Times Magazine, 29 January 2012; Bergman, Rise and Kill First. According to Bergman, Mossad compiled a list of 15 key Iranian scientists as targets for assassination.
10 Israel’s first targeted killing occurred in 1956, when Mossad agents killed Mustafa Hafez, the head of the Egyptian secret service. Ami Pedahzur, The Israeli Secret Services and the Struggle Against Terrorism (NY: Columbia UP 2009), 26.
11 On Israel’s history of using assassination against its enemies, see Pedahzur, The Israeli Secret Services and the Struggle Against Terrorism, Ch. 1.
12 David M. Halbfinger and Ronen Bergman, ‘Eyes on Israel As Bomb Kills Missile Maker’, New York Times, 7 August 2018.
13 Bergman, ‘Will Israel Attack Iran?’ U.S. and Israeli officials also actively sought to persuade Iranian scientists to defect to the West.
14 Bergman, Rise and Kill First. Hayden said: ‘this program has no American relationship whatsoever. It is illegal, and we [the CIA] never would have recommended it or advocated such a thing’.
15 William Tobey, ‘Nuclear Scientists as Assassination Targets’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 68/1 (January/February 2012), 61–69; Ali Vaez and Charles Ferguson, ‘Killing Iranian Nuclear Scientists Is Counterproductive and Wrong’, TheAtlantic.com, 13 January 2012, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/killing-iranian-nuclear-scientists-is-counterproductive-and-wrong/251340/; Siegfried S. Hecker and Abbas Milani, ‘Ending the Assassination and Oppression of Iranian Nuclear Scientists’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 71/1 (January/February 2015), 46–52.
16 On the international norm against assassination, see Ward Thomas, ‘Norms and Security: The Case of International Assassination’, International Security 25/1 (Summer 2000), 105–33. See also Michael L. Gross, Moral Dilemmas of Modern War: Torture, Assassination, and Blackmail in an Age of Asymmetric Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2010), Ch. 5.
17 Ronen Bergman, ‘Bracing for Revenge’, New York Times, 18 February 2008.
18 Tobey, ‘Nuclear Scientists as Assassination Targets’, 65. See also Juliette Kayyem, ‘Iran Scientist Assassinations Serve No End’, Boston Globe, 14 January 2012; Sharon Weinberger, ‘Murders Unlikely to Slow Iran’s Nuclear Efforts’, Nature 481/7381 (2012), 249.
19 David E. Sanger and Rick Gladstone, ‘Iranian Says Nuclear Sites Were Targets of Explosions’, New York Times, 18 September 2012. Fereydoon Abbasi, the head of Iran’s nuclear agency and who himself narrowly escaped assassination, said that the IAEA had been infiltrated by ‘terrorists and saboteurs’.
20 Ian J. Stewart and Nick Gillard, ‘Iran’s Illicit Procurement Activities: Past, Present, and Future’, 24 July 2015, http://www.projectalpha.eu/proliferation/item/428-iran-s-illicit-procurement-past-present-and-future. There are various pathways for how sabotage and covert action can delay or disrupt (either directly or indirectly) a country’s nuclear program. Sabotage can destroy important chokepoints for the production of nuclear parts or material. Indirectly, sabotage may lead to changes in states’ production strategies, make foreign suppliers less willing to provide parts or equipment, or lead to enhanced inspections. Cf. Sarah E. Kreps and Matthew Fuhrmann, ‘Attacking the Atom: Does Bombing Nuclear Facilities Affect Proliferation?’ Journal of Strategic Studies 34/2 (April 2011), 162, on how bombing nuclear facilities affect proliferation.
21 On the nature and scope of foreign sanctions imposed against Iran, see Alireza Nader, ‘Influencing Iran’s Decisions on the Nuclear Program’, in Etel Solingen (ed.), Sanctions, Statecraft, and Nuclear Proliferation (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2012), 211–31; Suzanne Maloney, Iran’s Political Economy since the Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2015), Ch. 9.
22 Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz, Fallout: The True Story of the CIA’s Secret War on Nuclear Trafficking (New York: Free Press 2011).
23 Quoted in James Blitz, Roula Khalaf, and Daniel Dombey, ‘Suggestions of Iran Nuclear Sabotage’, Financial Times, 22 July 2010.
24 In one high profile attempt to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, the CIA used a Swiss family of engineers as moles for the agency. See David Albright, Peddling Peril: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America’s Enemies (New York: Free Press 2010), Ch. 6; Collins and Frantz, Fallout, Ch. 1. See also William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, ‘C.I.A. Secrets Could Surface in Swiss Nuclear Case’, New York Times, 23 December 2010.
25 Ronen Bergman, The Secret War with Iran: The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle Against the World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist Power (New York: Free Press 2008).
26 Eli Lake, ‘Operation Sabotage’, The New Republic, 14 July 2010, http://www.tnr.com/article/world/75952/operation-sabotage?page=0,1.
27 Quoted in Lake, ‘Operation Sabotage’.
28 Sanger, Confront and Conceal, 144–45. Moghaddam was called ‘the Werner [sic] von Braun of Iran’s missile program’. Crist, The Twilight War, 553. While the cause of the explosion, and whether it was an accident or an act of sabotage, is still unknown, years of sanctions may also have played a role in these and similar explosions. Iran’s struggle to acquire equipment and spare parts for its missile program created dangerous working conditions.
29 Stimson Center, ‘Covert Operations in Iran’, 30 December 2010, http://www.stimson.org/spotlight/covert-operations-in-iran/.
30 Iraq purchased from France the cores for a nuclear reactor it was building. In April 1979, Mossad operatives blew up a warehouse in the French port town of La Seyne-sur-Mer that was storing the cores, which were about to be shipped to the Tammuz-Osirak reactor just outside Baghdad. The shipment was delayed for only six months while the cores were repaired. Jeffrey T. Richelson, Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea (New York: Norton 2006), 321. In 1981, when the reactor was set to go online, Israel destroyed it in a preventive military attack.
31 James Risen, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (NY: Free Press 2006), Ch. 9.
32 Sanger, Confront and Conceal, 197–203. See also Jon R. Lindsay, ‘Stuxnet and the Limits of Cyber Warfare’, Security Studies 22/3 (2013), 365–404; Kim Zetter, Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon (NY: Crown 2014).
33 Ralph Langner, ‘Stuxnet’s Secret Twin’, Foreign Policy, 19 November 2013, http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/11/19/stuxnets-secret-twin/.
34 Zetter, Countdown to Zero Day.
35 A confidential study that made its way through U.S. national laboratories estimated that the worm slowed Iran’s nuclear progress by one to two years. See David E. Sanger, ‘America’s Deadly Dynamics with Iran’, New York Times, 5 November 2011.
36 Sanger, Confront and Conceal, 206.
37 John Markoff, ‘New Worm By Creators of Stuxnet Is Suspected’, New York Times, 19 October 2011.
38 James P. Farwell and Rafal Rohozinski, ‘Stuxnet and the Future of Cyber War’, Survival 53/1 (February-March 2011), 23–40.
39 Quoted in David Rothkopf, ‘The Obama Paradox’, Foreign Policy, 4 June 2012, http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/06/04/the-obama-paradox/.
40 For cautionary views of the use of covert action to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, see Ted Galen Carpenter, ‘Be Very Cautious About Covert Action Against Iran’, The National Interest, 17 November 2011, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-sceptics/be-very-cautious-about-covert-action-against-iran-6170; Stephen M. Walt, ‘The “Silent War” with Iran’, Foreign Policy, 7 December 2011, http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/12/07/the-silent-war-with-iran/.
41 Colum Lynch, ‘Shutting Down Iran’s Nuclear Smugglers’, Foreign Policy, 1 July 2015, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/01/shutting-down-irans-tehran-nuclear-smugglers-security-council-united-nations/.
42 See Valerie Lincy and Gary Milhollin, ‘Iran’s Nuclear Potential before the Implementation of the Nuclear Agreement’, Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, 18 November 2015, https://www.iranwatch.org/our-publications/articles-reports/irans-nuclear-timetable. Though it is possible that Iran’s nuclear program would be even more advanced than it is now in the absence of sabotage and covert action.
43 James Dobbins, Alireza Nader, Dalia Dassa Kaye, and Frederic Wehrey, Coping with a Nuclearizing Iran (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation 2011), 86.
44 Christopher Ford, ‘Nonproliferation and Covert War: Iran and Beyond’, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2011, http://www.hudson.org/research/9041-nonproliferation-and-covert-war-iran-and-beyond; Walter Pincus, ‘GOP Candidates Embrace Covert Action in Iran’, Washington Post, 13 November 2011, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/gop-candidates-embrace-covert-action-in-iran/2011/11/13/gIQAQqGEJN_story.html?utm_term=.318e1e7780c3; Andrew Cummings, ‘A Covert Campaign Is the Only Way to Stop Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions’, The Guardian, 12 January 2012.
45 Quoted in Mike Shuster, ‘Inside the United States’ Secret Sabotage of Iran’, NPR, 9 May 2011, http://www.npr.org/2011/05/09/135854490/inside-the-united-states-secret-sabotage-of-iran.
46 On how a covert attack on a potential proliferator can cause compounding problems, see Sadot, ‘Osirak and the Counter-Proliferation Puzzle’.
47 On some of the challenges a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program would pose, see Colin H. Kahl, ‘Not Time to Attack Iran: Why War Should Be a Last Resort’, Foreign Affairs 91/2 (March/April 2012), 166–73.
48 Quoted in Rothkopf, ‘The Obama Paradox’.
49 Kenneth Katzman, ‘Iran Sanctions’, Congressional Research Service, 28 November 2018.
50 Covert action may also be considered a success when compared to the counterfactual scenario in which Iran did not face any foreign interference in its nuclear activities. In this situation, Iran might have been able to put even more centrifuges into operation, and to build an even bigger stockpile of enriched uranium than it ultimately did.
51 Robert Jervis, ‘Getting to Yes with Iran’, Foreign Affairs 92/1 (January/February 2013), 108.
52 On the risks associated with deterring a nuclear Iran, see Matthew Kroenig, A Time to Attack: The Looming Iranian Nuclear Threat (NY: St. Martin’s Press 2014), Ch. 5.
53 Todd S. Sechser, ‘Goliath’s Curse: Coercive Threats and Asymmetric Power’, International Organization 64/4 (October 2010), 627–60.
54 As a result, many analysts who have studied coercive diplomacy have found that it has a poor track record. See Alexander L. George, Forceful Persuasion: Coercive Diplomacy as an Alternative to War (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press 1992); Daniel Byman and Matthew Waxman, The Dynamics of Coercion: American Foreign Policy and the Limits of Military Might (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2002); Robert J. Art and Bruce Cronin (eds.), The United States and Coercive Diplomacy (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press 2003).
55 Bruce W. Jentleson and Christopher A. Whytock, ‘Who “Won” Libya?: The Force-Diplomacy Debate and Its Implications for Theory and Practice’, International Security 30/3 (Winter 2005/06), 47–86.
56 Jentleson and Whytock, ‘Who “Won” Libya?’, 52. Foundational texts on credibility include Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1960); Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press 1966); Daryl G. Press, Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2007).
57 Since Israel lacked the same means as the United States to dramatically destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities via military action, its coercive credibility likely was weaker.
58 Miroslav Ninic, The Logic of Positive Engagement (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2011).
59 Jentleson and Whytock, ‘Who “Won” Libya?’, 52.
60 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Annex III, 10.2, 14 July 2015, https://www.state.gov/e/eb/tfs/spi/iran/jcpoa/.
62 Jentleson and Whytock, ‘Who “Won” Libya?’, 51. Sechser shows deductively that targets are more likely to comply with lower demands and are less likely to comply with higher demands. Todd S. Sechser, ‘A Bargaining Theory of Coercion’, in Greenhill and Krause, Coercion.
63 Haun argues that the United States often demands too much, which leaves the target state little choice but to resist. Phil Haun, Coercion, Survival, and War: Why Weak States Resist the United States (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 2015), Ch. 2.
64 See Austin Carson, ‘Facing Off and Saving Face: Covert Intervention and Escalation Management in the Korean War’, International Organization 70/1 (Winter 2016), 103–31; Austin Carson and Keren Yarhi-Milo, ‘Covert Communication: The Intelligibility and Credibility of Signaling in Secret’, Security Studies 26/1 (2017), 124–56. For good recent overviews of coercion, see Kelly M. Greenhill and Peter Krause (eds.), Coercion: The Power to Hurt in International Politics (New York: OUP 2018); Robert J. Art and Kelly M. Greenhill, ‘The Power and Limits of Compellence: A Research Note’, Political Science Quarterly 133/1 (Spring 2018), 77–97.
65 On commitment problems in coercive diplomacy, see Sechser, ‘Goliath’s Curse’; Haun, Coercion, Survival, and War.
66 Austin Carson, Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2018).
67 Carson, Secret Wars, 13.
68 Schelling, Arms and Influence, 135.
69 Sechser, ‘Goliath’s Curse’; Sechser, ‘A Bargaining Theory of Coercion’; and Todd S. Sechser, ‘Reputations and Signaling in Coercive Bargaining’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 62/2 (2018), 318–45. Alex Weisiger and Keren Yarhi-Milo, ‘Revisiting Reputation: How Past Actions Matter in International Politics’, International Organization 69/2 (Spring 2015), 473–95.
70 There is an interesting literature on latency and hedging in the Iran nuclear context. Altman and Miller note, for example, that Iran was careful to not cross any clear nuclear red lines that might provoke an Israeli or U.S. military strike. Dan Altman and Nicholas L. Miller, ‘Red Lines in Nuclear Nonproliferation’, Nonproliferation Review 24/3–4 (2017), 315–42.
71 Volpe shows that potential proliferators can wrest concessions by threatening to acquire nuclear weapons. See Tristan A. Volpe, ‘Atomic Leverage: Compellence with Nuclear Latency’, Security Studies 26/3 (2017), 517–44.
72 Robert K. Merton, ‘The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action’, American Sociological Review 1/6 (December 1936), 894–904.
73 Collin Anderson and Karim Sadjadpour, Iran’s Cyber Treat: Espionage, Sabotage, and Revenge (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2018), Ch. 2.
74 Nicole Perlroth, ‘Without Constraints on Tehran, Experts Warn of Iranian Cyberattacks’, New York Times, 12 May 2018.
75 Afshon Ostovar, Vanguard of the Imam: Religion, Politics, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (Oxford: OUP 2016), Ch. 10.
76 Golnaz Esfandiari, ‘Iran Developing Cult of Personality Around Slain Nuclear Scientists’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 17 February 2012.
77 Tamar Meisels, ‘Assassination: Targeting Nuclear Scientists’, Law and Philosophy 33/2 (March 2014), 207–34.
78 Michael N. Schmitt (ed.), Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare (Cambridge: CUP 2013).
79 Overt action can of course also produce unintended and undesirable consequences. The 2003 invasion of Iraq is one of the clearest examples of this in recent history. Under some conditions, however, covert action may produce worse ‘blowback’ for the coercer state. For example, because the public in the coercer state will be in the dark about what its government is doing, it may not be clear to them why the target state may seek to retaliate. This could result in greater popular pressure in the coercer state to inflict retribution on the target state in response, threatening a level of escalation neither side wanted.
80 Francis J. Gavin, ‘Blasts from the Past: Proliferation Lessons from the 1960s’, International Security 29/3 (Winter 2004/05), 100–35.
81 Nicholas L. Miller, ‘The Secret Success of Nonproliferation Sanctions’, International Organization 68/4 (Fall 2014), 913–44.
82 This type of state fits most closely to Narang’s ‘sheltered pursuit’ model of nuclear proliferation. See Vipin Narang, ‘Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation: How States Pursue the Bomb’, International Security 41/3 (Winter 2016/17), 110–50.
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Richard Maher
Richard Maher is an Assistant Professor, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland