The Risk Question
Are Iran and its allies likely to be risk averse, or will they be willing to run risks? A 2001 Rand Corporation study interpreted Tehran’s actions as an expression of prudent realism and observed that
Since the Islamic Republic’s establishment, two factors—revolutionary Islam and Persian nationalism—have driven it into confrontation with its neighbors, with the superpowers, and with a host of governments in the Muslim and broader world. These two sources of adventurism are still strong today in Iran, particularly among key sectors of the elite.54
There are two schools of thought regarding Iran’s risk appetite. The first argues that Iran is increasingly pragmatic. For instance, a 2009 Rand Corporation report posited that although Iranian security decision making is fractured, its strategic calculations “usually trump ideology” and its decisions are a product of realpolitik thought.55 According to this argument, Iran’s support for its proxy groups, such as Hezbollah, appears “quite cynical and calculated.” The report finds that “Iran would not hesitate to barter or terminate its patronage if it perceived that the state’s broader strategic aims would be better served. This dynamic is most evident in Tehran’s May 2003 offer to the United States to effectively disarm Hezbollah.”56
A second school of thought views Tehran’s behavior, no matter how rooted in realpolitik calculations, as risk prone. Examples from Iran’s internal dynamics and its dispute behavior support this view. In terms of domestic politics, two forces encourage risky behavior. First, the current regime’s decision-making process lends it plausible deniability, which allows for adventurous foreign policy because the decision makers do not feel they can be held accountable for their actions. Through his commissars, who number in the hundreds if not thousands, Khamenei knows what debates are occurring and decides policy by decreeing what cannot be done.
By wielding veto power, the supreme leader sets policy but also ensures there is no smoking gun to indicate who ultimately made each decision. This kind of plausible deniability encourages risky behavior.57 Not only do Iran’s domestic politics enable it to take risks today, but the regime’s increasing factions also make its risk taking more likely in the future. Factions are likely to make competing appeals to populist strains of nationalism to advance their domestic position while centralized policy making may prove more difficult.
There is also a wide range of expert opinion regarding President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who, rhetoric aside, may be a risk taker himself. In the ongoing power struggle between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei and between conservatives and reformists, some posit that it will be the collective leadership of the IRGC that ultimately emerges as the victor.58 The IRGC has bureaucratic incentives to further its own policy and is already acting as both spoiler and provocateur. It is believed, for example, that the IRGC blocked Ahmadinejad’s attempts after the 2009 election to improve relations with the United States. Each time Iran disregards a US red line with no consequence, the IRGC reinforces its belief that the United States is incapable of using or unwilling to use force.
Does Iran’s behavior indicate that it will be willing to run risks? Tehran’s reaction to the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq provides another indirect measure of the regime’s risk assessment. From a realpolitik perspective, US actions removed two of Iran’s implacable enemies from power. Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime had been the most constant, proximate, and mortal threat to revolutionary Iran, and the Taliban more than matched Iran’s Shia millenarianism. For a moment, the Tehran regime appeared content to cooperate with the Bush administration, and there was even talk of a larger rapprochement. At the same time, the regime dispatched its proxies into Iraq immediately after the invasion in 2003. Muqtada al Sadr, a key Iranian proxy, was active inside Iraq in 2004. By 2006, Iran had inserted special group operatives under the command of the Qods Force and was providing or sponsoring training and lethal bomb-making equipment to Sunni insurgents. Whether these actions were provoked by a US presence or were another expression of the traditional exceptional attitudes of the Iranian ayatollahs toward the “Great Satan” is immaterial: these are risky and provocative behaviors that the Iranian regime could not resist.
Iran has consistently inspired, financed, armed, and trained radical Shia groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. It is debatable whether alliances of convenience with Sunni or non-Shia groups represent greater prudence or greater willingness to take risks; in either case they mark a desire for broader influence. In extremis, as during the war with Iraq, the mullahs in Tehran were so desperate that they made clandestine arrangements with Israel and the United States. If this is realpolitik, it is a risky brand. These proxies have their own agendas, and while they are perfectly willing to get weapons, training, and assistance from Tehran, they are not always under Tehran’s control.
Iran’s relations with Syria and Lebanon are a critical part of its strategy, and a discussion of Iran’s risk tolerance necessitates an examination of its relationships with its de facto allies or quasi proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Syrian regime. Both have proven willing to take strategic and military risks and are prone to miscalculation.
Experts debate the extent of Hezbollah’s current autonomy from Iran, though Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and others remain adamant that the offspring is inseparable from its creator.59 In 2006, as Iran faced increasing pressure from the international community for its illegal nuclear program, Hezbollah kidnapped three Israeli soldiers from within Israeli territory and triggered war between Israel and Hezbollah. While there was no evidence Iran explicitly directed Hezbollah’s move, this does not mean Iran did not earlier lay out the parameters of actions it desired Hezbollah to take at a time and place of that group’s operational choosing. The war did significant damage inside Lebanon, especially in Hezbollah-controlled areas. When Nasrallah apologized for initiating conflict, saying, “We did not believe . . . that the captive operation would result in such a wide-scale war. . . . Had we known . . . we would not have carried it out at all,”60 one wonders whether he directed it not only to the Shia in Lebanon, but also to Iran. Regardless of who was able to influence the decision to start it, the 2006 war certainly served to preoccupy the international community at a convenient juncture for the Islamic Republic. It is also a reminder that Iran is no more immune from the ill-considered actions of its proxies than any other previous sponsor has been.
Will Hezbollah be as rash in the future? Will a nuclear-armed Iran embolden the group? Will Iran be less willing to tolerate risky behavior on the part of its quasi proxies, fearing being drawn into nuclear conflict? There are no certain answers to these questions, yet the very uncertainty casts doubt on the prospects for deterrence. Some argue that Hezbollah is increasingly independent from its Iranian patron. The 2009 Rand Corporation report cautions against assuming that Hezbollah is willing under any circumstance to employ violence on Tehran’s behalf. Instead, it argues that a decision to act against the United States or its allies will be rooted in the group’s “own calculations about whether Iranian aid advances [its] own domestic agendas.”61 As Hezbollah becomes increasingly ingrained in Lebanese politics, its nationalist interests may continue to diverge from Iran’s.
Not all experts posit that Hezbollah’s autonomy from Iran is increasing, however. Some believe that Tehran’s disapproval over Hezbollah’s 2006 actions has resulted in its controlling the Lebanese organization more tightly today.62 The same Rand Corporation report details how Hezbollah’s ability to assert independence eroded after the 2006 war because the organization’s reliance on Iran actually increased as it turned to Tehran for rebuilding.63 Since the report’s publication, Iran’s weaponry has become even more sophisticated, and it has ratcheted up the sophistication of its arms supply to Hezbollah. Hezbollah has in recent years developed alternative funding sources.64 It is, however, unlikely to seek complete financial independence from Iran at this time. As long as Iran remains a primary source of income for Hezbollah, th
e linkage between the two will remain tight. Whether this translates into more risky behavior is anyone’s guess.
It is also unclear how rash Iran’s other major quasi proxy, Syria, will be once Iran goes nuclear, if the Assad regime still holds sway. Like the Shia Iranians, the Alawite-dominated Assad family regime in Damascus is an odd man out among the region’s Sunni royalty. Syria and Iran have conspired in Lebanon against Israel and opposite the government in Beirut. The Obama administration invested significant effort into its theory that Syria could be split from its Iranian patron and brought into the anti-Iranian fold.65 These efforts have failed and underscore the value that the Assad regime places on its relations with Iran. History shows that Syria, like Hezbollah, is willing to take major risks in service of Tehran. From weapons-trafficking to Hezbollah to allowing the presence of IRGC camps on its soil to funneling al Qaeda terrorists into Iraq and more, Syria has displayed its willingness to endanger its own security to enhance its partner’s. One lingering question is whether the Syrian nuclear plant at al Kibar, destroyed by Israel in 2007, was a purely Syrian affair. Some have surmised that the reactor was an offshore effort by Iran to continue its nuclear program on safer soil.66 Whether this was the case has never been proven decisively, but the program’s large expense and Syria’s poverty suggest a partnership of some kind.
The Assad regime is clearly under immense domestic pressure and acting with extraordinary violence to suppress its own people. Perhaps assessing the landscape of the Arab Spring and the ignominious ends to the Mubarak, Moammar Gadhafi, and Zine el Abidine Ben Ali regimes, Assad has been willing to murder thousands to maintain his grip on power. It is not unreasonable to wonder what Assad, having made himself an even greater pariah in the region, would not do to reassert power locally and project power regionally. Will Damascus be emboldened by an Iranian nuclear umbrella? Will one be extended?
All in all, calculating Iran and its associates’ propensity to take risks or escalate crises into conflict provides a good deal of worry for Americans and their allies. During the extended crisis over Iran’s nuclear program, Clawson and Eisenstadt argue that Khamenei “has generally been loath to risk the Islamic Republic’s grip on power.”67 Even scholars who see a general pattern of realpolitik and prudence in Iranian decision making grant that “Iran’s policies toward Israel and the United States are often an exception.”68 But these tactical compromises divert attention from the larger strategic risks the regime is running: as painful as any war would be for the United States or Israel, it would also pose an existential risk to the Iranian regime. Certainly the domestic and international value of the nuclear program is very high to Khamenei and the senior Iranian leadership. It is likely that the Iranians value nuclear weapons not only for their deterrent purposes but also, if delivered by a suicide terrorist, for the intoxicating promise of devastating effect and potential deniability. It is also worth recalling that the Islamic Republic was created by risk takers who took full opportunity of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s weaknesses and then, in consolidating power, were willing to ride the wave of popular anger and emotion that surrounded seizing the US embassy in Tehran and holding US hostages in 1979, with very little understanding of what the result might be.69 Whatever the true power and status of President Ahmadinejad within the regime, the presence of a radical populist as the leading civilian and international face of the government is not an expression of strategic caution.