Free Unthinkable by Kenneth M. Pollack

United States.
    AN ISRAELI SECOND-STRIKE CAPABILITY. For more than a decade Israel has been developing long-range cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons that can be launched from submarines—and acquiring the submarines to launch them. This is the nucleus of an Israeli second-strike capability. Israel may ask the United States for additional help in the form of newer or better cruise missiles (or the technology to build them), more subs, more survivable long-range strike aircraft (like the F-22), or even more robust ballistic missile defenses to hinder Iran’s ability to destroy Israel’s own nuclear assets with a preemptive strike of its own. Just because the Israelis have made great progress in all of these areas does not mean that they will feel that it is enough. 11
    AN AGGRESSIVE AMERICAN POLICY TOWARD IRAN. Many Israeli military, intelligence, and political leaders fear that Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear capability will signal the start of a wide-ranging, multi-front unconventional war against Israel by Iran, one waged by Iran’s various allies and proxies. Although these same Israeli leaders are determined to fightthat battle and never give up, they will also be looking for considerable assistance from anywhere they can get it, but particularly from the United States. They will want money, weaponry, and technology to help with that fight, but more than that, they will look for the United States to aid them in waging these battles wherever possible. They will likely push American leaders to be confrontational with Iran to keep it weak, constrained, and “on its heels.” They will encourage the United States to take action against Iran’s various proxies and allies, possibly even including Hizballah in Lebanon. The more that the United States is pushing back on Iran, the less of the burden Israel will feel it needs to shoulder. Israeli leaders may also try to involve the United States in its own “counteroffensive” operations, like supporting Iranian Kurds, Baluch, and Arabs against the regime.
    As a corollary to this point, it would probably be the case that the more aggressive the United States is in fighting back against Iran’s various allies and proxies, the more likely that even the most hawkish Israelis will feel either that they don’t need to do so themselves, or else that doing so would be counterproductive, as it could hinder the ability of the United States to garner support for this fight from the Arab states. Even the ultra-hawkish Yitzhak Shamir was convinced not to take direct action against Iraq in response to Saddam’s Scud missile attacks on Israel in 1991 because the Bush administration made the case that there was nothing Israel could do that the United States was not already doing, and Israeli participation could create real problems for the United States with its Arab allies.
From Détente to Confrontation with Iran
    Taken as a whole, these various issues underline the overarching notion that the containment of Iran cannot be rigid. It should not be a one-size-fits-all policy, let alone a one-time-fits-all policy. There are a wide variety of issues that containment has to address and a wide variety of toolsavailable to do so. The challenge will be in sensing when to shift from one variant of containment to another and when to employ the different tools at our disposal.
    Iran is not the Soviet Union. It lacks Russia’s strength, its resources, its size, its empire, and so containment of Iran can afford to be more aggressive than the containment of the USSR should we choose to make it so. Because we are so much stronger than the Islamic Republic, a willingness to invest in the offensive components could pay off in accelerating the regime’s demise and making it more pliable in the meantime. Nevertheless, we should never lose sight of the problems of containing a nuclear Iran and never fall into believing that we can do so