Madness, sanity, nuclear war and EMP in the Middle East

For Israel, the only successful outcome of military conflict with Iran would be a tangible reduction of Iranian nuclear war fighting capabilities and intentions.

Prof. Louis René Beres | Jul 29, 2024

“Into the eternal gloom, into fire, into ice.”Dante, Inferno

As matters stand presently, it would not be in Iran’s interest to use NNEMP (non-nuclear EMP) weapons. This is because Israel could mount a higher level EMP (an NEMP) retaliation. In strategic terms, therefore, Israel is in a clear position for “escalation dominance” because Iran is still pre-nuclear.

If the NNEMP weapon were used against Israel by Hezbollah rather than by Iran directly, Israel’s “escalation dominance” advantage could prove less important as a deterrent, but it would simultaenously give Israel a carte blanche in destroying Hezbollah.

They know that.

In world politics, it would first seem obvious that sanity is better than madness. Upon reflection, however, the risks of a nuclear or EMP war could be as high or higher among “sane” adversaries. For Israel, a country smaller than America’s Lake Michigan, any failure to understand such a counter-intuitive assessment could hasten the onset of unprecedented hostilities with Iran. Most ominously, over time, this could mean suffering Iranian nuclear attack.

For Jerusalem, there are variously pertinent specifics. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Israel’s “Iran nuclear problem” is not principally about enemy leaders who could become “mad.” The more worrisome existential problem for Israel is sane and rational enemies who could become subject to decisional miscalculation, incorrect reasoning or mechanical/electrical/computer malfunction. Other nuclear hazards that could coincide with Iranian sanity and rationality include accidental firing, unauthorized launch and coup d’état.

Though true that certain decisions of a mad Iranian nuclear adversary could have catastrophic nuclear consequences for Israel (even before Iran itself becomes nuclear), the actual likelihood of such decisions is lower than what could be expected of a sane and rational Iranian enemy. Because a nuclear war would be a unique event, such likelihood cannot be expressed numerically or statistically but is still supportable by refined analytic argument.

In essence, on the basis of logic-based calculations alone, it is probable that any continuous dispersion of nuclear dangers among multiple Iranian decision-makers would be more perilous for Israel than the prospect of a single authoritative Iranian leader who is mad or irrational. Here, madness and irrationality would include Iranian decision-makers driven by jihadist theologies and principles.

In all circumstances, whether the greater danger to Israel is Iranian decisional madness or Iranian decisional sanity, Jerusalem will need to stay mindful of a possible “black swan.” This need would become much greater if Iran were allowed to become a nuclear weapons state. Even at this very late date, Israel should diligently remain “preemption ready.”

For Jerusalem, there are also time-urgent considerations of geo-political context. Today, Iran is approaching nuclear weapons capability at the same time that its jihadist proxies – Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthi, Islamic Jihad and Fatah – are accelerating terror-crimes against Israel. Significantly, Iran, with its steadily expanding ties to Russia, China and North Korea, repeatedly declares its genocidal intentions toward Israel. And Israel is a state with no “strategic depth.”

Prima facie, middle eastern geopolitics are a system. The continuously changing iterations of “Cold War II” could embrace international conflicts that would involve Israel with North Korea, China, India or Pakistan. Such a fearful embrace could be sudden or incremental.

For Israel to proceed purposefully, certain primary and subsidiary distinctions will need further clarifications. One such distinction concerns the vital differences between a deliberate or intentional nuclear or EMP war and one that is unintentional or inadvertent.

Nonetheless, the presumptively greatest dangers of an unintentional war would stem from impossible-to-exclude decision-making errors, under-estimations or over-estimations of enemy intent or “simple” miscalculations. To recall classical military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, “Everything is very simple in war, but even the simplest thing is difficult.”

There will be additional nuances. In dealing with growing nuclear war risks in the Middle East, no concept could prove more clarifying than “synergy.” Synergistic interactions are those wherein the “whole” of nuclear war risk effects must always be greater than the “simple” sum of its “parts.” Unless such specific interactions are accurately assessed and evaluated in time, Israeli leaders could underestimate or overestimate the cumulative impact of any superpower competition in risk-taking. This suggests circumstances in which Russia and the United States (and perhaps China) would struggle for “escalation dominance” in extremis, that is, during high-value crisis situations.

In the United States, from the beginning, allegedly reliable safeguards have been incorporated into all operational nuclear command/control decisions. These same safeguards, however, do not apply at the presidential level. Back in March 1976, to gather informed policy clarifications regarding madness, irrationality and nuclear war, I reached out to retired General Maxwell D. Taylor, a former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Taylor sent a comprehensive handwritten reply. Dated 14 March 1976, the distinguished General’s letter concluded: “As to those dangers arising from an irrational American president, the only protection is not to elect one.”

In today’s convulsive world order, General Taylor’s succinct 1976 warning takes on even greater and more generic meanings. Based on both ascertainable facts and logic-based derivations, it is reasonable to assume that if an American President were to exhibit signs of emotional instability, irrationality or “mad” behavior, he/she could still lawfully order the use of American non-conventional weapons. More worrisome, an American, Russian or Chinese president could become emotionally unstable, irrational or delusional, but not exhibit such liabilities conspicuously.

In all matters concerning this type of war in the Middle East, there exist no past histories from which to draw inferences. The irony of this situation is obvious and problematic. Still, whatever the science-based obstacles to reliable prediction in this explosive region, Israel should approach the problem as an intellectual rather than political challenge.

There are some final nuances. A nuclear war or one using non-conventional weapons in the Middle East could result as a “spillover effect” of nuclear war in Europe. Regarding Israel’s particular survival interests, an American president should consciously avoid strategic postures that would neglect potential synergies with Russian, Chinese and/or North Korean postures. North Korea is an already-nuclear ally of Iran, one that had earlier built a nuclear reactor for Syria. This Al Kibar reactor was destroyed by Israel’s “Operation Orchard” on September 6, 2007. In law, this operation expressed a permissible act of “anticipatory self-defense.” Recalling Cicero on self-defense, “The safety of the people shall be the highest law.”

In the aftermath of a nuclear conflict, wrote strategist Herman Kahn back in the early 1960s, “survivors might envy the dead.” This remains the case whether the catastrophe had been intentional or unintentional and whether or not it was spawned by base motive, miscalculation, computer error, hacking intrusion or weapon-system/weapon infrastructure accident.

There remains one last point about the estimable risks of an Israel-Iran nuclear war. For Israel, the only successful outcome of protracted military conflict with Iran would be a tangible reduction of Iranian nuclear war fighting capabilities and intentions. Optimally, for Israel, this point will be understood and operationalized while Iran is still pre-nuclear.

We began this inquiry with a “hellish” epigraph from Dante. Euripides, an ancient Greek playwright, warned poetically, “Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.” For present-day Israel, Dante’s prophetic imagery is more useful than Euripides’ observation about madness. Once it is at war with an already-nuclear Iran or with a still pre-nuclear Iran that has a witting nuclear proxy (e.g., North Korea), Israel could be mortally wounded by perfectly rational decisions of utterly sane enemy leaders. For now, though Iran is not yet nuclear, it could use radiation dispersal weapons or EMP against the Jewish State and/or launch non-nuclear missiles at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor.

In world politics, the most significant risks of nuclear war are not ones of madness or irrationality. Instead, they are the cumulatively catastrophic risks of sane and rational decision-making. For Israel, this means that the worst case Iranian nuclear war scenario is not the popularized narrative of mad leadership in Tehran, but one of sane adversaries operating interactively with similarly sane adversaries in Jerusalem.

In this bewildering world order, the accumulated risks of a mutually sane search for “escalation dominance” could include a nuclear war or one using non-conventional weapons. All things considered, Israeli leaders should maintain very high wariness of mad or prospectively mad Iranian leaders, but even greater wariness of the conflict consequences posed by sane and rational Iranian decision-makers.