| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article clarifies and evaluates the intellectual underpinnings of the respective military red lines that Western leaders have drawn against Iran's developing nuclear program: (1) the red line of "no Iranian nuclear weapon"-the stance that has been embraced by President Barack Obama- and (2) the red line of "no Iranian nuclear weapons capability"-the stance that has been embraced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and many prominent American Iran hawks. We contend that the key intellectual divide between these stances is that the Netanyahu view implicitly assumes that a "significant quantity" (SQ) of highly enriched uranium is essentially equivalent to a bomb because an explosive nuclear test is technically unnecessary, whereas the Obama view implicitly assumes that if and when Iran gets to the point of being technically and psychologically ready to assemble a nuclear weapons arsenal, it will conduct a test. We show through theoretical and empirical analysis that the likelihood that Iran will choose an "Israeli-style" policy of creating an arsenal of untested but operational nuclear bombs is very low. Therefore, Obama's red line is more intellectually defensible than Netanyahu's.
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