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An emboldened Iran will almost certainly sponsor more aggression, while the West will face vastly greater risks in checking such a rise.  Guessing when extremist clerics in Teheran might launch a nuclear strike will dominate and constrain such decisions as, whether to force open a closed Strait of Hormuz, or whether to support Israel in a future war of survival against Hezbollah.

Several analysts, including Ted Bromund and James Phillips of the Heritage Foundation, have eloquently detailed the obstacles to successfully containing a nuclear Iran.  Such as:

1) The lack of reliable allies.  In the Cold War, the Soviet empire was ringed by a core group of vigorous democratic allies from across Europe, to Australia, Japan, and South Korea – all supporters of containment.  By contrast, in the Middle East and South Asia, there would be just one such ally: Israel.

2)  Human rights trade-offs.  Even more so than during the Cold War, the frontlines of a containment coalition in the Middle East and South Asia will have to draw upon unsavoury and dictatorial regimes; the price of their support will include overlooking their human rights abuses.

3)  Constrained budgets.  Maintaining a critical mass of allies and a sufficiently serious, deployable military deterrent are enormously costly, and may need to continue for decades as part of an effective containment policy.  Yet the West is in much worse fiscal shape than during the Cold War.

But among the several asymmetries between the challenges of the Cold War era and those of present-day Iran, the following three are especially problematic.

First, the Manichean, religious zealots who govern Iran may be less deterred by threats of force than the former Soviet leadership.  Ten years ago, former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani declared that “application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel but . . . would just produce damages in the Muslim world.”

Recall that this same regime, in its war with Iraq, organized tens of thousands of teenage and pre-teen boys, some as young as nine, into the infamous “Basij” martyrdom units, and sent them into Iraqi minefields to act as human mine-sweepers.  Nine of every ten such boys were reported to have died.

Second, unlike the Soviet empire, several of the threats emanating from Iran are carried out by terrorist proxy groups (which gives Iran some measure of deniability).  Hezbollah’s cadre of suicide bombers are effectively immune to deterrence, and their willingness to risk “everything” greatly exceeds the risk tolerance of the former Soviet gerontocracy.

In sum, how will the West contain a Hezbollah suicide bomber with a nuclear warhead - or a radioactive ‘dirty bomb’ – hidden under a tarp on a flatbed truck?

Last and perhaps most important, unlike the Cold War era, the risk of a proliferation cascade is much greater.  It is generally accepted that, if Iran goes nuclear, the other Middle East regimes will rush to try to follow suit.  If we cannot stop Iran, how will we stop its neighbours?

Here lies the true end-game of the containment option:  not just a nuclear Iran, but a cluster of radical Islamist regimes bristling with nuclear weapons.  For the sake of accuracy, it is tempting to strike the word ‘containment,’ and call this the Armageddon option.

How will the West contain that?

Henry Kopel is a counter-terrorism prosecutor with the US Department of Justice in Connecticut. The views here are his own, and do not reflect the views of the Justice Department

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