Towards Changing The Logic of Iran's Nuclear Doctrine
This article was submitted by Dr. Abolfazl Anaei, Ph.D Political Science – Political Sociology, University of Isfahan, Iran. He can be contacted at anaei.abolfazl@gmail.com
Introduction
The Middle East is the most critical and shatterbelt geopolitical center in the world-system. This unique feature distinguishes the Middle East from the other two critical coordinates of the heartland in the Fareast and the western part of Eurasia (Cohen 2003). In fact, the presence of the two top domestic global powers, including China and Russia, is an effective force in moderating the severity of crises in the mentioned geographical space. In this perspective, we can point to 3 decisive variables in the creation of complex crises in the Middle East:
1- Prominent geopolitical and strategic coordinates and diverse rich natural resources of the region.
2- The critical role of imperialism since the 17th century to control the Middle East.
3- The forced and fake establishment of Israel's entity following the publication of the colonial Balfour Declaration in 1917.
In this article, the main axis of discussion and analysis will emphasize the third variable. The importance of this issue stems from the propelling Palestinian-Israeli crisis and its transformation into genocide and cruel ethnic cleansing by the Zionist regime and the comprehensive support of many Western countries led by the United States. This crisis coincides with the deepening of ambiguity in the fate of the Palestinian nation, which is justified by the fascist and orientalist discourse of the scientific and political coteries of the Zionist and Western factions, the reactions of some independent countries in the region, including Iran, in front of the clear violation of the principles of international relations and open aggression Israel's international law has created a situation that has revealed the realist understanding of power distribution mechanisms in the region and the transmogrification of defense doctrine and foreign policy. In this perspective, Iran's effort to improve the quantitative and qualitative level of weapons and possible change in the nuclear doctrine to move in the direction of creating an effective nuclear balance against the irresponsibility of the Zionist entity and the security risks caused by that regime's access to nuclear weapons requires a theoretical analysis. The necessity of the present discussion is to find practical and feasible alternatives to curb Israel's irresponsibility and its resort to aggression in connection with a world imperialist gang led by the collapsing hegemony of the United States.
In this regard, what is raised as problematic in the geopolitical debate of the Middle East is the regional consequences of the Israeli army's inhumane genocide in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which finally followed the Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate building in Damascus, the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh hosted by Tehran, and the assassination of S.H. Nasrallah and General Nilforoushan led to Iran's offensive missile response in the True Promise I & II operations to military positions in the occupied territories. Subsequently, the adventurous and very ineffective reaction of the Israeli army in the full support of the US army against Iran's defense positions to the possibility of regional escalation and Iran's requirement to review its defense and nuclear doctrine with the aim of curbing the strategy of buck-passing Israel's realistic responsibility to America and weakening The effectiveness of this alliance's threats and the possibility of its expansion to other NATO members against Iran has become a political, security and theoretical concern. It seems that a possible change in Iran's defense and nuclear doctrine can be deduced from the historical and theoretical logic of the offensive realism approach (Mearsheimer 2001).
Algebraic rule of anti-hegemonic offensive:
POH < CAH +FIAH
Hegemonic offensive pressure: POH
Anti-Hegemonic Confrontation: CAH
Anti-Hegemonic Offensive Force: FIAH
In other words, resorting to all-round balancing power aimed at effective deterrence and based on aggression can be effective in creating security and forcing the assailant to retreat. From this perspective, the containment of an irresponsible nuclear aggressor is a structural necessity in the regional and international order, which has no obligation to the imperatives of international law and the guidelines of international organizations, and to reproduce its survival by using the most advanced weapons. And the ammunition imported from the complicit countries resort to targeted and unbridled military violence against every living and non-living creature and commit the most heinous and brutal war crimes.
Discussion
The beginning of the bloody crisis of genocide and ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza after the Al-Aqsa storm operation (October 7, 2023) and the gross and cruel violation of human rights by the “IDF” is an unmediated reflection in proving the lack of practical commitment of the Israeli regime to any treaties and conventional principles in law and International relations have been evaluated (United Nations Human Rights 2024) (Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor 2024, 72). This extremely catastrophic and chaotic human situation in Gaza has been realized while a huge part of the financial, weapons, logistics and information resources of the genocidal process was provided with the full support of some Western governments, especially the United States, Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy.
In this content, the role of the United States in selling a huge amount of weapons and financial aid to the Zionist regime worth a staggering $22 billion (Bilmes, Linda J. , Hartung and Semler 2024) is highlighted since the beginning of the Iron Swords genocide operation in October 2023. This issue cannot be ignored from the perspective of the complex mechanisms of realpolitik and its consequences in the power morphology of the Middle East region on the part of some independent states of the region, especially the Iran, which is at the forefront of supporting the resistance front and supporting the Palestinian nation.
This antagonistic situation becomes more complicated when the existence of Israel's nuclear warhead arsenal enters the multi-equilibrium realpolitik apparatus of the Middle East as a crisis variable. In this situation, Iran's natural tendency to strengthen foreign and defense policy based on offensive realism to create multiple and effective alternatives with the aim of creating an offensive deterrent against the irresponsible and law-breaking hostile state has become a rational and self-evident doctrine. The importance of this issue becomes doubly important when Israel, along with the comprehensive support of the dominant Western powers, has always sought to Buck-Passing strategy to the U.S. to create a double and multi-layered deterrence against the countries of the Middle East. This responsibility has been assigned to CENTCOM in practice.
In these complex security mechanisms of the Middle East, the problem that is considered to be a double crisis synthesis is the expansion of a very heavy arms race in the Middle East. From the point of view of statistical data, Middle East region is the second buyers and importers of weapons in the world (SIPRI 2024, 8). This issue is not considered as a chronic political and military issue due to the structural dependence and subservience of some regional countries to the core states of the world-system. But what is related to the problematic point of this article is Iran's independent and revisionist reaction to Israel's entity and crisis-making actions.
This situation can be evaluated in the texture of theoretical analysis of international politics as hegemonic competition. Considering that Iran has native and natural sources of power such as geographical size (Iran is 75 times the occupied territories), population (Iran is 10 times that of the Zionist regime) and rich natural resources; Therefore, this power struggle of Iran, taking into account the mentioned variables, has a level of natural superiority compared to the Israel entity. But in terms of comparison, Israel's military spending is 2.5 times more than Iran's military spending without considering the annual aid of the United States.
From Iran's perspective, these contradictions cannot be confirmed as a deterministic and teleological issue and ignore the imbalance in power sources. Therefore, the epistemological basis in the principles of realist policymaking and action to ensure stable national security has created the conditions, the result of which is the revision of the attitude of Iran's focal of power in order to improve soft and hard power resources and the operational capability of the armed forces on a scale based on creating offensive deterrence based on The strategy is to inflict deep and irreparable blows on the hostile entity in the state of invasion and the first crisis-making action by the other side. The logic of this strategy is the result of the necessity of relative military-intelligence superiority to ensure survival in the defense policy of Iran's offensive realism and to impose national security on the Zionist regime based on its refusal to attack and create a security and military crisis.
In this regard, Iran has increased the annual defense budget by 200% (Tehran Times 2024)in order to revise the relative balance of power in the geopolitical structure of the Middle East and to improve the quantitative and qualitative level of expertise in the logistic, weaponry, operational and tactical effectiveness of the armed forces. It seems that this drastic change can strengthen the technical and operational mobility of Iran's foreign and defense policy, and from the point of view of the ability of the field operations of the Iranian armed forces, the warring regional and trans-regional states from the offensive situation or security disturbances on a large scale in the situation to restrain the defense.
This metamorphosis can doubly strengthen Iran's ability to deter hegemony based on arsenals of various classes of missiles and drones. Therefore, the irresponsible actions and war crimes of the Zionist regime in alliance with the Biden administration and the decisive influence of the deep state in the United States and its other accomplices can encourage Iran from the position of an independent country with a revisionist and anti-hegemonic approach to review the nuclear doctrine.
This transmogrification is an issue that has been officially emphasized by Dr. Kamal Kharazi, chief of the Strategic Council of Foreign Policy and some other lawmakers (Tasnim News Agency 2024 , Tehran Times 2024). Therefore, in this situation, we will observe a change in the national security structure of Iran, which is likely and uncertain to ensure the structure of the balance of power and effective deterrence in the region and to increase the effectiveness of the offensive realist defense policy to occlusion the possible nuclear decision and action of the hostile entity of the Israeli regime and stopping warlike behavior contrary to the principles of international law, putting the production of nuclear war on the agenda of defense and weapons policy. The possible and uncertain decision and action of the focal of power in the system of the I.R. of Iran to produce nuclear warheads can come to the fore under the conditions that the Israeli regime, having nearly 100 nuclear warheads (Hersh 1991), lacks any means of political, legal, moral and technical control in using them. It is a nuclear weapon.
Therefore, from the Iranian perspective, the reproduction of national security in the crisis phase of transition to the post-American world-system will be a dialectical and complex relationship with anti-hegemonic confrontation and containment of the Israeli regime. This situation is the result of creating a strategic crisis for the U.S. in the hypothetical heartland triangle, in which there is a serious conflict in its three vertices (West Middle East/West Eurasia/far east), which can turn into the third full-scale international war.
In other words, the security and military crises in the geopolitical heartland triangle can be evaluated as a part of the power-building scenario in Washington, the main purpose of which is to temporarily delay the uncertain transition to the 4th hegemonic cycle in the world-system. In this status, the systemic pressures of the crises of the world-system on Iran can appear in the form of a tendency to create nuclear deterrence against various and complex forms of regional and trans-regional crises.
On the other hand, the mutations in international security and global political disturbances in the post-Soviet era have fueled the intensification of global militarism and the increase of countries' defense budgets. Taking into account the dispersal variables of the balance of power and disturbance in global security, Iran's tendency from a rational side and the logic of offensive realism in the conditions of a possible confrontation with NATO in the context of conflict with the regional interests of the U.S. and the Israeli regime to strengthen the effective nuclear balance in the Middle East increase In fact, the transition crisis from the cycle of American hegemony and its aggressive reaction against the international anti-hegemonic front has created anthropic feedbacks in global peace and security.
Accordingly, Global common sense demands that collective disarmament be realized on the international scale in the face of the ongoing security-military crisis, whose main origin can be found in the contradictions and contradictions of the reproduction of the capitalist world-economy. In other words, if the principle of not having access to nuclear weapons is to ensure world peace, all the states with nuclear arsenals must destroy their nuclear power and prevent other countries that do not have nuclear weapons to achieve nuclear balance and deterrence.
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