January 11, 2010--Back to the Stone Age

I think I’ve finally figured out this Iran thing.

At least how they are running their nuclear weapons program. And to be sure, they have one under way. The only issue in dispute is how long it will take them to build an atomic bomb. One year, 18 months, three years? Even the three-year scenario is scary.

Equally scary is how they’re going about this. It seems that most of the critical work is being carried out underground. In caves in the many mountains of Iran. And this strategy is making it virtually impossible for the U.S. or even the Israelis, who feel more immediately threatened, to contemplate “taking them out” militarily. Though we are trying to develop bunker-buster bombs, none in the planning stage have the capacity to reach deep underground where the Iranian facilities are situated.

And according to a recent article in the New York Times (linked below), there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of large caves throughout Iran where weapons research and development may be underway. In fact, to make matters worse, there are decoy tunnels and entrances all over the country.

So for those of my friends who are clamoring to take care of the problem not through diplomacy or sanctions but by “bombing Iran back to the Stone Age,” they are a country with a very modern weapons program that in many ways is already operating as if it is still in the Stone Age. In caves.

And in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad they have a secular leader who knows his caves. I always thought he looked like a stereotypical accountant or high school algebra teacher. But, no, he is a tunnel maven.

He started his political career in Iran as a transportation engineer and later became the founder of the Iranian Tunneling Association. I am not making this up.

In that capacity, in 2004, while also Mayor of Tehran, Ahmadinejad chaired the Sixth [!] Iranian Tunneling Conference and in his keynote address praised leaders of ancient Persia for building subterranean waterways and called for the construction of modern-day tunnels to link government, universities, and professional groups’ facilities. At the time he didn’t have much to say about weapons-building tunnels. But he clearly was well prepared for his current job.

Ironically, much of this tunneling to hide and protect nuclear labs and fissionable fuel production plants is the result of Iran’s reaction to threats from right-wing saber-rattlers in both Israel and the United States. The Times quotes Iranian officials as saying that it was these veiled bombing threats that motivated them to exercise their nation’s “sovereign rights” to protect their nuclear facilities by placing them in caves.

The chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran told Iran’s Press TV, “We will be using the passive defense so that we don’t need to have active defense, which is very expensive.” (My italics.) If someone had only told our military leaders and politicians about this. Maybe it would have helped us rethink some of our own military planning and spending.

Perfect—we show the Iranians our cards in order to bluster and thereby appear tough and this alerts them to what they have to do to in order to protect themselves from us. And also provides the justification they feel they need to proceed with a nuclear program. After all, those they consider to be their sovereign enemies—Israel and the U.S. (put aside for the moment who might be originally at fault in creating this dangerous mess)—are already armed to the teeth with weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them.