Opinion | It Might be Time to Reconsider Israel’s Nuclear Ambiguity

In war, short-term operational success need not imply long-term strategic success. Despite achieving its immediate goals during the “Twelve-Day War” with Iran, Israel will still have to make substantial deterrence policy modifications. Potentially, the Jewish state, smaller than America’s Lake Michigan, now faces greater perils than before the latest war. 

How can this be possible? Didn’t the combined effects of Israeli and American bombings “obliterate” Iran’s nuclear military threat? There is a succinct answer. Though this threat has been degraded, it has not been removed. In assorted increments, Iran could return to status quo ante bellum and then advance further in tangibly quantum leaps. At some stage, already-nuclear state allies of Iran could agree to function as Tehran’s nuclear surrogate. Here, both North Korea and Pakistan should come quickly to mind.

What is Israel’s most immediate task? Above all, Jerusalem should do whatever is needed to upgrade and enhance its nuclear deterrence posture. This posture, which includes both doctrine and strategy, will depend on Israel’s decipherable willingness to replace “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” with “selective nuclear disclosure.” 

Even after Israel’s recent victories over Iran, it would be unreasonable to assume that “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” could work indefinitely. Even if Iran’s nuclear potentialities were meaningfully set back by the Israeli and Amrican bombardments, there would remain other worrisome enemy states. After the just-halted conflict, Pakistan reaffirmed “complete solidarity” with Iran. This declaration included explicit threats of direct nuclear retaliation against Israel if Iran were to face an Israeli nuclear attack. Prima facie, nuclear North Korea has a history of belligerent interactions with Israel and could conceivably serve Iran as a fearsome nuclear proxy. 

If Israel remained committed to its “bomb in the basement” nuclear posture, the country’s intra-war opportunities to achieve “escalation dominance” would be severely limited. Even if Tehran were to accept the “usability” of Israel’s nuclear options, it might still not believe that Jerusalem would be willing to exercise these options. As a result, a tit-for-tat dynamic of conventional warfare could proceed unabated and Israel might have to face the exhausting prospect of seemingly interminable attrition warfare. 

Iran is planning to buy Chinese Chengdu J-10C fighter jets compatible with PL-15 missiles, the same ordnance used by Pakistan’s air force.[1] China already assists Iran by buying its oil, a vast benefit to Tehran that could accelerate resumed efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Less directly, any planned US sale of F-35 stealth fighter jets to Turkey could offer multiple military benefits to Iran.

In essence, Israel cannot rely indefinitely on an implicit nuclear deterrence posture. Regarding any future or impending war with Iran, Israel needs to consider once-speculative but no longer unrealistic scenarios. Among the narrative possibilities, Pakistan and/or North Korea could sometime become actual nuclear proxies for a still non-nuclear Iran. At that point, any Israeli continuance of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” would be manifestly irrational.

Israel needs to ensure “escalation dominance” in all plausible conflict scenarios. Inter alia, this will mean keeping Iran non-nuclear. Although there will be many technical questions about optimal levels and times of “selective nuclear disclosure,” this is not yet the moment for raising such queries.

There is more. Even a pre-nuclear Iran could make combat use of radiation dispersal weapons and/or conventional missiles/drones launched against Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. In a worst-case scenario, Iranian ally North Korea would place nuclear assets at Tehran’s operational disposal. Pyongyang, it should be recalled, built a nuclear reactor for Syria that was destroyed by Israel’s Operation Orchard on September 6, 2007.

While it is doubtful that “selective nuclear disclosure” would end Iran’s belligerent designs against Israel, a more selectively-explicit Israeli deterrence posture represents Jerusalem’s only rational choice. At the same time, even this enhanced doctrine and strategy might not be enough. It follows that Jerusalem, with or without its American ally, could sometime still need to launch new rounds of measured preemptive strikes. 

There is one final observation. The prevailing “mood” in Israel is largely opposed to any changes of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity.” Though such wary sentiment is understandable (“why stir the pot if deterrence is already working”), it fails to take account of variously plausible changes to enemy intentions and capabilities. Moreover, any expected liabilities to Israel of new pressures to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) would be outweighed by the expected security benefits.  

“The safety of the people,” says Cicero in The Laws, “shall be the highest law.”

Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books, monographs, and scholarly articles dealing with military nuclear strategy. In Israel, he was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon, 2003). Over many years, he has published on nuclear warfare matters in Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs; The Atlantic; Israel Defense; The New York Times; Israel National News; The Jerusalem Post; The Hill; International Security (Harvard); World Politics (Princeton); The War Room (US Army War College); Air-Space Power Journal (USAF); Modern Diplomacy; Small Wars Journal); Modern War Institute (West Point); Parameters: Journal of the US Army War College; Special Warfare (Pentagon); BESA (Israel) and Oxford University Press. His twelfth book, published in 2016 (2nd ed., 2018) is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel's Nuclear Strategy. He was born in Zürich at the end of World War II.