Earlier this summer, the Trump administration chalked up a number of supposed achievements in its ongoing efforts to contain Iran’s ballistic missile program. U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law additional sanctions, while U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley coaxed the British, French, and German UN representatives into officially criticizing the launch of Iran’s Simorgh space launch vehicle (SLV) in late July as threatening and provocative. The Trump administration quickly placed sanctions on Iranian companies that support Tehran’s space program.
While pleasing to a president and many others in both parties in Washington who appear determined to blow up the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement that limits Iran’s nuclear program, these efforts are as inaccurately off-target as the Iranian missile strike on terrorists in Syria last June. Worse, they display a fundamental unwillingness to understand and account for Tehran’s genuine political and security needs. This blinds Washington to opportunities to limit Iran’s ballistic missile forces to their current ranges, which are well short of posing an intercontinental threat to the U.S. homeland.
Haley continues to make an Obama administration argument that Iran’s missile and space activities violate the “spirit” of the JCPOA along with its implementing UN Security Council Resolution 2231. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also has used the Iranian missile program as a line of attack on the JCPOA. He has complained that U.S. negotiators had “put blinders on and just ignored” missile and other issues not directly part of Iran’s nuclear program.
But Resolution 2231 only “calls upon” Iran to abstain from ballistic missile testing and development. And, if Tillerson were better informed, he would know that the topic of limiting Iran’s missiles was raised early in the negotiations and that Iran resisted its inclusion, which otherwise would have been a deal killer. Also, when Resolution 2231 was being drafted, Tehran, with Russian and Chinese support, tried to get all missile provisions removed before compromising on the final, non-binding language. Because the resolution requests that Iran refrain from missile activity “designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons,” Tehran asserts that its missile launches are not violations because, as UN inspectors regularly certify, Iran has no nuclear weapons.
Simply put, Iran is not going to give up its missiles or its space program. Iran almost certainly would never have accepted the JCPOA and UN resolution if its ability to develop conventional capabilities to deter and defend against attacks had been restricted. Because Tehran’s deterrent strategy rests heavily on missiles, U.S. efforts to constrain or eliminate these capabilities can only increase Iran’s insecurity, forcing it to resist even more strongly.
Since the JCPOA was signed, little has changed with Iran’s ballistic missile forces. These forces are still the largest in the Middle East with the ability to strike targets throughout the region. Iran has several short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) that can reach from 150 to 700 kilometers. In mid-June, Iran fired as many as seven Zolfiqar and Qiam SRBMs at an Islamic State (ISIS) compound in Syria in retaliation for ISIS-claimed terrorist attacks in Tehran that left more than a dozen dead earlier that month. Israeli officials, however, reported that Iran did much less damage than claimed because at least three of the seven missiles did not reach their intended target.
Iran also has two operational medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBM) with ranges up to 2,000 kilometers, the Shahab-3 and Sejjil. Iran has slowly been developing variants of the Shahab-3, such as the Qadir, Emad, and Khorramshahr, for many years without fielding a new system. The Khorramshahr was launched in late January and flew roughly 1,000 kilometers before exploding in a failed test of a reentry vehicle.
Because of such recent missile failures and because most of Tehran’s adversaries, with U.S. help, have strong missile defense systems protecting them, Iran is committed to developing more accurate, more numerous, and more survivable missiles. In response to the recent U.S. sanctions, Iranian lawmakers voted in mid-August to raise spending on the nation’s missile program by more than $300 million, which, in light of past similar actions, may or may not happen. President Hassan Rouhani, defending his national security credentials against Iranian hardliners, took credit in July for increased missile production under his administration, which, he suggested, had contributed more to the growth of Iran’s strategic weapons capabilities than his predecessors.
Iran is no less committed to its space program, which began in the mid-2000s. Iranian officials of all political stripes view the program as a means to join other countries in utilizing space for communications and remote sensing, promote science and technology, collaborate with other countries’ space programs, and, perhaps most importantly, gain prestige. An independent space program also is a hedge against Western efforts to limit Iran’s access to commercial space launch services. Tehran responded to the U.S. criticisms of the Simorgh’s test, in part, by announcing plans to launch two more satellites in the next two years.
Ambassador Haley’s UN statement about the Simorgh claimed it was “inherently capable of delivering a nuclear warhead,” echoing the common critique that any SLV program can be a cover for building intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). In his Worldwide Threat Hearing testimony on Iran in May, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was more circumspect, saying only that “Tehran's desire to deter the United States might drive it to field an ICBM” and that “progress on Iran's space program could shorten a pathway to an ICBM because space launch vehicles use similar technologies” (italics added). Historically, however, Iran and countries such as India, France, and even the United States used ballistic missiles to develop SLVs not vice versa.
I am not a rocket scientist, but there are numerous differences in the technologies used for placing a satellite into orbit and precisely targeting a warhead to a spot on the ground from space. Overcoming these differences would require significant commitments of money and technical resources, which Iran may not need or want to spend. In 2016, one of Rouhani’s advisers claimed that Iran already intended to limit its ballistic missile forces to a range of 2,000-2,300 kilometers because its strategic defense plan currently saw no justification for longer ranges. Interestingly, Iran’s space program in May cancelled its small manned space flight program because it was too expensive.
So, if stopping Iran from testing missiles is impossible, what are Washington’s options short of militarily destroying its capabilities? Negotiating in good faith with President Rouhani on restricting Iran’s development of longer-range missiles would be a good place to start. Moreover, such negotiations might create a pause in missile testing that the United States and its allies so desire. Still, Washington will have to remove its blinders first.
There is an old military intelligence saying that may apply here: once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action. That is, when you start to see a pattern, there is intent behind it. And, in making a case for Iran’s elected leaders’ willingness to compromise by freezing activities for the sake of negotiations, there is an argument for testing the proposition with a third approach to Tehran.
Recall that between 2003 and 2005 Rouhani chaired Iran’s Supreme Council for National Security and worked with like-minded President Muhammad Khatami on negotiating limits on Iran’s nuclear program with the Europeans. Iran temporarily suspended its uranium enrichment activities then, resuming them only after the negotiations failed. But this was not a one-off event. After Rouhani became president in 2013, he managed to get the Revolutionary Guard to freeze its missile tests while Iran negotiated the JCPOA. Perhaps some could argue that it was only coincidence that Rouhani was again central to negotiations and activity freezes.
But, why not find out by trying for a freeze and negotiations a third time? As part of his effort to cast Iran’s 2017 presidential election as a referendum on the nuclear agreement, Rouhani charged that his hardliner opponents welcomed the election of President Trump because he wanted to tear up the nuclear deal. After his resounding re-election victory, Ruhani used his second term inauguration speech in mid-August to reinforce Iran’s commitment to JCPOA and, more importantly, to open the door for further negotiations. In the nationally televised address, he told Iranians that now is “the time for the mother of all negotiations, not the mother of all bombs,” referring to the use of the U.S. massive ordnance air blast (MOAB) bomb in Afghanistan in April.
True diplomats and dealmakers would seize this offer, especially when Rouhani has delivered in the past by getting Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayaollah Ali Khamenei on board with negotiations. A testing halt while talks are underway for a 2,000-kilomter limit on the current range of Iran’s missiles would nicely complement the JCPOA’s nuclear restrictions. In return for Tehran accepting limits on Iranian missile ranges and future tests, the U.S. and its allies could commit to remove existing missile sanctions and perhaps provide incentives such as increased scientific collaboration in civilian areas, including Iran’s space program. Such a compromise could go a longer way in having a positive impact on Iran’s behavior than the “mother of all bombs” seemed to have in Afghanistan.
A good faith approach would enable Rouhani to continue to outmaneuver his hardline opponents and argue that Iran’s security interests are best served by compromises involving limits on expensive and unnecessary efforts to build longer-range ballistic missiles. Now might just be the “right time” to talk to Tehran that Secretary Tillerson did not see during his visit to Saudi Arabia earlier this year. But someone in the current administration or among its supporters has to have the vision to see the opportunity.
