Download or read book Osirak Redux written by Whitney Raas and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: As of this writing Iran's nuclear ambitions have been the subject of serious debate within the international community for over two years. Iran contends its nuclear program is entirely peaceful and insists the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) guarantees the right to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes; the United States asserts that Iran intends to use its civilian nuclear facilities as a cover for nuclear weapons development. Spanning the middle ground are France, Germany, and the UK, currently engaged in ongoing but periodically stalled negotiations over the status of Iran's uranium conversion and enrichment activities, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which acknowledges "concerns" regarding Iranian nuclear intentions but maintains there is no convincing evidence that Iran's true objective lies in militarizing its nuclear program. With very few exceptions, Israel has repeatedly stated its unequivocal opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran, and much speculation exists in the media today about Israel's military intentions towards Iran. Even though Israeli leaders have publicly maintained that no military action is under consideration, they have not ruled it out and multiple reports have indicated that Israel is indeed contemplating a preventive military strike to remove the threat of an Iranian nuclear capability. This is not without precedent: On June 7, 1981, Israel launched one of the most ambitious preventive attacks in modern history. Eight Israeli Air Force (IAF) F-16s supported by eight IAF F-15s destroyed the Iraqi reactor at Osirak in one of the earliest displays of what has become known as "precision strike." None of the IAF planes were lost, and, despite the political repercussions, the raid was considered a great success. More than twenty years later, some in Israel are again mulling the possibility of preventive action against an unfriendly state's attempts to gain nuclear weapons, this time Iran. In a report given to Prime Minister Sharon in 2003, a group of Israeli and American scholars and analysts present a grand strategy that calls for Israel to develop and maintain a "Long Arm" capability for long-range precision strike. This report, known as Project Daniel, further argues that this "Long Arm" be used for preventive action against attempts by unfriendly states to gain weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The project's chair, Louis Rene Beres, reiterated this view in a recent op-ed, calling on Israel to maintain strong preventive capability against adversaries' attempts to develop WMD even as it develops anti-ballistic missile systems. As Iran's nuclear program moves forward, the argument of the Project Daniel group may seem increasingly compelling to the government of Israel (as well as outside observers in the U.S. and elsewhere). Yet no unclassified net assessment of Israel's current capability to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities exists. The capabilities of the IAF have grown dramatically in the past two decades, yet the Iranian facilities are a significantly more challenging target than Osirak. This paper will attempt to fill this gap in the existing literature by providing a rough net assessment of an Israeli strike on known Iranian nuclear facilities. It will do so by taking the strike on Osirak as a generic template for the strike and then attempting to update the scenario to account for both the improved IAF capabilities and the much tougher Iranian defenses. The paper will first present a short overview of the Osirak raid, followed by a description of the nature and location of the Iranian nuclear facilities in the context of targeting for the IAF. The next section will attempt a rough estimate of the "weaponeering" necessary to destroy the target set. The third section will discuss the forces the IAF and Iran possess relevant to this planned strike, while the fourth will attempt to evaluate potential attack routes and the interaction of the forces. The paper will conclude with a brief discussion of the likely outcome of an Israeli attack and some policy considerations based on this outcome. In addition to specific assessment of the Iran-Israel scenario, this paper will also provide insight to the more general phenomenon of the use of precision-guided weapons as a counterproliferation tool. As concern over WMD proliferation grows, the use of precision-guided weapons for strikes on individual targets may become even more appealing. The Bush Administration has already made military counterproliferation part of its national strategy. The case of Iran provides a template for the prospective use of precision weapons and problems associated with the use against various targets of interest, especially nuclear-related, hardened, and well-defended targets.

Download or read book A Time to Attack written by Matthew Kroenig and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean for Iran to have nuclear weapon capabilities? And what should the United States do about this threatening situation?

Download or read book Unthinkable written by Kenneth Pollack and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines Iran's current nuclear potential while charting America's future course of action, recounting the prolonged clash between both nations to outline options for American policymakers.

Download or read book The Gulf Military Balance written by Anthony H. Cordesman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-03-12 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States faces major challenges in dealing with Iran, the threat of terrorism, and the tide of political instability in the Arabian Peninsula. The presence of some of the world’s largest reserves of oil and natural gas, vital shipping lanes, and Shia populations throughout the region have made the peninsula the focal point of US and Iranian strategic competition. Moreover, large youth populations, high unemployment rates, and political systems with highly centralized power bases have posed other economic, political, and security challenges that the Gulf states must address and that the United States must take into consideration when forming strategy and policy.

Download or read book Cultures of Counterproliferation written by Raphael BenLevi and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-20 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that the nature of counterproliferation strengthens the effect of cultural factors in policy choices, and illustrates this by focusing on US and Israeli policy toward the Iranian nuclear program. The United States and Israel have been the two states most active in opposing Iran’s nuclear ambitions; however, the respective strategies of each of these states have changed repeatedly. This book explores how competing cultural schools of thought on grand strategy within each state inform and shape the key policy decisions in their attempts to prevent a nuclear Iran. Drawing on numerous interviews conducted with former high-level officials in each country as well as published memoirs, this book first describes in detail the belief systems of the competing schools and then analyses the internal debates and key decisions on policy toward the Iranian Nuclear Program, while critically assessing the extent to which these beliefs influenced policy in the face of material-structural pressures. This in-depth analysis of the internal debates and dilemmas within the national leadership of the two states most prominent in the effort to prevent a nuclear Iran constitutes an indispensable guide for scholars and policymakers who will inevitably face similar dilemmas in dealing with this ongoing challenge and additional cases of nuclear proliferation around the world. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, US and Israeli foreign policy, Middle Eastern politics and IR in general.

Download or read book The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran written by Yossi Melman and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by hate and surrounded by fundamentalist leaders in a country that may soon possess nuclear weapons, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad poses the most serious threat to world peace, even while he shrewdly manipulates public opinion at home. Until now, Americans have known little about him. Since his election in June 2005, Ahmadinejad has accelerated his country's nuclear research; called for the elimination of Israel; and failed the Iranian people, who elected him on a since-neglected domestic platform. In this first book about him, we see the forces that are bringing the world to the brink of another war in the Middle East. Written by an Iranian-born insider and a world-renowned intelligence expert, it offers the first full portrait of this former mayor of Tehran whose rural roots and vituperative populism catapulted him from obscurity to national leadership.

Download or read book Nuclear Asymmetry and Deterrence written by Jan Ludvik and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: offers a new, broader conception of deterrence theory examines five key historical case studies of nuclear deterrence dyads nuclear weapons proliferation is a topic of increasing importance will be of interest to students of nuclear proliferation, strategic studies, deterrence theory, security studies and IR

Download or read book Strategic Studies written by Thomas G. Mahnken and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of Strategic Studies: A Reader brings together key essays on strategic theory by some of the leading contributors to the field. This revised volume contains several new essays and updated introductions to each section. The volume comprises hard-to-find classics in the field as well as the latest scholarship. The aim is to provide students with a wide-ranging survey of the key issues in strategic studies, and to provide an introduction to the main ideas and themes in the field. The book contains six extensive sections, each of which is prefaced by a short introductory essay: The Uses of Strategic Theory Interpretation of the Classics Instruments of War, Intelligence and Deception Nuclear Strategy Irregular Warfare and Small Wars Future Warfare, Future Strategy Overall, this volume strikes a balance between theoretical works, which seek to discover generalisations about the nature of modern strategy, and case studies, which attempt to ground the study of strategy in the realities of modern war. This new edition will be essential reading for all students of strategic studies, security studies, military history and war studies, as well as for professional military college students.

Download or read book The United States and Iran written by J. Roshandel and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-07-20 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relations between Iran and the US have been strained for over 30 years. This book provides unbiased discussions of issues such as historical relations, the Iranian nuclear program and their support for 'terrorist' organizations. It also identifies a wide range of possible US policy solutions to improve relations.

Download or read book The Evolution of International Security Studies written by Barry Buzan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-27 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first intellectual history of International Security Studies since 1945, providing an unparalleled survey for students and scholars.

Download or read book Indian Power Projection written by Shashank Joshi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: India is growing into one of Asia’s most important military powers. Its defence budget has more than doubled in the past decade, and it imports more arms than anyone else in the world. But India is still seen as a land power focused on long, disputed and militarised borders with Pakistan and China rather than the global military force it was in the first half of the twentieth century under British rule. Is this changing? India is acquiring increasing numbers of key platforms – aircraft carriers, amphibious ships, refuelling tankers and transport aircraft – that are extending its reach to the Indian Ocean littoral and beyond. But most accounts of this build-up have been impressionistic and partial. Indian Power Projection assesses the strength, reach and purposes of India's maturing capabilities. It offers a systematic assessment of India’s ability to conduct long-range airstrikes from land and sea, transport and convey airborne and amphibious forces, and develop the institutional and material enablers that turn platforms into capabilities. It draws extensively on the lessons of modern expeditionary operations, and considers how India’s growing interests might shape where and how it uses these evolving capabilities in the future. This study finds that Indian power projection is in a nascent stage: limited in number, primarily of use against much-weaker adversaries, and deficient in some key supporting capabilities. India’s defence posture will continue to be shaped by local threats, rather than distant interests. Indian leaders remain uncomfortable with talk of military intervention and expeditionary warfare, associating these with colonial and superpower excess. But as the country’s power, interests and capabilities all grow, it is likely that India will once more find itself using military force beyond its land borders.

Download or read book THE ISRAEL LOBBY AND U S FOREIGN POLICY written by N. Nourizadeh and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2014-02-13 with total page 659 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about politics and the close relation between Israel and US foreign policy.

Download or read book The Long Shadow written by Muthiah Alagappa and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Long Shadow investigates the purposes and roles of nuclear weapons in the new security environment, the nature and content of the national nuclear strategies of relevant states, and their implications for international security and stability in the Asian security region

Download or read book Theory of Unipolar Politics written by Nuno P. Monteiro and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-21 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has enjoyed unparalleled military power. The international system is therefore unipolar. A quarter of a century later, however, we still possess no theory of unipolarity. Theory of Unipolar Politics provides one. Dr Nuno P. Monteiro answers three of the most important questions about the workings of a unipolar world. Is it durable? Is it peaceful? What is the best grand strategy a unipolar power such as the contemporary United States can implement? In our nuclear world, the power preponderance of the United States is potentially durable but likely to produce frequent conflict. Furthermore, in order to maintain its power preponderance, the United States must remain militarily engaged in the world and accommodate the economic growth of its major competitors, namely, China. This strategy, however, will lead Washington to wage war frequently. In sum, military power preponderance brings significant benefits but is not an unalloyed good.

Download or read book Nonproliferation Policy and Nuclear Posture written by Neil Narang and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-08 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the causes and consequences of nuclear postures and nonproliferation policies. The real-world importance of nuclear weapons has led to the production of a voluminous scholarly literature on the causes and consequences of nuclear weapons proliferation. Missing from this literature, however, is a more nuanced analysis that moves beyond a binary treatment of nuclear weapons possession, to an exploration of how different nuclear postures and nonproliferation policies may influence the proliferation of nuclear weapons and subsequent security outcomes. This volume addresses this deficit by focusing on the causes and consequences of nuclear postures and nonproliferation policies. It is the aim of this book to advance the development of a new empirical research agenda that brings systematic research methods to bear on new dimensions of the nuclear weapons phenomenon. Prior to the contributions in this volume, there has been little evidence to suggest that nuclear postures and policies have a meaningful impact on the spread of nuclear weapons or security outcomes. This book brings together a new generation of scholars, advancing innovative theoretical positions, and performing quantitative tests using original data on nuclear postures, nonproliferation policies, and WMD proliferation. Together, the chapters in this volume make novel theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions to the field of nuclear weapons proliferation. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, international relations and security studies.

Download or read book Globalization and the National Security State written by Norrin M. Ripsman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-18 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past two decades, many have posited a correlation between the spread of globalization and the decline of the nation-state. In the realm of national security, advocates of the globalization thesis have argued that states' power has diminished relative to transnational governmental institutions, NGOs, and transnational capitalism. Initially, they pointed to declines in both global military spending (which has risen dramatically in recent years) and interstate war. But are these trends really indicative of the decline of nation-state's role as a guarantor of national security? In Globalization and the National Security State, T.V. Paul and Norrin M. Ripsman test the proposition against the available evidence and find that the globalization school has largely gotten it wrong. The decline in interstate warfare can largely be attributed to the end of the Cold War, not globalization. Moreover, great powers (the US, China, and Russia) continue to pursue traditional nation-state strategies. Regional security arrangements like the EU and ASEAN have not achieved much, and weak states--the ones most impacted by the turmoil generated by globalization--are far more traditional in their approaches to national security, preferring to rely on their own resources rather than those of regional and transnational institutions. This is a bold argument, and Paul and Ripsman amass a considerable amount of evidence for their claims. It cuts against a major movement in international relations scholarship, and is sure to generate controversy.

Download or read book A War It Was Always Going to Lose written by Jeffrey Record and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Makes sense of Japan's seemingly incomprehensible decision to go to war against the United States.