U.S. is laying groundwork to contain Iran's nuke strategy

The administration's move this year to reconfigure an interceptor and radar system to protect Europe against short- and medium-range missiles already is a clear element of deterrence aimed at a nuclear Iran. The proposed system is based on the assumption that the missiles would be Iranian and carry nuclear warheads.

“So the initial steps are being taken” in that direction, said Kugler, who sees that move as taking the United States toward “extended deterrence,” a sort of umbrella over neighbor-nations threatened by a nuclear Iran.

That is akin to a controversial “defense umbrella” concept that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton mentioned publicly in July. Those comments angered Israel, which said it sounded as if the United States was conceding Iran was going nuclear and preparing to live with it.

Clinton insisted her comment was meant to show Iran that it would not profit from building an atomic bomb.

Extended deterrence would be meant to protect friends and allies in the Middle East and Europe from the threat of an Iranian nuclear attack -- not unlike the security umbrella the United States provided for Germany during the Cold War, when the central threat was seen as either a Soviet land assault or a nuclear attack.

Some question whether such an argument can dissuade Iran, but retired Gen. John Abizaid, who oversaw U.S. military operations in the Middle East from 2003-07, says he thinks that a nuclear-armed Iran would make rational judgments.

“The historical evidence would suggest that Iran is not a suicide state,” he told a University of Virginia conference Oct. 5. “So it's my military belief that Iran can be deterred.”

Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said in an AP interview that Washington is mistaken in insisting that it would be intolerable for Iran to have nuclear weapons.

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