WASHINGTON – While the world powers are trying to strike a deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran to limit its nuclear program, experts say they should also be concerned about the country’s missile program.
“Despite UN resolutions that forbid the development and testing of nuclear delivery systems, Iran has continued its missile program unabated and currently has the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the Middle East,” said Kenneth Weinstein, the President and CEO of Hudson Institute, a domestic and foreign policy think tank based in Washington, D.C.
Experts were invited to the Hudson Institute to further examine this issue. According to U.S. Republican Representative Ron DeSantis from Florida’s 6th district, Iran’s missile arsenal undermines international and regional security because these armaments can be used as a delivery mechanism for nuclear and other unconventional weapons. He also said that Iran’s missile capacity will allow the country to exercise undue influence in the region, as well as intimidate neighboring countries.
“I think this is something that the Congress needs to scrutinize and I think that we need to elevate this issue as much as we can,” DeSantis said during the panel discussion at the Hudson Institute on June 2.
According to Michael Eisenstadt, the director of The Washington Institute For Near East Policy’s Military and Security Studies Program, Iran’s way of war focuses on deterring and avoiding major conventional conflicts. The country pursues this through a combination of proxy operations and information operations.
“The missiles play a key role in both deterrence with regard to preventing them from getting into a major conventional conflict and in their information activity,” Eisenstadt said. “So it’s absolutely critical for deterrence and in the event they get into a major war, it’s also absolutely critical for warfighting from their point of view.”
In terms of Iran’s proxies and partners, Eisenstadt said Iran’s weapons of choice are rockets and missiles.
“I served in the embassy in Baghdad in 2010 and we got rocketed quite often by special groups that were trained by the Iranians,” he said. “Overall, I would argue that their missile force is really the backbone of their strategic deterrence.”
Eisenstadt said Iran views “missiles as a part of their ability to advance their strategy of driving wedges in enemy coalitions.”
“And for a while they were working on missiles that had arranged to reach Europe,” he said. “(It) is important for them to be able to target the Europeans in the event of a crisis and split them off from the U.S.”
Eisenstadt said he thinks the missiles are used as a replacement for Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
David Cooper, who serves as a professor and chair of the Department of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, said at the panel discussion that missiles are associated with nuclear weapons, but they are treated separately. He said that should not be the case.
“If Iran were to make a bulk for serious nuclear weapons power status along the lines of Pakistan or in India,” he said, “then the missiles far from being peripheral actually are rather key to the whole solution for the Iranians.”
Although Iran said that its nuclear weapons program is peaceful, Cooper said that the missiles may tell a different story.
“Iran has a very capable missile force,” he said. “The vast expanse and the international taboo of long range ballistic missile programs … really only make economic, political, military sense in the broader context of an ambition to become a nuclear weapons power.”
DeSantis said that not only is Iran’s missile program a threat to the U.S., but he also thinks that the country’s leadership is “dedicated to a militant, Islamic ideology that is inherently antagonistic to the United States.”
“I think underneath what (the Obama administration is) trying to do is an assumption that Iran could be kind of brought into the civilized world and could become a productive force for regional stability,” DeSantis said. “I think they really want a deal because a deal means Iran might start to change.”
As the U.S. and the other five world powers – Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia – work to limit Iran’s nuclear program, experts said they should also consider Iran’s missile program.
“I think we really do need … (to) put the Iranian regime on the hook to explain what is it they need these long range missiles for if not nuclear weapons,” Cooper said.
