Note: The purpose of this article is not to discount the dangers of a nuclear armed Iran — indeed, a Middle East devoid of a nuclear security spiral is ideal, and the United States should continue to advocate for denuclearization; but rather, to examine how stability could be formed between Iran and Israel — and why in such a case, non-Iranian backed jihadist groups such as ISIL, would remain the primary threat to regional security, due to gaps in international relations academia.
On January 7, 2020, following the assassination of Iranian General Qassim Suleimani by the United States, Iran launched ballistic missiles at two military bases housing American troops. The New York Times speculated that the missiles were “a deliberate attempt by Iran to claim it had responded, but without provoking” the United States. As evidenced by this behavior, despite its bellicose threats against freedom, Iran remains a rational state actor. As a result, policymakers can contextualize its policies within dominant and deeply institutionalized international relations (IR) paradigms such as realism and its rational actor assumption.
On the other hand, the acts of non-state jihadist groups are unpredictable to policymakers because they are given secondary importance within these traditional schools of thought.
Subsequently, what results is a disconnect between theory and jihadi practice, producing oxymoronic behavior that many experts have deemed “irrationally rational.” While alternative IR theories may help contextualize their motivations, they have not yet fully permeated into mainstream discourse, and jihadism fueled by extremist ideology, regardless of context, remains challenging to confront.
Therefore, I argue that even though jihadist groups such as ISIL do not possess the sheer destructive potential of a nuclear Iran — their incompatibility with realism and resultant unpredictability; makes them a greater threat to regional security than Iran’s nuclear program, which can be interpreted as stability-searching through a lens of defensive realism.
Iran’s nuclear program was born amidst the US-led ‘Atoms for Peace’ initiative, designed to promote peaceful nuclear development. However, with the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Western threat perception regarding Iran’s ‘peaceful’ nuclear intentions skyrocketed. In a recent assessment, an alarmed International Atomic Energy Agency reported that “Iran may have enough low enriched uranium to produce … a second nuclear weapon …” However, Iranian foreign policy is not made by so-called irrational, mad mullahs “hell-bent … to create another Holocaust,” as neoconservative pundits such as John Bolton propose, but by “perfectly sane ayatollahs who want to survive.” Therefore, although Iran engages in combative rhetoric against its neighbor Israel, threatening to ‘wipe it off the map’, it remains a rational actor, and as defensive realism will elucidate — shows “no propensity for self-destruction.”
According to leading defensive realist Kenneth Waltz, states, as security maximizers tend to preserve the existing balance of power by adopting what they perceive to be defensive measures as a form of self-help behavior. They prefer maintaining the status quo because the benefits of expansion are seldom worth the costs. Accordingly, Waltz believes that Iran’s alleged nuclear capabilities, or efforts to gain capability, are not offensive by nature but rather defensive as part of a long-term effort to restore the status quo disrupted by Israeli nuclear ascension. Since the 1967 Six-Day War, with significant financial support from the West, Israel has developed a nuclear triad currently possessing between 75-400 warheads. As a result of its nuclear preponderance, Israel has been able to act with impunity, most recently assassinating a top Iranian nuclear scientist, an action that will likely engender Iranian retaliation.
Following this logic, if a virtual Israeli nuclear monopoly generates instability, then Iran’s ascendence to the nuclear playing field should restore the status quo and ensure stability — albeit through a security dilemma of mutually assured destruction.
Buttressing this assertion is Robert Jervis’ expansion on defensive realism: Offense-Defense Theory, which measures states’ ability to “do well by attacking relative to defending.” Consequently, the world is perceived by states as either offensive or defensive-dominant, when offensive and defensive capabilities are indistinguishable.
Accordingly, given the power imbalance in its favor, the Middle East is currently offensive-dominant as perceived by Israel. In such a world, an emboldened Israel assumes an offensive posture, and as a result, it is doubly dangerous due to the heightened risk of misperception, which might compel Iran to preempt any Israeli action. On the other hand, according to this theory, Iran, which currently views its environment as lending to the defense, reasons that if it gains nuclear weapons, at least enough to mount a successful second-strike, both it and Israel will perceive the world as defensive-dominant, experience deterrence, and experience regional stability, due to the risk of mutually assured destruction.
Subsequently, while Iran’s actions can be interpreted as stability-searching, neorealists do not give much credence to non-state actors, and as a result, are; as acknowledged by leading realist John Mearsheimer — unprepared to contextualize what they deem the ‘irrationally rational’ actions of globally networked jihadist groups such as ISIL, who view all states as apostates — including Iran.
Addressing jihadist behavior’s supposed rationality, such a characterization finds its roots within the rational actor model, where terrorist groups are deemed to be politically motivated unitary actors who undergo a cost-benefit calculus (like states) to maximize political utility. While this is true to an extent, groups like ISIL represent new terrorism, characterized by: “a substantial departure from rationality” at the individual level while remaining strategically rational, hence the description ‘irrational rationality’. In other words, jihadi terrorism “may … be rational [in the sense of serving the political goals of] … terrorist organizations … but that does not make it rational from the viewpoint of the [relatively autonomous] individual recruits.”
This usurpation of the rational actor assumption confounds policymakers, who have historically relied on realism to shape their understanding of world dynamics.
For instance, in the aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, many realists and liberals (who similarly subscribe to the rational actor model) questioned why aspiring ‘state’ ISIL would take such a large risk by aggravating “one of the more militarily aggressive Western powers … potentially [provoking] a massive retaliatory response?”
While such attacks might be interpreted as a costly political signal at the strategic level, at the individual level, where they are actually planned and executed, motivations prove to be overwhelmingly ideological. For instance, jihadis are fed a prophecy that as faithful Muslims seeking salvation, they will fight and kill infidels “whose defeat … will initiate the countdown to the apocalypse.” The fact that such an ideological explanation is constructivist and does not conform with either the rational actor or unitary actor assumption can explain why existing counterterrorism strategies are counterproductive and why jihadism is so resilient.
Existing counterterrorism doctrine created by realists and liberals emphasizes leadership decapitation, a misguided strategy that further legitimizes jihadists’ radical conceptions, thus contributing to further regional destabilization. Because policymakers perceive jihadist groups as hierarchical unitary actors similar to states, they reason that if prominent figures are assassinated, then the remainders of their organizations will wither. However, despite efforts at institutionalization at core levels, the fact remains that global jihadist groups, such as ISIL, remain fanatical terrorist networks predicated upon ideological motivations, and consequently “unlike a hierarchy, cannot be destroyed by decapitation” given their extensive peripheries.
Having been inundated in zero-sum ideological rhetoric, jihadist cells exhibit a lack of formality, operating relatively “independently of each other, and … [seldomly] report to a central headquarters or single leader for [explicit] direction.” Therefore, their recruits are parochially motivated to continue their missions autonomously, even in the absence of a higher command authority that might have exercised a modicum of restraint.
This phenomenon can be observed following the killing of ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, where despite his death, his radical ideologies persisted and only increased his adherents’ fanaticism regarding apocalyptic prophecies; while rebuffing “advice from [new] central leadership.” This lack of formalization increases uncertainty, which in turn produces organizational instability following a leadership decapitation event. This resultant instability counterproductively threatens regional security through unpredictable and ever-increasing brazen attacks.
In conclusion, Iran is a rational state actor, and policymakers can interpret its nuclear aspirations as stability-searching through a lens of defensive realism. In contrast, ‘irrationally rational’ jihadist groups such as ISIL remain unpredictable at individual levels when analyzed through deeply institutionalized international relations theories due to a disconnect between the rational actor assumption that shapes policy and jihadi reality. Therefore, compared to Iran: a rational actor whose actions can — to a degree, be anticipated as defensive; ideologically motivated, ‘irrationally rational’ jihadists pose a greater risk to regional security simply because policymakers are unprepared to contextualize, and therefore preempt their behavior.
As a result, the existence of a nuclear Iran (alongside a nuclear Israel), does not relegate jihadism to the periphery in the context of Middle Eastern politics — despite ISIL’s recent fall from grace. Instead, policymakers must remain wary of ISIL’s resurgence, which would prove doubly dangerous for all states involved.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect any official policy or position of the US Government, the Department of Defense or the US Army.
