Credo quia absurdum, “I believe because it is absurd.-Tertullian
For conspicuous reasons, the likelihood of direct war between Israel and Iran is “high.”[1] What remains inconspicuous is that such a war could quickly or incrementally involve North Korean military assets. Even if Israel were able to keep Iran pre-nuclear, an already nuclear North Korea could still multiply and magnify Iranian aggressions. In this scenario, North Korea would function as a witting surrogate of Iran.
What arguments could support such a portentous conclusion? In a worst case scenario, Israel would find itself facing a direct military conflict with Iran’s state ally in Pyongyang, one in which Israel could lose its presumptive upper hand during competitive risk-taking. Any such loss would be the result of Israel no longer being the sole nuclear power during crisis escalations. In strategic parlance, this signifies a prospective Israeli loss of “escalation dominance.”[2]
Such calculations would be perplexing, and not for the intellectually faint-at-heart.[3] At the same time, going forward, purposeful Israeli solutions could be discoverable only by gifted strategic thinkers, not by politicians, pundits or the assorted marionettes of artificial intelligence. Regarding incentives for North Korea to undertake potentially grave risks on behalf of Iran, the most recognizable encouragements would coalesce around Iranian oil.
If Hezbollah, Hamas and Houthi terror attacks on Israel should lead to direct and protracted warfare between Israel and Iran, North Korean involvement could more immediately immobilize Israel. In nuclear terms, Israel would likely be in an unfavorable position to engage Iran’s PRK proxy because Israel is a “50 target state.” Even in its still pre-nuclear iteration and without tangible North Korean backing, Iran would be a “1000+ target state” with long-range strike capabilities.
Israel could soon have to face a newly-nuclear Iran and an already-nuclear North Korea simultaneously.[4] And this is to say nothing about variously possible Russian and/or Chinese interventions undertaken for Iran, or about plausible Indian and/or Pakistani involvements.
Pakistan, a nuclear Sunni Islamic state, is improving its ties to Shiite Iran while remaining supportive of Sunni Saudi Arabia. Nuclear India, the long-time foe of Pakistan, is also strengthening its ties to Iran by way of Chabahar port.[5] Pakistan has openly embraced a “counterforce” or warfighting strategy of nuclear deterrence, one that could confront Israeli decision-makers with altogether unprecedented existential hazards.
In the final analysis, it could be left up to the United States to support Israel’s survival against Iranian, North Korean and potentially Pakistani aggressions. This conclusion would identify scenarios in which Iran-backed jihadist terror attacks[6] on Israel wind up retrospectively as the original precipitants of a regional or global nuclear war. Presently, Iranian surrogate forces are visibly operational in all Palestinian Arab territories (especially Gaza), Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Mali and Somalia.
A key question dawns: If Iranian decision-makers are confident in their timetable to become nuclear, why should they ever need to solidify or enlarge alliance ties with North Korea? Exactly “how close” are Tehran and Pyongyang as military allies? Would it be prudent or cost-effective for Iran to strengthen its ties to North Korea when the Islamic Republic might still have to face Israeli preemptive strikes or other barriers to independent nuclear status?[7] Are presumptive Iranian interests in a North Korean nuclear surrogacy sensible, rational and cost-effective? Or are they “absurd?”
What are the relevant and particular scenarios? How should these time-urgent narratives best be ascertained and delineated? Though Israel has no direct adversarial connections to North Korea, Pyongyang does have binding ties to Syria and does remain a close ally of not-yet-nuclear Iran.
Jihadist Iran is the primary patron of anti-Israel terrorism, both Sunni (Hamas) and Shiite (Hezbollah, Houthi). Imminently, Israel’s ongoing struggles against Iran-supported terrorism could bring the Jewish State into a direct and protracted conflict with that adversarial state and (derivatively) with North Korea. It is likely (see Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida) that Iran has already supplied Hezbollah and other proxies with electromagnetic ordnance, and that terror-group use of these non-nuclear or NNEMP weapons could soon initiate a direct and escalating Israeli war with Iran.
If such an unpredictable conflict should commence, both Israel and Iran would strive for “escalation dominance,” an inherently unstable competition in which a still pre-nuclear Iran would struggle for supremacy at a starkly presumptive disadvantage. Ironically, such an Iranian strategic disadvantage – one best explained by Israel’s plainly evident nuclear monopoly - could effectively worsen Israel’s overall security situation. This is because any such competition in risk-taking would immediately accelerate Iran’s search for an independent nuclear deterrent. At the same time, any direct Iranian use of NNEMP weapons could be countered (among several other options) by Israeli use of a nuclear or NEMP retaliation.
There are further details, most of them similarly bewildering. Depending on Iran’s intra-war willingness to accept existential risks, Jerusalem could sometime find itself in “active belligerent status” with Pyongyang. Belligerency could take the form of direct military engagement with Iran’s designated nuclear proxy or with North Korea’s nuclear and/or non-nuclear assets. These North Korean assets could have previously been placed within the decision–making ambit of Tehran.
Whatever North Korea’s policy disposition on accepting nuclear surrogacy for Iran, the prospects for a widening conflict would be “high.” Because all pertinent scenarios would lack historical precedent, there could exist no science-based method of assigning numerical or statistical probabilities. At the same time, per axiomatic principles of mathematics, there would still remain reliable ways of conflict estimation. Here, the outbreak of a direct nuclear belligerency between Israel and North Korea could involve the United States, Russia and/or China; and the precise forms of any such superpower involvement would be indeterminable.
For Israel, the threats from Iran/North Korea are existential and palpable. Accordingly, the immediate question for Jerusalem is what should Israel do now? Not much could be gained via direct diplomacy with Iran or North Korea, but there could still be more-or-less calculable benefits for Jerusalem in gaining certain supportive policy guarantees from Washington.
But even such seemingly persuasive guarantees could fail. Jerusalem would then have to plan urgently for a uniquely complex set of decisional options. In these scenarios, even decipherable success in keeping Iran non-nuclear might provide Israel no assurances of national safety. In these scenarios, all presumptions of Israeli success would be sorely problematic.
Further clarifications will be needed. By definition, an accidental nuclear war between Israel and North Korea would be unintentional, but an unintentional nuclear war would not necessarily be the result of an accident. An unintentional nuclear war between Jerusalem and Pyongyang could represent the outcome of decision-making miscalculation or irrationality by one or both adversaries.[8] Such a distressing understanding is realistic and potentially probable.
What is being done about this bewilderment in Israel? Though unverifiable, neither Jerusalem nor Pyongyang is likely paying sufficient attention to the intersecting risks of an unintentional nuclear war.
At some point, Israel’s survival could depend on variously viable combinations of ballistic missile defense and defensive first strikes. But settling upon such untested combinations would exclude critical input from material or quantifiable historical evidence and present at the highest imaginable levels of existential risk. In certain residual circumstances, the offensive military threat to Israel could warrant some rational form of situational preemption. At that late stage, however, there could be no "ordinary" circumstances wherein a defensive strike against a nuclear North Korea could be considered rational.
There are additional nuances. For the moment, it seems likely that Kim Jong Un would value his own personal life and the lives of his family above any other conceivable preference or combination of preferences. In corresponding scenarios, Kim could be presumed rational and remain subject to Israel/US nuclear deterrence. Still, it could be important for a negotiating Israeli leadership team to carefully distinguish between authentic instances of enemy irrationality and instances of feigned or pretended enemy irrationality. Also worth noting is that actual negotiations or bargaining with North Korea would likely be led by the United States, and any related or underlying diplomacy would be conducted with Iran.[9]
Another specific hazard surfaces. Ipso facto, there will be more to assess concerning an inadvertent nuclear war between Jerusalem and Pyongyang. Such a dizzying conflict could take place not only as the catastrophic result of misunderstandings or miscalculations between rational national leaders (Israeli, North Korean, Iranian and/or American), but as the unintended consequence (whether singular or synergistic) of mechanical, electrical, computer malfunctions or hackings. These last interventions could include the substantially complicating intrusions of "cyber-mercenaries."
Always, regarding potential Iranian nuclear surrogate North Korea, Israel’s strategic policies should emphasize the maintenance of stable intra-war nuclear thresholds. Israel’s actual war would always be against Iran, and North Korea would be operating against Israel solely as Iran’s nuclear surrogate.
Israel’s best path to nuclear war avoidance/nuclear war limitation with North Korea should involve prior strategic understandings with Iran or prior military actions against Iran. Reciprocally, North Korea’s willingness to function as Iran’s nuclear proxy would assuredly be contingent on expected benefits for Pyongyang. North Korea would likely “win” an actual nuclear war with Israel, but any such “victory” would come at very high costs.
Summing up, though the above-identified connections between Israel, Iran and North Korea may first seem implausible, they do represent credible connections. While it is possible that even a pre-nuclear Iran could sometime gain “escalation dominance” against an already-nuclear Israel (because Israel is only a “fifty-target state”), it is still more likely that Iran would prefer all possible alternatives to warring against a cornered Israeli nuclear enemy. One such alternative would be to enlist the surrogate nuclear assistance of North Korea. Recalling timeless words of Tertullian, Jerusalem should take prompt notice of the ancient philosopher’s famously ironic declaration: “I believe because it is absurd.”
LOUIS RENÉ BERES (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue. His twelfth and most recent book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel's Nuclear Strategy (2016) (2nd ed., 2018). Professor Beres' strategic writings have appeared in Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); International Security (Harvard University); Yale Global Online (Yale University); Oxford University Press (Oxford University) Air-Space Operations Review (USAF) and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and other publoications. Dr. Beres was born in Zürich at the end of World War II.
Notes:
[1] Under authoritative international law, the question of whether or not a “state of war” exists between states is ambiguous. Traditionally, it was held that an explicit declaration of war was necessary before any “state of war” could formally exist. Seventeenth-century jurist Hugo Grotius divided wars into declared wars, which were legal, and undeclared wars, which were not. (See Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace, 1625; Bk. III, Chaps. III, IV, and XI.) By the start of the twentieth century, the position that war obtains only after a conclusive declaration of war by one of the parties was codified by Hague Convention III. This treaty stipulated that hostilities must never commence without a “previous and explicit warning” in the form of a declaration of war or an ultimatum. (See Hague Convention III Relative to the Opening of Hostilities, 1907, 3 NRGT, 3 series, 437, article 1.) Currently, declarations of war may be tantamount to admissions of international criminality because of the express criminalization of aggression; it could therefore represent a clear jurisprudential absurdity to tie any true state of war to formal and prior declarations of belligerency. It follows, inter alia, that a state of war may now exist without any formal declarations, but only if there exists an actual armed conflict between two or more states and/or at least one of these affected states considers itself “at war.”
[2] On "escalation dominance," see article by Professor Louis René Beres at The War Room, US Army War College, Pentagon: https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/nuclear-decision-making-and-nuclear-war-an-urgent-american-problem/
[3] "It must not be forgotten," writes French poet Guillaume Apollinaire in The New Spirit and the Poets (1917), "that it is perhaps more dangerous for a nation to allow itself to be conquered intellectually than by arms."
[4] For generic assessments of nuclear war fighting consequences by this author, see: Louis René Beres, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel's Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd. ed., 2018); Louis René Beres, Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Louis René Beres, Mimicking Sisyphus: America's Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (Lexington MA: Lexington Books, 1983); Louis René Beres, Reason and Realpolitik: US Foreign Policy and World Order (Lexington MA; Lexington Books, 1984); and Louis René Beres, ed., Security or Armageddon: Israel's Nuclear Strategy (Lexington MA: Lexington Books, 1986).
[5] See: https://besacenter.org/chabahar-port-indias-entrance-into-geopolitical-influence/
[6] The cumulative effect of such attacks expresses assorted “crimes against humanity.” Such crimes were originally defined in law at Nuremberg as "murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population before or during a war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated...." Charter of the International Military Tribunal, Aug. 8, 1945, Art. 6(c), 59 Stat. 1544, 1547, 82 U.N.T.S. 279, 288.
[7] From a legal standpoint, it is always necessary to distinguish preemptive attacks from preventive attacks. Preemption is a military strategy of striking first in the expectation that the only foreseeable alternative is to be struck first oneself. A preemptive attack is launched by a state that believes enemy forces are about to attack. A preventive attack is launched not out of any genuine concern about “imminent” hostilities, but rather for fear of a longer-term deterioration in a pertinent military balance. In a preemptive attack, the length of time by which the enemy’s action is anticipated is presumptively very short; in a preventive strike, the anticipated interval is considerably longer. A related problem here for Israel would be not only the practical difficulty of determining “imminence,” but also that delaying a defensive strike until appropriately ascertained urgencies could be acknowledged might prove “fatal.”
[8] Expressions of decisional irrationality could take different and overlapping forms. These forms include a disorderly or inconsistent value system; computational errors in calculation; an incapacity to communicate efficiently; random or haphazard influences in the making or transmittal of particular decisions; and the internal dissonance generated by any structure of collective decision-making (i.e., assemblies of pertinent individuals who lack identical value systems and/or whose organizational arrangements impact their willing capacity to act as a single or unitary national decision maker).
[9] On deterring a prospectively irrational nuclear Iran, see: Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain, "Could Israel Safely Deter a Nuclear Iran?" The Atlantic, August 2012; and Professor Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain, "Israel and Iran at the Eleventh Hour," Oxford University Press (OUP Blog), February 23, 2012. General Chain (USAF/ret.) served as Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC).