BACKGROUND: In early 2000, the CIA reported it could not guarantee that Iran did not have a nuclear capability. Subsequent testimony by CIA director, George Tenet emphasized that within a decade Iran would have a functioning nuclear weapon. Likewise, the CINC of USCENTCOM, General Anthony Zinni, stated that Iran would have a nuclear weapon and delivery system by 2005. Since many analysts agree that possession of nuclear weapons makes the world safe for conventional warfare, the temptation to use such weapons to assert Iranian objectives in Central Asia or the Transcaucasus might prove too strong to resist. Neither does the scenario of a more aggressive Iran, and not only in the Gulf and Middle East, stop with these questions.

Iran is already becoming a "second-tier" proliferator to other states. Just as North Korea sells technology and weapons components abroad to gain revenues with which to fund its own conventional and nuclear force modernization, so too could Tehran play this game, especially in the Middle East where there are many would be proliferators already. Or it could sell technology to Pakistan, India or back to North Korea, providing a conduit for the passage of dangerous and/or dual-use technologies to establish "wannabe" proliferators. Central Asian states, with Russian and Chinese support, have tried successfully to avoid nuclear entanglements and create a nuclear free zone.

Russia now is trying to bring Iran and India into the Shanghai -5 to convert that organization into a regional anti-American security system. But this move can hardly preclude future regional complications growing out of Iran's nuclearization. Once Tehran develops a usable nuclear force will it agree to put this region "on ice", so to speak, and join this nuclear weapons free zone? And if it does not what will then happen to that zone and what pressures might be unleashed within Central Asia or the CIS as a whole to react to Iran's accretion of nuclear power? Likewise, we cannot know what the ultimate configuration of Iranian forces will be or what kind of doctrine it will choose.

IMPLICATIONS: It certainly is conceivable that Iran and Russia might part ways or that Irano-Pakistani rivalry in Afghanistan might lead Tehran to play a secessionist card against either Moscow or Islamabad in the belief of its essential invulnerability to serious retribution. But however matters work out, it is clear that Iran's entry into the nuclear club has the potential to destabilize not just the Middle East and the Gulf, but also Central Asia and South Asia. South Asia is already rushing headlong into more extensive nuclearization as India and Pakistan further develop their new arsenals. Pakistan and Iran are already at odds over Afghanistan and Central Asia and one can easily see the security agendas of any one of these regions bleeding into the other.

Pakistan;s rivalry with Iran and Russia in Central Asia could lead to further embroilment with India thereby joining security rivalries in South Asia and Central Asia. The development of nuclear arsenals in South Asia might be signs of how Iran will think about its weapons once it obtains a credible nuclear capability. India's recently published nuclear doctrine talks of a stable deterrent and second-strike capability, language that strongly implies it is moving towards a large, robust nuclear force with a triad of land, sea, and air based delivery systems or missiles for those weapons. India is also apparently starting down the road of ballistic missile defenses to preserve its deterrent's credibility.

Iran might conceivably move in the same direction and thereby massively destabilize much of Asia. After all, in response to Iran's expected nuclearization, Israel has taken possession of SSBN Dolphin-class submarines to give it a credible second-strike capability against attackers. And Israel is also building the Arrow missile defense system for the same reason. A relatively robust, diversified Iranian force, complete with second-strike capability and aspirations to a missile defense system might come into eventual play. We have not begun to imagine what the consequences might be for the Transcaucasian and Central Asian governments, India and Pakistan, or even for Russia under such circumstances. Some thought must be given to these no longer implausible possibilities.

CONCLUSIONS: Even if the rest of the CIS remains non-nuclear, Iran's forthcoming entry into the nuclear club will create a third or fourth regional player, with the inclusion of Pakistan, in Central Asia and the Transcaucasus that has both nuclear weapons and vital strategic interests at stake in these regions. It is not too much to assume that the connection between those two phenomena and regional security will grow and affect every government in these regions or that has important interests there.

Proliferation and missile defense and force structure issues are no longer exclusively a matter for the great or super powers. Increasingly, fundamental issues of regional security and rivalries between aspiring regional hegemons are wrapped up in a tight knot with the issues of nuclear security, strategy and force structure. This is the case even when only one state in a region or adjoining a region has a nuclear capability. We can no longer afford to overlook the strategic and political conundrums that will face Central Asia and Russia, and thereby supporting Iran’s nuclear proliferation efforts when Iran achieves that capability.

AUTHOR BIO: Dr. Stephen Blank is Professor of Strategic Studies at the US Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, PA. The views expressed in this article do not in any way represent those of the U.S. Army, Defense Department, or the U.S. Government.

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