CIAO DATE: 07/02

Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East Regional Trends, National Forces, Warfighting Capabilities, Delivery Options, and Weapons Effects

Reasons for Proliferating and War Fighting Options

• Reasons for proliferating outweigh disincentives, and motivation is growing.
• Arms control regimes harass proliferators without stopping stem and fail to offer non-proliferators security.
• War fighting concepts are likely to lack clear structure and be highly volatile in terms of enemy, targets, and crisis behavior.
• Only a few leadership and military elites -- such as Egypt and Israel -- have shown a concern with highly structured strategic planning in the past.
• Iran-Iraq and Gulf Wars have demonstrated missiles and weapons of mass destruction will be used.
• Israeli actions in 1967 and attack on Osirak, Egyptian and Syrian attack on Israel in 1973, demonstrate regional focus on surprise and preemption.
• Iraq has already demonstrated regional concern with launch on warning, launch under attack options. Syria probably has some option of this kind.
• Concentration of population and leadership in single or a few urban areas makes existential attacks possible.

Full Text (PDF, 166 pages, 541K)