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Iran is moving to restart its suspended uranium enrichment program. Negotiations with the European Union have collapsed and the crisis is escalating. Does the United States -- or Israel -- have a military option?
The same neoconservative pundits who campaigned for the invasion of Iraq are now beating the drums on Iran. Urging us this week to keep military options open, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol said Iran’s “nuclear program could well be getting close to the point of no return.” Writing from the same talking points, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said, “Instead of being years away from the point of no return for an Iranian bomb…Iran is probably just months away.”
Do they reflect the thinking of senior officials closely aligned with these political currents? No official has indicated that they do. But just one year ago, Vice President Cheney seemed to be thinking along exactly these lines when he told radio host Don Imus on Inauguration Day, "Iran is right at the top of the list." Cheney came close to endorsing military action, noting that "the Israelis might well decide to act first and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards."
There is no need for military strikes against Iran. The country is five to ten years away from the ability to enrich uranium for fuel or bombs. Even that estimate, shared by the Defense Intelligence Agency and experts at IISS, ISIS, and University of Maryland assumes Iran goes full-speed ahead and does not encounter any of the technical problems that typically plague such programs.
This is not a nuclear bomb crisis, it is a nuclear regime crisis. US Ambassador John Bolton has correctly pointed out that this is a key test for the Security Council. If Iran is not stopped the entire nonproliferation regime will be weakened, and with it the UN system.
But it will have to be diplomats, not F-15s that stop the mullahs. An air strike against a soft target, such as the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan (which this author visited in 2005) would inflame Muslim anger, rally the Iranian public around an otherwise unpopular government and jeopardize further the US position in Iraq. Finally, the strike would not, as is often said, delay the Iranian program. It would almost certainly speed it up. That is what happened when the Israelis struck at the Iraq program in 1981. (Read More)
The Bush Administration has imposed sanctions at a significantly greater rate than the Clinton Administration, raising important questions about how the United States should approach the spread of technology in a globalizing world. Do more sanctions result in more security? A preliminary look into the case of the two Indian chemical firms suggests the answer may be no.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s demagoguery has triggered a strong European backlash that may produce the Western unity long lacking in negotiations with Iran. European leaders have denounced Ahmadinejad’s screeds against Israel and his denial of the Holocaust, linked them to deep suspicions of Iran’s nuclear program and begun talk of sanctions and other actions to force Iranian compliance with its treaty obligations. Ahmadinejad’s radical statements did not start EU-US collaboration, but will strengthen their partnership in support of Security Council referral. EU-Iranian negotiations, set to begin December 21, will be the first time since August of this year that the EU (led by Britain, France and Germany) will hold direct talks with the Iranians. On August 5, the Europeans gave Iran a “Framework for a Long-term Agreement,” but negotiations stalled 3 days later when Iran restarted its uranium conversion program at Isfahan.
Administration officials have settled on a standard answer to questions about their pre-war claims of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq: “much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong.” This explanation ignores the central role senior officials had in creating, shaping and selecting the intelligence.
A compilation of information on fissile material around the world.
As 2005 comes to a close, there is good news to report on several government efforts aimed at stemming the spread of nuclear weapons. We are moving in the right direction, though not as fast nor as far as we could.