Saturday, September 25, 2004

Maybe Kerry Can Go To Work For The European Union

The morning of November 3, John Kerry will have to start looking elsewhere for somebody who appreciates his towering diplomatic skills more than Americans. Perhaps he could try France - no really. After all, European Union diplomacy hasn't yielded much in Iran.

In any event, events in Iran are heading toward a crisis. An unstable, terrorist regime cannot be allowed to build a bomb.

The “tactical” talks about Afghanistan and Iraq never expanded into a broad, strategic dialogue about all issues that are of common interest to the United States and Iran. Such a dialogue could have provided the framework for handling the nuclear issue, which was coming to a head. New intelligence gathered since 2002 about the extent of Iran’s nuclear program left no doubt that Iran was at the very least developing the necessary infrastructure for making nuclear weapons. The Bush administration relied on others—the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and above all the
EU—to bring Iran back into line because the United States had already exhausted all sanction options it had at its disposal. The administration was not willing to pursue a policy based on incentives.

The policy outsourced to the IAEA and the EU was accompanied by a “carefully worded escalation.” That was how one “senior White House official” described Bush’s statement in June 2003 that the United States would not tolerate Iran’s building of nuclear weapons. Although Bush did not specifically mention military options, he made it clear shortly thereafter that “all options remain on the table.” As far as is known, such hints at using the military are also supported by contingency plans that have been drawn up in case of a crisis.

But this would be no easy undertaking. The nuclear facilities are broadly scattered and it is likely that there are smaller ones which are not known yet. At least one is purportedly built to withstand a conventional weapons attack. Should military force ever be used, it would presumably be directed against the light water reactor in Bushehr and the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, among others. But these options entail considerable political risk, whether in the form of increased anti-American sentiment or terrorist attacks in revenge.


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