What To Do in Iran

There are two very interesting articles on what the US should do about Iran. In USA Today, Amitai Etzioni writes that it's time for the US to make a deal with Iran; specifically, that the US should "offer Iran a bargain: No Iranian nukes, no American-induced regime change. The United States would need to commit to not attacking Iran unless Iran attacked the United States or a U.S. ally. In addition, the Bush administration would not seek to undermine the regime by arming or financing opposition groups (whose legitimacy in Iran is undercut by American support anyway)." Etzioni indicates that this seems to be what the mullahs in Iran really want, writing that "Selig Harrison, director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy in Washington, is among those who has written that Tehran asked European Union representatives to obtain security commitments from Washington in exchange for Iran restraining its nuclear arms — but to no avail." If he's right, such a guarantee would, in fact, be a relatively small price to pay for preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. But if he's wrong, Etzioni, in this article at least, makes no suggestions as to what the US, the EU, or the international community should do if Iran keeps moving towards nuclear status.

In a piece over at the New York Times, Roger Cohen addresses this scenario, and asks the $64,000,000 question: "What's worse — a nuclear-armed Iran or American military action against Iran to prevent that happening?" Cohen begins by quoting Ghassan Salam, an adviser to Kofi Annan, who says "I wake up one day thinking American airstrikes would be the worst outcome, and the next thinking a nuclear Iran may be even more terrible," but moves on to say that "he chances that diplomacy will stop Iran's quest for nuclear weapons look remote. There are three reasons: Russian oil, Iranian nationalism and the Iraq legacy." Ultimately, Cohen concludes that "to allow a country that shelters some Qaeda operatives and has links to terrorist groups -— including Islamic Jihad - access to nuclear weapons is unacceptable."

So, what to do? To be honest, I don't know. And nobody else seems to know either. As Cohen makes abundantly clear in his article, military options are poor at best, and also carry huge risks, such as "enflaming Muslim sentiment against the West, intensifying exponentially the conflict in Iraq, increasing the threat of terrorism against the United States, sending oil prices spiraling, raising the possibility of Iranian military reprisals in neighboring countries including Israel, and hardening global anti-American sentiments." Etzioni puts his hope in the likelihood that Iran would sacrifice much for a no-attack pledge from the US; I'm skeptical that that is the primary motivation for Iranian proliferation. The offer should be explored, but if it goes nowhere, we're right back where we started. I'm willing to allow negotiations to continue, for now.