Seeking tougher sanctions against Iran may not be a surefire way to tamp down the country’s nuclear ambitions, but it’s the least bad option available.
International pressure on Iran has been growing since revelations last week that the country has built a secret new nuclear enrichment plant. The new facility may be able to produce enough weapons-grade material to produce one nuclear bomb a year by 2010.
Disclosures about the facility are more evidence that Iran is determined to acquire nuclear weapons.
Some say talking to Iran and imposing sanctions would be fruitless. But the alternative, a military strike, could kill innocent civilians without even deterring Iran from developing the weapons.
(Its facility is being built beneath the mountains of Iran.)
However, if countries with leverage over Iran, specifically China and Russia, could be persuaded that it’s in their best interest to pressure Iran, the strategy could succeed.
Military analysts say Iran has developed its arsenal of missiles, presumably the vehicles to carry any nuclear weapon it might develop, with countries such as Israel and Iraq in mind. Iran views both countries as regional adversaries.
If Iran feels a chill from its powerful neighbors Russia and China, with whom it has significant trade and economic ties, the country’s leaders may find it more in their interests to slow down their nuclear weapons program.
“The only way you end up not having a nuclear-capable Iran is for the Iranian government to decide that their security is diminished by having those weapons, as opposed to strengthened,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said recently.
The key is finding that pressure point without launching bombing runs against Tehran. Gates said “the reality is, there is no military option that does nothing more than buy time” in preventing what the U.S. has said is Iran’s will to build a nuclear weapon.
President Obama’s recent modification of missile deployment plans in Poland, which elicited positive remarks from Russia, might be the sort of diplomacy that gets Russia to the table. As the U.S. looks to forge a broad coalition against Iran and creates a package of sanctions, these sorts of alliances will become ever more important.
In the coming days, the U.S. and other countries will begin talks with Iran. They must make clear to Iran that its activities are dangerously isolating them from the rest of the world and that sanctions would be crippling.
