Get used to a nuclear Iran:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/04/21/get_ready_to_live_with_nuclear_iran?mode=PF

H.D.S. GREENWAY
Get ready to live with nuclear Iran

By H.D.S. Greenway | April 21, 2010

SOONER OR later, Iran will acquire the capability to build nuclear weapons. The challenge for the United States and other nations is how to deal with that unpleasant reality.

Last weekend, The New York Times got wind of a classified memo in which Defense Secretary Robert Gates purportedly said the United States had no effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady march towards acquiring nuclear capability. In public, the administration insists that Iran will not be allowed to succeed. Gates said his memo was simply a set of proposals “to contribute to an orderly and timely decision-making process.”

But it’s doubtful that the United States has a workable policy.

Senator John McCain was quick to say he didn’t need a Gates memo to tell him that we had no coherent Iran policy, but, as he pointed out, neither had the Bush administration. “We have to be willing to pull the trigger on sanctions,” said McCain, “and then we have to make plans for whatever contingencies follow if those sanctions are not effective.”

Past approaches haven’t worked. President Bush tried his we-don’t-speak-to-evil hard line, which failed to persuade Iran to stop its nuclear program. President Obama tried his open-hand approach, but Iran refused to engage in negotiations. Given the political turmoil within Iran it is possible that Iranians cannot get their act together to engage with the United States. But the nuclear program has broad support, even among the political opposition.

There are really only two options if sanctions fail: attack Iran or prepare to live with an Iranian bomb.

Most experts agree that attacking Iran would, at most, delay an Iranian bomb by only a few years. And if there is one thing that would unite all Iranians, that would be it. There’s a chance now of political change in Iran in the coming years. There would be no such chance if Iran were attacked. An attack would consolidate the regime and provoke an even fiercer determination to build a bomb.

Secondly, the last thing the United States can afford, politically or economically, is another war against another Muslim country, as Gates well knows. Al Qaeda is a Sunni Muslim phenomenon. We don’t need to alienate the Shi’ite world as well.

Thirdly, Iran would find a way to retaliate, with incalculable consequences. If we are ever to find our way out of Iraq and Afghanistan, we are going to need Iranian help. An Israeli attack, which would be universally seen as being in connivance with the United States, would have all the same consequences.

So the other alternative is learning to live with the Iranian bomb. There are hints that the administration has a contingency plan for this option. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton let slip some time ago that the US might extend a nuclear umbrella over our Middle East Arab allies, as we have done with Japan, to encourage them not to develop their own bombs.

The Iranians are not suicidal. They know that Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons. Iran can be contained, as was the Soviet Union. And Iran gains nothing by letting terrorists have its nuclear secrets. The North Koreans, for money, or some rogue Pakistanis, for ideological reasons, are a much greater danger on that score.

The administration’s official position is that the United States will never let Iran “acquire nuclear capability,” meaning even the ability to complete a bomb. This is not a coherent strategy. Iranians might be prevented from actually manufacturing a bomb, for a while, but not from developing the capability.

In reality the best hope we have is persuading Iranians to accept a “virtual” nuclear power status, meaning that they have the capability but don’t actually build a bomb. That could satisfy their national pride — a factor we pay too little attention to — and their desire for a deterrent against further threats against their nation. It might also inoculate the region against a nuclear arms race.

Given the threats that we have made against Iran, branding them part of an “axis of evil,” Iran is going to settle for nothing less. And it may not even accept that.

H.D.S. Greenway’s column appears regularly in the Globe.

A third reason for the reluctance of the UN Security Council to impose sanctions might be a problem of credibility. In the recent past, the US used false intelligence reports to convince the other members of the Security Council; think of the run-up to Gulf War II. Whether or not these reports were directly backed by the Bush administration - which, if yes, would increase the credibility of the current administration - does not matter. The intelligence agencies which drafted these reports might still be seen as a sole persecutor of American military interests. Hence every effort to impose sanctions based on intelligence by US agencies (about, say, Iranian centrifuges for nuclear material) is seen as prelimary steps to a next war in the Middle East. The administration changed, but the institutions didn't. It is a problem of credibility.

What do you mean by "sole persecutor"?

Obama administration is just going through the motions, just to show the world in general and the American people in particular that he is doing something about Iran’s nuclear program, especially since that program is supposed to threaten the world in general and US in particular.

Try all he may but it is doubtful that Obama or any other US President can cork the nuclear genie that US unleashed in 1945. That august body called US Senate with its 100 thinking heads will never approve a treaty ‘destroying all the nuclear weapons of all the countries in the world bar none’ even if some US President was to succeed in getting such a treaty agreed to.

Let us face it - nuclear weapon crowns not just the powerful but the powerless equally.

Five Brahmins of UN Security Council have a right to possess, improve and increase their nuclear weapons stockpiles while preaching others the evils of the same weapons.

It is highly unlikely that any of these Brahmins is going to completely let go the safety and prestige that their nuclear weapons confer upon them. They will find every excuse to hold on to their nuclear weapon stockpiles while trying to monopolize that possession.

By their very actions, these five Brahmins encourage others who want to achieve the same status as them by acquiring nuclear weapons.

The comparison of Obama and Bush is flawed.

First, you have to understand that there is a disconnect between what people want and what politicians want. In many ways, politicians are more informed that the Average Joe.

So although Obama might be more popular than Bush, he's having more trouble because of other reasons, e.g., international conditions have changed and countries have decided that their interests and the way they will pursue them, have all changed.

Thus, the reasons Obama has had much more trouble for getting sanctions passed shouldn't be attributed to something as superficial as popularity.