Iranian Nuclear Weapons: Options if Diplomacy Fails

April 9, 2006 — -- A great deal of new speculation has developed over the nature of United Nations, United States, and Israeli options if Iran persists in acquiring nuclear weapons, and how Iran might respond.

Some reports rush to judgment, implying that the United States or Israel is on the edge of war. Others discuss sanctions and other measures design to coerce Iran to comply in halting proliferation and options like containment. Still others push for conventional diplomacy.

A close analysis does not predict any rush to war. No one can rule out some "smoking gun" by way of a new discovery about Iran that might lead to such action, but there are incentives to wait as well as to act.

U.S. intelligence takes the position that Iran will not have a weapon until after 2010. Israel officially uses a "rolling three year deadline" that essentially says Israel must plan for Iran to have a nuclear device within three years as prudent planning. This deadline was recently rolled forward from 2008 to 2009.

Playing the "bad cop" by tacitly threatening Iran probably makes good sense in pushing it to accept diplomatic options. Preparing the international community for possible action also makes sense.

Waiting for diplomacy to succeed or fail, however, gives the United States a number of major advantages: International credibility, more allies, avoiding the stigma of rushing forward as in the case of Iraq, time to target and assemble operating facilities, and waiting until Iran invests massively in high cost facilities.

Rushing into action would be terrible politics without a smoking gun that was credible on the U.S. and international level. It would probably also do far more to unite the Iranian people around the current regime than weaken it, and could trigger major new problems with the Shiites in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Hezbollah, and Iranian support of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.