Seymour Hersh has doubts about the existence of Iran’s nuclear program:
A nuanced assessment of the I.A.E.A. report was published by the Arms Control Association (A.C.A.), a nonprofit whose mission is to encourage public support for effective arms control. The A.C.A. noted that the I.A.E.A. did “reinforce what the nonproliferation community has recognized for some times: that Iran engaged in various nuclear weapons development activities until 2003, then stopped many of them, but continued others.” (The American intelligence community reached the same conclusion in a still classified 2007 estimate.) The I.A.E.A.’s report “suggests,” the A.C.A. paper said, that Iran “is working to shorten the timeframe to build the bomb once and if it makes that decision. But it remains apparent that a nuclear-armed Iran is still not imminent nor is it inevitable.” Greg Thielmann, a former State Department and Senate Intelligence Committee analyst who was one of the authors of the A.C.A. assessment, told me, “There is troubling evidence suggesting that studies are still going on, but there is nothing that indicates that Iran is really building a bomb.” He added, “Those who want to drum up support for a bombing attack on Iran sort of aggressively misrepresented the report.”
Why not the Japan option … of having the technology to quickly make a nuke but not actually taking that step? It always seemed to me the obvious best choice for the Iranian regime. My own view is that we should assume that at some point in the future, Iran will have a de facto nuclear bomb capacity, even if they are smart enough to pull a Japan. The task is then an obvious one, not the radical and recently disastrous policy of pre-emptive war, but that classic and successful American policy: containment. From my paywalled column yesterday:
It seems to me inevitable that at some point, a country as advanced as Iran that wants to get a nuclear capacity will get one. That capacity, to borrow George Kennan’s words, will not be “charmed or talked out of existence”. It is not a matter of if but when. And history suggests it would not be catastrophic. In fact, a region with two nuclear powers facing off against each other is more stable than one country with a monopoly of nuclear force. The only time a nuclear bomb has ever been used was when only one country had it. The task, therefore, should not be the truly dangerous bid to prevent a nuclear weapon from ever being developed by Iran, but a containment strategy to prevent its ever being used.
Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz see a new way to enforce more damaging sanctions without harming ourselves or the Iranian people:
Effective energy sanctions don’t have to raise oil prices; they can actually do the opposite. Washington just has to learn how to leverage greed.
We should bar from operating in the United States any European and most Asian energy companies that deal in Iranian oil and work with the Iranian central bank, Revolutionary Guards or National Oil Company. At the same time, however, we should allow companies from countries that have little interest in Iran’s nuclear program, or its pro-democracy Green Movement, and that are willing to risk their access to American markets — mainly Chinese companies — to continue buying Iranian crude in whatever quantity they desire. This would reduce the number of buyers of Iranian petroleum, without reducing the quantity of oil on the market. With fewer buyers to compete with, the Chinese companies would have significant negotiating leverage with which to extract discounts from Tehran. The government could lose out on tens of billions of dollars in oil revenue, loosening its hold on power.
But where I differ from Gerecht, Dubowitz and Obama is the intolerability of an Iranian nuclear weapon. It’s a horrible option, but not a doomsday scenario. If Israel were to initiate such a pre-emptive global war, I think its long-term survival would be highly unlikely.
The Dish 