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We Must Talk Iran Out of the Bomb

[Globe and Mail-Canada] Richard Haass - Iran and its nuclear program may well constitute the Obama administration's first foreign policy crisis. Iran is well down the path to being able to enrich uranium on a large enough scale to produce a nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency just reported that Iran may well reach this point in 2009. An Iran with a nuclear weapon or the ability to produce one or more bombs in short order poses a true danger. One path for the new American administration would be to adopt the "North Korea option" and live with the threat. The risk is that doing so would make an already unstable Middle East even more so. What would it take to essentially eliminate Iran's uranium enrichment effort? To begin with, it would entail putting together a diplomatic package that offered Iran access to nuclear energy but not physical control over nuclear materials. It is possible that Iran will reject any diplomatic compromise, even one put forward directly by the Americans. Mr. Obama and the world would then have to choose between tolerating an Iran with nuclear weapons (or the ability to produce them quickly) and using military force to prevent this outcome. It is the worst sort of choice, as neither option is attractive. For that reason, it is all the more important that diplomacy be recast and given one last chance. The writer is President of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former director of policy planning at the State Department.
2008-12-24 06:00:00
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