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Get Ready for a Nuclear Iran

(Wall Street Journal) John Bolton - Negotiations grind on toward a fourth UN Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran's nuclear weapons program. Sanctions advocates acknowledge that the Security Council's ultimate product will do no more than marginally impede Iran's progress. The further pursuit of sanctions is tantamount to doing nothing. Advocating such policies only benefits Iran by providing it cover for continued progress toward its nuclear objective. It creates the comforting illusion of "doing something." Just as "diplomacy" previously afforded Iran the time and legitimacy it needed, sanctions talk now does the same. Facile analogies to Cold War deterrence rest on the dubious, unproven belief that Iran's nuclear calculus will approximate the Soviet Union's. Iran's theocratic regime and the high value placed on life in the hereafter makes this an exceedingly dangerous assumption. Even if containment and deterrence might be more successful against Iran than just suggested, nuclear proliferation doesn't stop with Tehran. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and perhaps others will surely seek, and very swiftly, their own nuclear weapons in response. Thus, we would imminently face a multipolar nuclear Middle East waiting only for someone to launch first or transfer weapons to terrorists. Ironically, such an attack might well involve Israel only as an innocent bystander, at least initially. The writer, a former U.S. ambassador to the UN, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
2010-05-03 07:57:23
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