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Can a Nuclear Iran Be Contained?

(Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) John Bolton - America's diplomatic efforts to stop Iran have failed; Iran is on track to get nuclear weapons at a time of its own choosing. The only issue remaining is whether a nuclear Iran can be contained and deterred. The monarchs meeting Obama this week at the White House and Camp David are just as worried about Iran becoming a nuclear-weapons state as Israel. Washington might offer sophisticated weapons systems in an effort to reassure the Gulf Arabs, but enhanced conventional firepower is utterly insufficient to contain or deter a determined nuclear power. Even the threat of nuclear retaliation by another nuclear power is hardly likely to deter use of nuclear weapons in the hands of a regime like Iran's. Unfortunately, the Islamic Revolution does not follow the same cost-benefit analysis that Soviet leaders did during the Cold War. For the mullahs, as Bernard Lewis astutely observed, the threat of retaliatory destruction is an incentive, not a deterrent. The writer was U.S. ambassador to the UN and, previously, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.
2015-05-14 00:00:00
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