Iran Nuclear: Playing for Time on Back of US Financial Crisis

Iran is making fools of everyone. Even as it lies about how close it is to acquiring nuclear missiles, it continues to menace the political order throughout the Middle East, pressing on with rocketry and rearming Hamas and Hezbollah. And that mischief is nothing to what it will do if it is allowed to become a nuclear power.

A nuclear Iran will be a threat to U.S. national security, worldwide energy security, the efficacy of multilateralism, and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Having defied the world so brazenly, it might become overconfident enough to believe that its conventional or proxy forces could operate without fear of serious reprisals from the United States, Israel, or any other power... Tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands would join radical Islamist groups in the belief that Islamism is on the march.

Fundamentally, a nuclear Iran represents a unique threat. The fear of mutually assured destruction has long restrained other nuclear powers. There is a real risk that the Iranian leadership is not rational, that driven by its mad hatreds, it will act in ways that are unreasonable, even self-destructive. Anti-Americanism is a cornerstone of the ideology of this Islamic state.... The dominant Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterates that Iran's differences with America are more fundamental than political differences.

Whatever may happen to the leadership over time, the inescapable fact is that the United States just cannot take the risk of nuclear missiles in the hands of a clerical regime that preaches genocide.

Every U.S. administration since 1979—yes, including the past one—has reached out to the Iranians. To adopt President Obama's inaugural metaphor, every open hand has met a clenched fist....

It is not that the Iranians don't want to talk—they do. That's how they play for time. Quite simply, they seek the technical know-how that will enable them to produce nuclear weapons in a short period. They are in the midst of building stockpiles of low-enriched uranium from which they can produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear device in a matter of months—a breakout capability. They are adding centrifuges faster than the U.N. Security Council can step up the pressure and are learning about the intricate art of connecting a large number of centrifuges to a vast amount of pipe work, while maintaining everything in a vacuum. Getting centrifuges to run is not the challenge; getting them to run as a single entity is, and they are mastering it. Simultaneously, they are enhancing their ability to launch long-range ballistic missiles, a potential delivery system of nuclear weapons.... The clock is ticking inexorably, a race against time that Iran is winning, getting nearer every day to presenting the world with an Iranian bomb as a fait accompli.

What can be done?

Fortunately, Iran has an economic Achilles' heel: It is dependent on imported gasoline for 40 percent of its refined fuel. Furthermore, the country requires new investments in its energy industry to maintain current production. Reduced oil prices have put a great strain on its economy. Discontent is growing among a citizenry that is suffering from high inflation, unemployment, and poverty. Clearly, it makes sense to play on this fundamental weakness. We must press harder to coordinate four measures:

• An arms embargo.


• A ban on exports to Iran of gas and other refined products to cripple transport.


• A global boycott of the entire banking system of Iran, instead of helping it as European banks are.


• A prohibition on Western countries supplying spare parts to the oil industry.
  Before President Obama engages in "aggressive personal diplomacy," as he put it, he would be well advised to allow Iran's economic crisis to take its toll, in the hopes that an economic tailspin will leave the leadership more vulnerable to economic sanctions than it has been in the past 30 years and therefore more ready to come to terms. But there is no certainty that economic sanctions will work in time, leaving us with two unacceptable options: living with a nuclear Iran or acting militarily to prevent it.
  
  The Iranian leaders' judgment is that the current administration is ready to let diplomacy run on and on and on...and will anyway be incapable of making a military move while wrestling with the fallout from our domestic financial collapse. For this reason, many in Iran believe that the United States may be reconciling itself to the idea of living with an Iranian nuclear missile—even though it would be in the hands of an expressly genocidal regime.