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On Iran, Sanctions Are Not the Answer
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by John Bolton
IAF F-15's in flight. Photo: wiki commons.
America is in a race to stop Iran from making the world’s most dangerous weapons, and we are losing.
OUR VIEW: Don’t miscalculate pre-emptive strike
Sadly, we have been behind the curve for years, and recent Obama administration claims about slowing Tehran down are little more than re-election propaganda. President Obama is still naively fixed on diplomacy with Iran, though it is laughable to believe our smooth-talking negotiators will chitchat Iran out of its nuclear ambitions. If Iran returns to talks, what is the compromise between our insistence that Iran cannot have nukes and Iran’s determination to get them? That Iran gets to keep a small nuclear weapons program?
Sanctions have long been touted as the answer, but they are not. Iran has enough friends (Russia and China, plus Cuba, Venezuela and others on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent Latin jaunt) to withstand them. North Korea, the world’s most heavily sanctioned country, with a population perennially near starvation, has exploded two nuclear devices. Nonetheless, both the Obama and Bush administrations sought negotiations with Pyongyang’s criminal regime, an unfortunate tutorial for Tehran’s mullahs.
Nor have assassinations, sabotage or the Stuxnet computer virus materially damaged Iran’s program. While politicians claim these measures show they are “doing something” about Iran, objectively they simply enable its steady, clandestine progress. They are diversions masquerading as solutions.
The most likely outcome is stark: The world’s central banker of terrorism will very soon become a nuclear weapons state. The only other option is to take pre-emptive military action to break Iran’s program, and the odds of doing so successfully are deteriorating daily, as it hardens and deeply buries new facilities.
Indeed, faced with a weak, ineffective Obama, Iran’s smartest strategy is to accelerate its work, finishing the job before his potential defeat this November. Obama’s irresolution and inaction could well make a nuclear Iran his most lasting legacy.
John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2005-06.
