Iran’s Nukes ‘R’ Us: Fait Accompli

From The Middle East Interest:

[...]A nuclear-armed Iran would be better placed to reshape the regional order in a way that gives Iran a leading role in it, and a new status to seek hegemony in the wider Muslim world. It is clear that Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons against Israel or the United States, though the mullahs repeatedly claim the otherwise, but “the real target is the neighboring countries,” as Al Sharg Al Awsat newspaper observed in 2003.

President Bush is determined to dismantle Iran’s nuclear ambition before he leaves office, but his administration policies remain inconsistent. Already two years ago, Senator Joseph R. Biden said that “the Bush Administration has vacillated between two very different approaches. At times it signaled support for regime change. At other times, it engaged in direct discussions with Tehran over Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Of course, this mixed signals has been interpreted as the “dual-track policy” which offers limited dialogue with Iran while stepping up containment and backing the option of military strikes to take out Iranian nuclear facilities. Nonetheless, mixed signals cannot be taken seriously no matter what one calls them. They have no impact on Iran’s strategic decision of becoming a nuclear-capable state, and more or less express the view that it is already too late to stop Iran from getting the bomb.

In 2003 Iran’s nuclear program was stoppable on the ground to avoid any pretext for the United States to carry out a new Iraq in Iran.

Th EU-3 initiative in the Tehran agreement gave Iran a historic opportunity to avoid making a stark choice between suspending enrichment-related activities altogether or risking a possible military confrontation with the United States.

Since then the scenario of engagement, which relies on diplomacy of convincing Iran by sanctions and/or incentives to give up its quest for a nuclear option has repeated itself one way or another, and it has failed.

In the meantime, the Europeans are getting real and preparing for what they see as the need to shift policy from engagement to containment of a potentially nuclear-armed Iran, learning to live with it. This is realism, they said. Washington has already started talking about how to live with a nuclear Iran. The Bush administration’s decision to have talks with Iran is just a crash course in peaceful coexistence.