Iran, Iran Iran

From The Australian Editorial, September 29, 2008:

... What to do about Iran's nuclear weapons program will be one
of the most difficult challenges to face the next occupant of the White
House. A nuclear-armed Iran would spark an atomic arms race in the Middle
East, threaten the world's oil supplies and embolden Iran-sponsored
extremist groups such as Hezbollah.

As reported in The Weekend Australian, a bipartisan report written by Middle East expert Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute gives little ground for optimism when it comes to preventing Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.

According to Mr Rubin, only sanctions that are tough enough to make the cost of pursuing nuclear weapons too great will be effective. At the same time, Iran must be given sufficient incentives to make normalisation attractive to Tehran.

While Mr Rubin does not think that a military strike is a good option, he believes the threat needs to be kept up if diplomacy is to be given a chance to work. Merely talking with Iran, as Senator Obama would prefer, would do nothing to change the minds of Iran's leaders. As Mr Rubin points out, Iran built much of its covert enrichment program under its reformist president Mohammed Khatami during a period of maximum engagement with the West. The sudden reversal by North Korea on shutting down its nuclear enrichment program only underlines the danger of giving dictatorial regimes too much rope.

...The problem now is that getting the consensus of the European Union, Russia, China and the Persian Gulf states to take tougher action has become much harder. Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a number of his Western counterparts that Moscow had gone cold on international efforts to reign in the nuclear ambitions of Iran. Mr Lavrov cited the decision by the US and its allies to punish Russia for its invasion of Georgia by cutting Kremlin officials out of G8 talks for Moscow's change of heart. This is unfortunate, as a co-ordinated response to Iran's nuclear program is urgently needed. The current policy approach is not working. The UN Security Council has imposed three rounds of watered-down sanctions to force Iran to suspend a uranium enrichment program. Instead, Tehran has expanded its centrifuge cascades, which refine uranium into bomb-grade plutonium, to more than 4000 machines.

No wonder Iran's leaders are reading the West's weak and divided approach as proof that the world is prepared to tolerate their nuclear ambitions.