Informed Speculation

Lots and lots of stuff on the Iranian nuclear standoff today – the WaPo Editorial Board:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to help the Bush administration’s effort to convince the U.N. Security Council that more concerted action is needed to stop Iran’s nuclear program. His loud announcement yesterday that Iran had succeeded in enriching uranium confirmed recent warnings by U.S. officials — dismissed by some as exaggerated — that Tehran’s nuclear program was fast advancing. His defiant and exaggerated claim that “Iran has joined the club of nuclear nations” ought to make clear to Russia, China and other Security Council members how seriously the Iranian regime is taking their demand that it freeze its enrichment work. That is: not seriously at all.

Mark Helprin:

Even were one to believe that, despite its low and stagnant per capita gross national product and having the world’s second-largest reserves of petroleum and natural gas, Iran would invest uneconomically in nuclear power generation, one would also have to disbelieve that it wanted nuclear weapons. But with an intermediate-range strategic nuclear capacity, it could deter American intervention, reign over the Persian Gulf, further separate Europe from American Middle East policy, correct a nuclear imbalance with Pakistan, lead and perhaps unify the Islamic world, and thus create the chance to end Western dominance of the Middle East and/or with a single shot destroy Israel.

Gerard Baker:

How likely is it that the world will stand firm?

You can forget China and Russia, obviously, those two giants of global stability that foreign policy realists would have us embrace. When Hu Jintao visits Washington next week there’s no reason to think he will budge from Beijing’s strategic opposition to a get-tough approach with Teheran. And in what must continue to be one of the great gravity-defying diplomatic acts of all time, Vladimir Putin in Moscow will continue to do everything he can to obstruct US objectives, while remaining firmly in the good graces of the White House and the State Department.

That will leave Europe. – or the non-Russian part of it.

Thus far, it is true, the European Union has sounded admirably tough as Iran has breezily blown through each of the diplomatic roadblocks the British, French and Germans have thrown up in its way on the road to nuclear-armed status. Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel invokes the Nazi analogy to insist her government will stop Iran from threatening the world; Jacques Chirac even warns that France might use its own nuclear capabilities if Iran uses terrorism to further its ambitions.

The rhetoric is encouraging, but consider the actual state of Europe this week and ask yourself: is this a continent that is demonstrating political will?

Brent Scowcroft:

Having the international community – and the US in particular – take at face value Iran’s claims that it needs a civilian nuclear energy program to reduce reliance on diminishing hydrocarbon reserves and cut down on a growing pollution problem caused by fossil fuels places more pressure on the Iranian Government to demonstrate its good intentions.

A US-led international front that starts out by recognising that Iran has legitimate rights and concerns can go far in depriving the present regime of its ability to use Iranian nationalism in this crisis.

And should the Iranian Government reject an international proposal that implicitly recognises and safeguards its rights to a nuclear energy program under the NPT, it would become easier to convince other leading states of the need for sanctioning the regime.

Iran’s strategy remains predicated on the assumption that no united front is possible, that even if the US, the EU, Russia and China all agree that a nuclear-capable Iran is undesirable, disagreement over the tactics will preclude any effective action.

The Bush administration needs to be prepared to find common ground with the other permanent members of the UN Security Council. This includes being prepared to talk to the Iranians and to put the question of security guarantees on the table. Indeed, something that might develop as a result of such a process would be a move towards giving all non-nuclear states firm security guarantees and territorial integrity as a way to provide further incentives for non-nuclear states not to pursue a nuclear program.

I find that last excerpt particularly unconvincing…