Obama's Iran Challenge
By Greg Reeson
July 30, 2008
As he neared the end of his much-heralded "fact-finding" tour of the Middle East and Europe late last week, Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama called on Iran to quickly agree to international demands to freeze its uranium enrichment program. His words are ringing hollow in Tehran, though, because Senator Obama has thus far refused to back his emphasis on talking with the credible threat of military force.
Speaking in France on Friday, Senator Obama said, "My expectation is that we're going to present a clear choice to Iran: change your behavior and you will be fully integrated into the international community with all the benefits that go with that. Continue your illicit nuclear program and the international community as a whole will ratchet up pressure with stronger and increased sanctions." (web site) On Saturday, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad responded by saying Iran now had 6,000 centrifuges, twice the number needed for a nuclear program capable of weapons development.
Prior to Ahmadinejad's statement, Iranian representative Saeed Jalili had presented Tehran's response to the latest diplomatic effort produced by the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany at a Geneva meeting attended by the third ranking diplomat in the United States, Undersecretary of State William Burns. To no one's surprise, Iran's response was much the same as it has been for the past five years: a refusal to budge on its enrichment of uranium and a call for additional meetings in the future. So, the permanent five plus Germany announced a two-week deadline for Iran to comply or face a new round of sanctions from the Security Council. Senior Iranian cleric Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani immediately rejected the deadline.
Senator Obama wants to continue diplomatic efforts with Iran while refraining from discussing the possibility of using military force. He has repeatedly reminded us that he opposes the Bush Administration's "saber rattling," arguing that non-military options have not been exhausted. This view is shared by many on the left who either fear that we will provoke Iran into some sort of action that threatens the United States or who believe that military force is never justified. Speaking recently at a Center for Strategic and International Studies panel on Iran, former Carter national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski echoed the latter when he said, "We are perhaps unintentionally legitimating the idea of the use of force." (web site) He added, "The real option is to keep negotiating, be very tough on the sanctions, adopt more sanctions, make it more painful for the Iranians."
The problem is that nothing over the past five years has been painful for the Iranians. The ineffectiveness of the Security Council has demonstrated that meaningful multilateral sanctions are not likely to be forthcoming, and unilateral sanctions, such as those imposed by the United States and separately by the European Union, have historically had poor results. Gary Sick, a noted Iran expert and former Iran officer in the national security councils of the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations, recently told (web site) the Council on Foreign Relations, "On the U.S. side, there has been a recognition that our sanctions, which have been in place for thirteen years and have increased in severity over that time, have not in fact stopped Iran from building centrifuges and expanding its nuclear capability."
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