Should we live with a nuclear Iran?

“No one should want a nuclear-armed Iran and new sanctions should certainly be tried. But if we calculate correctly that the prospect of an Iranian bomb ultimately comes down to a question of Iranian willpower, then a mature debate needs to be had about how we manage that risk. Instead of threatening military action that will only increase Iran’s desire for nuclear weapons while undermining opportunities for democratic change, western powers should focus on developing a robust deterrence framework that provides security guarantees to vulnerable countries and reminds Iran’s leaders of what they stand to lose by abusing their nuclear potential. Proliferation is always a risk, but we can live with a nuclear Iran if we have to.”

This is the conclusion of a cogent case put by David Clark, former Special Adviser to the late Robin Cook when he was Foreign Secretary, in this article.


3 Comments

  • Eric Lee

    The very last phrase — “we can live with a nuclear Iran if we have to” — reminds me of the old joke. The Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian sidekick Tonto find themselves surrounded by hostile braves. “We’re really in deep trouble here,” says the Lone Ranger. “What do you mean ‘we’, white man,” replies Tonto.
    When a British politician or civil servant writes from his office that “we” can live with a nuclear-armed Iran, he’s living on a different planet from people in, say, Israel. Or to put it another way, imagine if back in the bad old days the IRA had acquired a nuclear weapon. Could “we” have learned to live with that?
    In my opinion, unless the regime in Tehran is overthrown by the Iranian people — which I don’t rule out — there are only two ways out of this mess with the Iranian nuclear program: either Obama manages to negotiate it out of existence, or the US or Israelis blow it out of existence. There is no — to coin a phrase — third way.

  • Roger Darlington

    Except that Clark makes a strong argument as to why it would not be possible to “blow it out of existence”:

    “There are, in any case, good reasons for believing that a military strike would fail to achieve its objective of stopping or even seriously delaying Iran’s nuclear programme. Having learned from the destruction of Iraq’s only nuclear reactor by Israel in 1981, Iran has concealed, dispersed and protected its nuclear assets in hardened bunkers. Even if Israeli jets could hit the right targets at the limit of their operational range, the damage could probably be repaired fairly quickly. Ayatollah Khamenei would use the crisis to snuff out all hope of political change and the result would be a nuclear-armed Iran, radicalised by war and subject to even fewer domestic and international constraints.”

  • Nick

    According to political analyst and game theorist Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Iran’s bid for a nuclear bomb will stall early next year. I know nothing about Bueno de Mesquita or his methods other than what is described in this entertaining article: Can Game Theory Predict When Iran Will Get the Bomb?

 




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