28 Mar 2024
Thursday 26 March 2015 - 15:33
Story Code : 156882

Bolton: To stop Irans bomb, bomb Iran

FOR years, experts worried that the Middle East would face an uncontrollable nuclear-arms race if Iran ever acquired weapons capability. Given the regions political, religious and ethnic conflicts, the logic is straightforward.


As in other nuclear proliferation cases like India, Pakistan and North Korea, America and the West were guilty of inattention when they should have been vigilant. But failing to act in the past is no excuse for making the same mistakes now. All presidents enter office facing the cumulative effects of their predecessors decisions. But each is responsible for what happens on his watch. President Obamas approach on Iran has brought a bad situation to the brink of catastrophe.


In theory, comprehensive international sanctions, rigorously enforced and universally adhered to, might have broken the back of Irans nuclear program. But the sanctions imposed have not met those criteria. Naturally, Tehran wants to be free of them, but thepresidents own director of National Intelligence testifiedin 2014 that they had not stopped Irans progressing its nuclear program. There is now widespread acknowledgment that the rosy2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which judged that Irans weapons program was halted in 2003, was an embarrassment, little more than wishful thinking.


Even absent palpable proof, like a nuclear test, Irans steady progress toward nuclear weapons has long been evident. Now the arms race has begun: Neighboring countries are moving forward, driven by fears that Mr. Obamas diplomacy is fostering a nuclear Iran. Saudi Arabia, keystone of the oil-producing monarchies, has long been expected to move first. No way would the Sunni Saudis allow the Shiite Persians to outpace them in the quest for dominance within Islam and Middle Eastern geopolitical hegemony. Because of reports of early Saudi funding,analysts have long believedthat Saudi Arabia has an option to obtain nuclear weapons from Pakistan, allowing it to become a nuclear-weapons state overnight. Egypt and Turkey, both with imperial legacies and modern aspirations, and similarly distrustful of Tehran, would be right behind.


Ironically perhaps, Israels nuclear weapons have not triggered an arms race. Other states in the region understood even if they couldnt admit it publicly that Israels nukes were intended as a deterrent, not as an offensive measure.


Iran is a different story. Extensive progress in uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing reveal its ambitions. Saudi, Egyptian and Turkish interests are complex and conflicting, but faced with Irans threat, all have concluded that nuclear weapons are essential.


The former Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal, said recently, whatever comes out of these talks, we will want the same. He added, if Iran has the ability to enrich uranium to whatever level, its not just Saudi Arabia thats going to ask for that. Obviously, the Saudis, Turkey and Egypt will not be issuing news releases trumpeting their intentions. But the evidence is accumulating that they have quickened their pace toward developing weapons.



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Saudi Arabia has signed nuclear cooperation agreements with South Korea, China, France and Argentina, aiming to build a total of 16 reactors by 2030. TheSaudis also just hosted meetingswith the leaders of Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey; nuclear matters were almost certainly on the agenda. Pakistan could quickly supply nuclear weapons or technology to Egypt, Turkey and others. Or, for the right price, North Korea might sell behind the backs of its Iranian friends.


The Obama administrations increasingly frantic efforts to reach agreement with Iran have spurred demands for ever-greater concessions from Washington. Successive administrations, Democratic and Republican, worked hard, with varying success, to forestall or terminate efforts to acquire nuclear weapons by states as diverse as South Korea, Taiwan, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa. Even where civilian nuclear reactors were tolerated, access to the rest of the nuclear fuel cycle was typically avoided. Everyone involved understood why.


This gold standard is now everywhere in jeopardy because the presidents policy is empowering Iran. Whether diplomacy and sanctions would ever have worked against the hard-liners running Iran is unlikely. But abandoning the red line on weapons-grade fueldrawn originally by the Europeans in 2003, and by the United Nations Security Council in several resolutions, has alarmed the Middle East and effectively handed a permit to Irans nuclear weapons establishment.


The inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program. Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure. The inconvenient truth is that only military action like Israels 1981 attack on Saddam Husseins Osirak reactorin Iraq or its2007 destruction of a Syrian reactor, designed and built by North Korea,can accomplish what is required. Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.


Rendering inoperable the Natanz and Fordow uranium-enrichment installations and the Arak heavy-water production facility and reactor would be priorities. So, too, would be the little-noticed but critical uranium-conversion facility at Isfahan. An attack need not destroy all of Irans nuclear infrastructure, but by breaking key links in the nuclear-fuel cycle, it could set back its program by three to five years. The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do whats necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Irans opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.


Mr. Obamas fascination with an Iranian nuclear deal always had an air of unreality. But by ignoring the strategic implications of such diplomacy, these talks have triggered a potential wave of nuclear programs. The presidents biggest legacy could be a thoroughly nuclear-weaponized Middle East.


This article was written byJohn R. Bolton for the opinion page of The New York Times on March 26, 2015. John R. Bolton, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, was the United States ambassador to the United Nations from August 2005 to December 2006.







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