With each passing day, it becomes more evident that no action taken by the UN, the US, the EU, Russia or China will stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Consequently, that seems to leave open four options, none of them appealing:
Economic sanctions, which rarely have proven effective anywhere in the past. Iran could retaliate by withholding oil to disrupt international markets.
Regime change, a euphemism for overthrowing the government and hoping it would be replaced by a government willing to negotiate.
Living with a nuclear-armed Iran and warning, publicly and privately, that an Iranian nuclear attack would draw massive retaliation.
Destroying Iran's nuclear plants, either with conventional munitions or nuclear arms, causing vehement physical and political fallout.
The parallel between Iran and North Korea in their nuclear ambitions is striking. It would be intriguing to know what sort of secret correspondence flows between Tehran and Pyongyang to coordinate political positions in defending their nuclear programs. US intelligence agencies are presumably trying to crack those codes.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought to connect the two nations in an article in the Washington Post: "Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism that has violated its own commitments and is defying the international community's efforts to contain its nuclear ambitions. North Korea, the least transparent country in the world, threatens its neighbors and proliferates weapons."
Iran's intransigence came through clearly last week as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran would not back down in the face of external pressures. Khamenei was quoted on state TV as saying: "The Islamic Republic of Iran considers retreat over the nuclear issue ... as breaking the country's independence."
Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi, was quoted by the official Islamic Republic News Agency as saying Iran would use "any means" to resist. Pointing to Iran's oil resources and the Straits of Hormuz, he said: "We have control over the biggest and the most sensitive energy route of the world."
Rice, in testimony before the US Congress, indicated that the Bush administration was seeking to undermine the government in Tehran: "We do not have a problem with the Iranian people," she said. "We want the Iranian people to be free. Our problem is with the Iranian regime."
Press reports from Tehran, which looked suspiciously like leaks favoring the administration's stance, reinforced Rice's remarks. The New York Times reported that "cracks are opening both inside and outside the circles of power over the [nuclear] issue." Similarly, the Washington Times said Iranian clerics and business leaders "are increasingly turning against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."
Whether regime change will work or, if it did, a more pliable regime would come to office is, at very best, uncertain. If economic sanctions and regime change fail, the Bush administration would be left with a choice between accepting Iran as a nuclear nation and military action to destroy Tehran's capacity for producing nuclear arms. The same would be true for North Korea. Living with a nuclear-armed Iran would most likely be coupled with a warning that a nuclear attack on the US or US forces or US allies would draw swift retaliation. That warning would be delivered in diplomatic language in public but with forceful language in private. The Pentagon could produce realistic simulations of nuclear destruction to show the Iranians.
An experienced strategist who asked not to be named said: "Massive retaliation was a credible deterrent throughout the Cold War because successive Soviet leaders were not only rational but conservative. They repeatedly probed soft spots, but backed off when resistance hardened."
He cautioned, however, that "nobody knows whether threats of massive retaliation would deter Ahmadinejad and his followers who, unlike Soviet leaders, seem to be certifiable nut cases who might welcome irrational risks."
The last resort would be a US assault action with conventional weapons to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, which would be well within US capabilities. Bombers and cruise missiles could wipe out most nuclear reactors, logistics support, and electrical systems. Iran's leaders and scientists would also be targets.
The outrage in the Muslim world would trigger rampages against US embassies, businesses, and citizens everywhere, including possibly within the US itself. Those eruptions would be accentuated if nuclear arms had been used. Altogether, no happy prospects here.
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
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