STOPPING PROLIFERATION
Getting prepared for a nuclear-ready Iran
By Henry Sokolski
June 19, 2005
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Iran might give its nuclear capabilities to terrorists or strike Israel or the United States but these are not the threats Iranian officials are currently making, and with good cause: If they dared to take any of these steps, the risks to them, their continued rule, and their people could easily be as great as they might be to us or our friends. More important, in focusing on these extreme scenarios, U.S. policy planners have been drawn to acute options – such as bombing, invasion, and various forms of appeasement – that ultimately are only likely to make realization of the worst of what Iran could conceivably do with its nuclear capabilities more probable.
Sadly, the debate over these extreme options has distracted us from dealing with the more probable threats presented by a nuclear-ready Iran. These threats deserve our attention because the lower risks they pose for Tehran make it more likely Iran will act on them as Iran becomes nuclear-ready and because we and our friends could neutralize most of these threats if we chose to do so.
Finally, hedging against these more probable dangers would significantly reduce the military and political advantages Iran might otherwise realize if it acquired nuclear weapons. What are these more probable threats? The first are actions Iran has already taken or threatened to take against the United States or its friends. They include mining international waterways, including the Suez Canal; threatening closure of the Straits of Hormuz by permanently deploying anti-shipping systems nearby; supporting and planning terrorist action against Israel, Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, U.S. forces in the Gulf and targets within America; demanding chairmanship of OPEC to manipulate the price of oil; extorting its neighbors and other energy customers to invest in Iran on terms acceptable to Tehran.
These possible threats can be mitigated significantly through a variety of measures. They include addressing oil and gas production and transportation vulnerabilities in the Persian Gulf by completing several Saudi pipelines and hardening certain facilities, diplomatically besting Iran in talks over freedom of passage in the Gulf, encouraging Israel to take the lead in establishing a new high standard for regional denuclearization, and promoting tighter border and export controls and key forms of defense cooperation in the region. These ideas are a good place to start.
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http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050619/news_lz1e19iran.html Editor's note:
These two commentaries on stopping nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran are adapted from congressional testimony earlier this year by Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington, D.C.
(www.npec-web.org).