The neo-con case for talking to Iran
10:47pmBob Kagan, one of the smartest and most influential American foreign policy thinkers, has a compelling piece on how to deal with Iran in the Washington Post.
Here’s how he starts: 
“Regardless of what one thinks about the National Intelligence Estimate's conclusion that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003 -- and there is much to question in the report -- its practical effects are indisputable. The Bush administration cannot take military action against Iran during its remaining time in office, or credibly threaten to do so, unless it is in response to an extremely provocative Iranian action. A military strike against suspected Iranian nuclear facilities was always fraught with risk. For the Bush administration, that option is now gone.
Neither, however, will the administration make further progress in winning international support for tighter sanctions on Iran. Fear of American military action was always the primary reason Europeans pressured Tehran. Fear of an imminent Iranian bomb was secondary. Bringing Europeans together in support of serious sanctions was difficult before the NIE. Now it is impossible.” The point about the Europeans and sanctions is, perhaps, a little sweeping. But it would certainly be correct if applied to the international community as a whole. Stephen and Daniel Finkelstein are right: Iran mothballing its weapon programme in 2003 is an argument for sanctions. But sadly the United Nations does not work logically and the rest of the world will conclude that if Tehran has suspended its nuclear weapons programme then there is no need to tighten sanctions on the regime.
Kagan’s conclusion is that it is time for the Bush administration to talk to Iran. His view is that much of the world thinks that the real obstacle to solving the Iran problem is American intransigence; by offering to talk Washington destroys that argument. Second, talking is not the same as appeasing. As Kagan says, “There's no reason the United States cannot talk to Iran while beefing up containment in the region and pressing for change within Iran.” Finally, by starting talks now Washington denies Tehran one of the things it wants most: time.
If the Bush administration doesn’t try and open talks then the next administration probably will, and certainly will if the president’s a Democrat. So the same result will be achieved but just with Tehran gaining an extra year.
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Comments
Lee Jakeman
December 5th, 2007 2:18am"Stephen and Daniel Finkelstein are right: Iran mothballing its weapon programme in 2003 is an argument for sanctions". I disagree. I think the THREAT of possible US military action played the main role, not sanctions. Now that even the THREAT of miltary action has gone, sanctions, from this point onwards, will have little or no effect at all.
Thomas O. Meehan
December 5th, 2007 4:11amHow is it that having made a mess of things in the US the Neocons find such a hearing in Conservative circles in the UK? Surely there are home grown pseudo-intellectuals capable of equally self serving advice. Second hand bad advice can be costly. Beware.
David Lindsay
December 5th, 2007 9:46amWe should learn from Iran. We, too, should be spending our money on nuclear power rather than on nuclear weapons. We should be doing this, both in order to restore to our working class the sort of high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs destroyed in the 1980s and 1990s, and in order to make ourselves independent of oil from the Middle East and gas from the former Soviet Union. If seventy-six billion pounds can somehow be found for Trident, then it should instead be spent on this.
TGF UKIP
December 5th, 2007 12:57pmOne of the principal factors in propelling the oil price to its existing level and maintaining it there, has been the tension over the Iranian nuclear weapons programme. This level of oil price has suited not only Iran but Russia (and Venezuela) too which has been a primary reason for Putin's intransigence over sanctions. (Many OPEC members, on the other hand, are uncomfortable with the present price level because of its potential impact on the Western economy where so many of their petrodollars are invested.) It's therefore going to be most interesting to see how Iran behaves, but one way or another it would seem to me that they (and their covert Russian ally) have every reason to keep the pot on the boil. As for the Europeans and sanctions, forget it. Germany is now an even more unreliable "ally" than France (remember as principal exporters to Iran, they wouldn't even agree to threaten sanctions when the Iranians kidnapped the British sailors) and under their present left wing governments the Italians and Spanish are just as likely to side with the Iranians.
William Norton
December 5th, 2007 1:12pmI wonder what might have happened in 2003 that persuaded the Iranians to moderate their policy?