Iran really will be next

If Bush doesn’t force Iran to back down, then his successors will

James Forsyth

8 September 2007

All the presidential candidates are determined to stop Tehran

Even as the contenders have moved left in an attempt to appeal to left-wing Democratic primary voters and their debates have come to sound like a Dutch auction over who can get America out of Iraq quickest, the consensus on Iran has stuck. All three frontrunners support direct diplomacy with Iran, but none is planning to fly to Tehran, sip mint tea and welcome Iran to the nuclear club. Robert Einhorn, who served as assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation under both Democratic and Republican presidents, emphasises to me that the differences between the Democrats and Bush are not about the threat itself but ‘about the diplomatic tools that could be used’ to deal with it.

None of the front-running Democrats intend to back away from their hawkish positions on Iran. Clinton has stressed in the debates that, while she supports diplomacy, ‘we still have to make it clear that Iran having a nuclear weapon is absolutely unacceptable. We have to try to prevent that at all costs.’ When Edwards was asked if a military threat should be considered, he replied that ‘no responsible president would ever take any option off the table’. Obama is sponsoring some of the toughest anti-Iran sanctions legislation in Congress and his current line on Iran is virtually the same as the one he road-tested in 2004. Will Marshall, co-founder of the Democratic Leadership Council — the influential Washington think-tank that played a crucial role during the Clinton years and will do so again come the restoration — tells me that the Democrat contenders are all aware that they need to pass the commander-in-chief test. But he also points out that ‘Democrats, especially those of a certain age, remember how Iran helped to bring down the Carter administration....There’s some history there.’ While the Bush administration had unfinished business with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the Democrats have it next door in Iran.