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| Authors: | Ray Takeyh, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies Vali R. Nasr, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies |
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December 14, 2007
Christian Science Monitor
It is clear that the Bush administration’s policy of sanctions and tacit threat of war toward Iran has lost all credibility. This became evident as soon as the National Intelligence Estimate released this month contradicted the White House depiction of the Iranian threat.
But the report isn’t a total win for Iran. Though it has nullified the threat of war and will embolden Iran in its march toward nuclear self-sufficiency, it may also undermine the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who thrives on international crisis and tension.
President Bush may take comfort in his rhetoric that nothing has changed. Yet, since the release of the NIE, everything has changed. A single intelligence report has done what all of Iran’s protestations could not: It subverted America’s coercive policy. The facts that the weapon design research has been suspended, and that the claim of an imminent threat was exaggerated, have undermined the administration’s case for war at home and abroad. They have even dashed its hope of isolating the Islamic republic: Russia and China are resisting new UN sanctions, and some of America’s European allies may soon relax financial restrictions they agreed on to avert war with Iran.
To add to US concerns, a careful reading of the report indicates that Iran has seemingly suspended the weaponization aspect of its program but is still constructing an elaborate enrichment infrastructure – one that will give it the option to construct a bomb in the not-too-distant future.
In Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President, experts from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution propose a new, nonpartisan Middle East strategy drawing on the lessons of past failures to address both the short-term and long-term challenges to U.S. interests.
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