Without going into the whole thing, let me just say that the very premises found in this paragraph are just wrong:
First, the United States and Europe must be clear about their collective purpose. The Iranians have made splitting the Atlantic partnership their modus operandi, hoping that disagreements between the United States and Europe will buy them the time to progress down the nuclear path to the point of irreversibility. In order to counteract this strategy, European and U.S. policymakers must repeatedly and jointly articulate that they seek to hold Iran to the obligations it has accepted under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to refrain from building nuclear arms. In the same breath, American and European heads of state must emphasize that the West does not seek to deny Iran the right to a peaceful civilian nuclear energy program under the necessary safeguards.
They start with an error that should be expected of this crew. While the Iranians may have made splitting the Atlantic alliance part of their strategy, splitting the Atlantic alliance is not their goal. Getting nuclear weapons is Tehran's goal. It is not our goal to counteract the Iranian strategy! It should be our goal to keep Iran from going nuclear. Maintaining Atlantic unity by repeatedly and jointly prattling on ineffectively while the mullahs spin up weapons grade uranium doesn't really deal with this problem. Iran does not intend to abide by the NPT and no amount of joint articulation will make the mullah's say, "Oh yeah, that NPT," and then cancel their nuke programs as some horrible misunderstanding. Trying to pretend that we can divide Iranian nuclear programs between peaceful and weapon programs is sheer folly.
The conclusion of this prestiguous group of former foreign policy advisors is equally astounding as their first round of assumptions and what it says about their thought processes. They say:
The interests of every nation will be served by an arrangement that gives Iran the civilian nuclear program it says it wants and the international community the insurance it needs. Together, with sufficient patience and resolve, Europe and America must push as hard as possible to achieve that outcome and stand together, as well, in the event the effort does not succeed.
The interest of every nation is decidedly not served by an arrangement that leaves the mullah nutballs of Tehran with nuclear programs. We can simply never trust them with this technology. Once again the authors raise the idea that standing together is the prime goal. Just how hard can we push when the Belgians (I should give the French a break for a day) are just standing around and we will only push together? And given that the patience of these types will never be exhausted, when will they ever admit that these efforts are not succeeding? And since they cannot even bring themselves to utter the words "war" or "force" just what would they do if their theoretically limited patience is exhausted? Go to the Security Council? For what--more talking? By then the Security Council will be discussing a treaty to recognize Iran as a nuclear power.
Wow. Thank goodness they are former foreign ministers.
Regime change is the only way to solve this problem. If the president isn't going to do something about Iran, one could have voted for Ralph Nader.
