I'm extremely confident that Iran won't accept any inducements to halt their nuclear program.
I've been sure all along that Israel will attack if we don't do something to halt Iran; and I'm pretty confdent that Israel can't do a thorough job without using nukes. Moslems will get mad at us and Iran won't be harmed significantly if Israel tries to push the problem down the road with conventional attacks, or Iran will have glass craters and the Moslem world will be furious with us. Oh, and Islamic bombs will proliferate like mad as a result of Israel using them against even the hated Shia Persians just as nukes will proliferate in the region if Iran gets atomic weapons.
I have been persistently hopeful that we have been preparing for a regime change in Iran as the ultimate solution to Iran's WMD ambitions. But what if I am wrong? What if our CIA has been too focused on regime change at home to do something useful covertly in Iran? What if the President doesn't have the heart to push regime change in the face of international and domestic opposition or even a conventional attack on Iran's nuclear facilities?
What do we do if all these things are true? What if Iran will go nuclear, we can't take action, and Israel will strike if we don't and fail to do a good job of it or use their own nuclear weapons?
This leaves us with the need to do something less spectacular than attacking and sponsoring a coup/revolution that can either succeed on its own or create circumstances where we will be justified in taking offensive action.
This article, via the Weekly Standard blog, says that Iran is more vulnerable to economic sanctions than $70 per barrel oil would lead us to believe:
As Iran hurtles toward a confrontation with the United States over its nuclear program, the nation's economy remains a dysfunctional wreck. Neither wholly free nor entirely socialist, the Iranian market is a ramshackle hybrid buttressed by lofty oil prices. One year after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president on a vow to share Iran's oil wealth with the poor, Tehran's army of jobless men is a reminder of the squandered potential that characterizes revolutionary Iran.
But weak sanctions won't harm Iran much more than our long years of unilateral sanctions. And even if we get stronger international sanctions, they will present Iran with only a short-term problem as sanctions leak and weaken (remember France and Russia in regard to Iraq?) as nations look to make a buck and as Iranians exploit their skills at avoiding sanctions to get around the rules.
So if Iran is indeed vulnerable to economic pressure, we have to enhance the pressure. We can't blockade since that is an act of war (Or could we? Invading our territory as the embassy seizure in Tehran nearly thirty years ago was has never been resolved.), but we could start intecepting ships with our Navy and slowing things down immensely for the Iranians--especially refined oil products. Could this sink Iran's economy and prompt a revolt?
Alternately, the pressure imposed by us might prompt the Iranians to retaliate. Either by attacking our fleet or interrupting oil exports in the Gulf. Halting their own oil exports would simply further harm Iran's economy. And if Iran responds overtly with military action, we would have an excuse to go after Iran's military assets. And as long as we go after conventional military assets, we could take down nuclear facilities. Even if we wanted just to go after Iran's WMD facilities we'd need to strike Iran's military assets to prevent retaliation so the actual campaign would be pretty similar.
Of course, if Iran endures the sanctions and harassment campaign without panicking and retaliating while keeping their population under control, we have the problem of what to do next.
But we already have quite a problem of what to do next.
I still hope that America and Britain are serious about destroying the mullah regime sooner rather than later and that we are not relying on hope to solve the problem.
