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WORLD FOCUS: Straight talk diplomacy

The United States has lived 31 years with the consequences of the Iranian Revolution. We may need to live with it for several more decades.

    An increasing number of foreign policy experts are saying that the United States and the Middle East would have great difficulty in living with the consequences of a nuclear-armed Iran.

    Former Ambassador James Bullington, a career diplomat who served as dean of the Senior Seminar, the State Department’s highest level of training program, in a recent interview with the Lake Placid News and The Virginia Gazette, said that beneath a nuclear-armed Iran, “much of the Middle East could fall under the strategic domination of a radical Islamist regime that supports global terrorism. Nuclear proliferation would be accelerated, with unforeseeable consequences, and vital energy supplies would be permanently threatened,”

    He posited that in coming years the United States will need to rely more and more on diplomacy, broadly understood. “We have to recognize that ‘soft power’ has to be combined with ‘hard power’ in order to constitute the ‘smart power’ that is required to protect our interest in an increasingly dangerous world,” he said.

    The actions of Iran, in defiance of the international community, could provide a test case for applying “smart power” to solve the most serious threat facing U. S. interests in the Middle East.

    Both the Bush and the Obama administrations have proclaimed repeatedly that a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable. Apparently those broad-based proclamations had little effect. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared recently that Iran has begun enriching uranium to a level closer to weapons-grade, a step that clearly violates an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency

    The question of how rapidly Iran’s uranium enrichment program would move the country closer to attaining nuclear-power status, is almost irrelevant. The Soviet Union was years behind the progress made by the Manhattan Project, but through a highly successful espionage effort it leapfrogged, and well ahead of all estimates; in 1949 it tested its first nuclear weapon.

    Israel, whose destruction is a proclaimed aim of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, is rightfully concerned that Iran may achieve a comparable nuclear breakout. According to press reports, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was recently in Moscow to convince the Russians not to sell their S-300 defense missile systems to Iran. He proclaimed that Israel faces an “existential threat” from an Islamic extremist Iranian regime determined to get nuclear weapons.

    Israel feels time is running out, and if international pressure in whatever form doesn’t deter Iran from developing a capacity to build a nuclear weapon, it has no choice but to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.

    It is well to remember that the Israeli prime minister is the younger brother of the late Yonatan Netanyahu, the commander in the elite Sayeret Matkai unit of the Israeli Defense Forces. He was the leader of the assault on Entebbe airport in Uganda. The raid was considered a “mission impossible.” Although he was killed during the raid, the Israeli military managed to rescue the hostages held by Palestinian terrorists after an aircraft hijacking.

    Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently warned Israel against striking Iran’s nuclear facilities, arguing that it would only delay Tehran’s nuclear program for a couple of years. Adm. Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during his visit to Jerusalem, reinforced this warning.

    But to apply American “smart power” to the task of defusing the Iranian nuclear threat, the Obama administration needs more than to restrain Israel. It has to persuade China and Russia that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not bluffing. It must also remind those who are averse to confronting Iran that considering  the support Israel enjoys in the U. S. Congress, an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities won’t lead to irreparable damage to U.S.- Israeli relations.

    Secretary of Defense Robert Gates may be right in saying that the acquisition of nuclear bombs by Iran can only be prevented if “Iranians themselves decide it’s too costly.” The task of America’s “smart power” diplomacy is to persuade Iran that it would indeed be too costly.

Frank Shatz lives in Williamsburg, Va. and Lake Placid. His column was reprinted with permission from The Virginia Gazette.

 

 

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