Bad Options on Iran

An Israeli strike won't suffice.

by Michael Rubin

On October 1, Pres. Barack Obama ascended the podium in the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House and declared negotiations with Iran a tentative success. “The P5-plus-1 is united, and we have an international community that has reaffirmed its commitment to non-proliferation and disarmament. That’s why the Iranian government heard a clear and unified message from the international community in Geneva: Iran must demonstrate through concrete steps that it will live up to its responsibilities with regard to its nuclear program. In pursuit of that goal, today’s meeting was a constructive beginning,” Obama said, adding, “but it must be followed by constructive action by the Iranian government.”

Where Obama sees tentative success, reality suggests failure. Faced with irrefutable evidence, Tehran acknowledged that it had built a second, covert nuclear-enrichment plant, squirreled away in an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base near Qom. Neither Obama nor the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, acknowledged that Iranian confirmation of its second enrichment plant belied the veracity of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate. Regardless, Tehran’s decision to confess when confronted with proof of cheating should not be considered the same as Iranian transparency and goodwill. Many scientists within the International Atomic Energy Agency believe that the Iranian regime now has “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” nuclear bomb.

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