Carrot (The Hidden Kristof)

First off, this news from the WaPo:

Iran has proposed extensive negotiations with major world powers to resolve the stand-off over its nuclear program, but it is threatening to cut off talks and other cooperation if the case against it proceeds in the U.N. Security Council, as advocated by the United States.

In a detailed and sometimes rambling response given three weeks ago in reply to a set of proposals made by the members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany last June, Iran stops short of rejecting demands to halt its nuclear enrichment program, saying the issue can be resolved in negotiations. The response was made public on a Web site Tuesday.

It's looking like the US has Iran just where it wants it -- easing away from international dialogue so that military action against Iran's nuclear facilities will be justified. Nicholas Kristof in today's NYTimes sees this possibility as another fiasco on the horizon (Starting Another War is fully available to Times Select subscribers):

Iran’s leaders are probably praying for such a [missle] strike; it may be the only way that they can stay in power for more than another decade.

I’ve never been in a country where the government is so unpopular as in Iran, with the possible exception of Burma. The government is so corrupt, tyrannical and incompetent that it will eventually collapse — unless we attack its nuclear sites and trigger a nationalistic surge of support for the regime.

We Americans are still paying the price for our involvement in the 1953 overthrow of the elected Iranian government of Mohammed Mossadegh; if we bomb Iran, we may cement the mullahs in power for another 50 years.

Moreover, the military options are wretched, partly because Iran is probably doing much of its work at sites we can’t destroy because we don’t know where they are. The Natanz site for now is an empty room. We might kill Russian technicians at Bushehr or elsewhere, and Iran might retaliate with terror attacks aimed at us (counterterrorism experts suspect that Iran has sleeper agents in the U.S. whom it could activate).

A military strike would also do nothing more than buy time. Ashton Carter, a former senior Pentagon official who has studied the possibility of a strike and considers it feasible (but unwise at this time), estimates that a one-time strike would delay Iran’s nuclear weapon at most three or four years. The U.S. could then go back and hit the sites again, but Iran presumably would hide the locations, so later strikes would be less effective.

Dov Zakheim, who was under secretary of defense in Mr. Bush’s first term, recalls that fears of Pakistan’s “Islamic bomb” proved exaggerated and notes that Iran doesn’t treat its 20,000 Jews as wretchedly as its rhetoric would suggest (Iran continues to be home to more Jews than any Middle Eastern country save Israel). Mr. Zakheim argues that the best way to protect Israel is to give Israel improved missile defense capabilities on the understanding that it not launch a first strike against Iran.

As for alternatives to bombs, the best option is more of the carrot-and-stick diplomacy that the West is already engaging in (including direct Iran-U.S. talks) — and keeping International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors in Iran to uncover the hidden sites. Few experts expect Iran to give up its nuclear program altogether, but it’s likely that Iran could be persuaded to adopt a Japanese model: develop its capacity to the point that a bomb could be completed in weeks or months, but without testing or stockpiling weapons.