OVER THE last four years, and especially under radical new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran has done its best to live up to President Bush's 2002 declaration that it is part of an "axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world."
Yet as Iran's leaders make incendiary statements and threaten to fully resume their nuclear program, the United States and Europe have done little to effectively defuse the threat.
The tired transatlantic discourse has gone roughly as follows: Those who favor aggressive action against the Iranian regime for its nuclear aspirations point to Ahmadinejad's crackdown on civil society, his purge of moderate diplomats from Tehran's embassies around the world and his recent statement that Israel should be wiped off the map. They also note with concern that Iran covered up its nuclear program for nearly two decades and that it has been disingenuous in its commitments to suspend this effort since it came to light in 2003.
Those who oppose a harsh response have an equally long litany of defenses. Bombing nuclear sites or imposing harsh sanctions, they say, will only rally the Iranian population around the mullahs, further postponing democratic reform or revolution. Targeting nuclear sites is difficult because of their diffuse and secret locations. Besides, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has kept Ahmadinejad on a tight leash regarding the nuclear program and has explicitly said that Iran would not attack Israel.
This debate has pushed the West to a point of strategic weakness. To contend with Iran, the United States favors an awkward assortment of tactics: lukewarm endorsements for the European negotiations; intermittent, cryptic threats of military action; overbroad sanctions; and the diplomatic silent treatment. The European talks, for their part, lack clear momentum and teeth; European foreign ministers have been refreshingly strong in their rhetoric but without results. Most important, the United States and Europe have failed to bring aboard Russia and China, whose vetoes in the U.N. Security Council could obviate any meaningful multilateral response.
Tehran has masterfully exploited the limits of the U.S. and European approaches, pressing ahead with elements of its nuclear program, seeking strategic allies whom it can tempt with its vast oil and gas resources and further suppressing democracy at home.
