(Vox) Max Fisher interviews Michael Doran - Doran: What makes the administration believe Iran has made a strategic shift away from a desire to have, if not a nuclear weapon, then a turnkey capability? I don't believe they have made a strategic shift, and I don't see why the administration believes they have. If the argument is that the very willingness of the Iranians to sit down and negotiate with us and to stick to the agreement over the last 18 months is proof of a strategic change of some kind, I don't buy it for a second. It's just proof to me that they want sanctions relief. They have pursued this nuclear weapons program doggedly and at enormous cost to themselves. They have been willing to take their economy to the brink of disaster in order to preserve this program. They belong to a category of regimes, like the North Koreans, that calculates that if they can get this weapon, then the world will treat them differently. They have a very well-known ideology that is hostile to the American order. They have a vision of Iran's place in the world, in the Islamic world especially, that they have not given up on. The basic assumption of the Obama administration that Iran is a fundamentally defensive power is wrong. The Iranians want hegemony in the region. The goal of Iran's nuclear weapons program is not to defend against the U.S. or Israel - it's to advance its regional agenda. Michael Doran, who oversaw Middle East policy on the U.S. National Security Council from 2005 to 2007, is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute.
2015-04-21 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive