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Avoiding the Containment Trap with Iran

(Foreign Policy) Michael Singh - On March 4, 2012, President Obama declared, "Iran's leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon." We must prevent ourselves from being maneuvered into a corner where we have little choice other than to accept containment. Instead of emphasizing what we may do if Iran obtains a nuclear weapon, or is on the cusp of doing so, the U.S. should focus on denying Tehran the necessary building blocks to reach a nuclear weapons capability. The U.S. should not provide relief from sanctions in exchange for anything less than the full suspension of uranium enrichment by Tehran, and other hard-to-reverse steps such as the removal of Iran's enriched uranium stocks and dismantlement of its key fuel fabrication facilities. Washington has tended to focus its energies on each marginal advance by Tehran, such that what the U.S. now appears willing to do in return for a limit on Iran's enrichment activities is equivalent to what had previously been offered for a full suspension of enrichment. The perverse effect of this constant re-drawing of U.S. redlines is not to cap Iran's activities, but to encourage further nuclear progress. The leverage the U.S. has built up has been hard-won, but can be easily lost, and should not be yielded too readily. The writer is managing director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
2012-05-23 00:00:00
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