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Iran Slips Away

[Washington Post] Editorial - Amid the financial crisis and the worsening violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iran's nuclear program and Western efforts to stop it have slipped down Washington's list of priorities. That's just what Tehran's ruling mullahs were hoping for. The government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still stonewalling international inspectors trying to investigate evidence that Iran has secretly worked on nuclear bomb and missile warhead technology. This summer, it rebuffed the latest Western effort to open negotiations - one whose only precondition was that Iran agree to a six-week pause in adding centrifuges to the 3,800 it has already installed in a uranium enrichment plant. The result, as Iran races toward accumulating enough uranium for a bomb, is that the sense of urgency about the threat it poses is lower here and in Europe than it was six months or a year ago. There seems to be little prospect that the Security Council will agree anytime soon on a fourth round of UN sanctions - much less the tough measures that might command Tehran's attention. The two most important measures would be an arms embargo - which would prevent Russia from supplying Iran with the advanced air defense systems it has reportedly promised - and a ban on the export to Iran of gasoline and other refined products, which could cripple Iranian transport.
2008-09-23 01:00:00
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