Amir Taheri reports:
Iran is a "short distance" from securing all it needs to make a nuclear warhead. This is the conclusion of a long-awaited report prepared for the French National Assembly (parliament) and submitted to President Nicolas Sarkozy in the last days of 2008.
The report is the fruit of a bipartisan effort headed by Jean-Louis Bianco, a prominent Socialist Member of Parliament, and senior advisor to President Francois Mitterrand in the 1980s and 1990s. Much of the report is based on the in-depth research done by a number of leading French experts on international politics and nuclear proliferation, among them Francois Heisbourg and Therese Delpeche.
Analysing Tehran's strategy, the report asserts that the Islamic Republic will be an effective member of the nuclear club by the end of 2011 at the latest. Moe importantly, perhaps, it makes it clear that 2009 may be the last year in which the major powers would be able to persuade the Islamic Republic not to cross the threshold of making the bomb.
As Taheri notes, this leaves two options: try and stop the mullahs, or begin preparing for the consequences of a nuclear Iran. The president-elect has pledged to prevent Iran from going nuclear, but his administration has also indicated a willingness to adjust to what may be an inevitability. That strategy, as laid out by Hillary Clinton and quoted in Taheri's piece, would involve extending the U.S. nuclear umbrella to our allies in the Middle East -- not only Israel, but also the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia. The aim here would be to prevent what may be the worst outcome of a nuclear Iran: a new wave of proliferation in the most unstable region on the planet. But even if that were prevented by the guarantee of U.S. nuclear deterrence, the United States would be in the awkward position of making a commitment to wage nuclear war on behalf of despotic regimes that do not share our values.
Would the American people tolerate the use of nuclear weapons in retaliation for an Iranian attack on Egypt? The Egyptians would be foolish to count on such support, which means that proliferation is almost guaranteed. If North Korea going nuclear was a black mark on the Bush administration's record, how will it play if Obama presides over the entry of Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia into the nuclear club? Or will that just be called the success of realism?
