Few good options in Iran nuclear debate

Iran's threats to restart its nuclear development program and pull out of European-led talks is forcing the Bush administration to consider what to do next if diplomatic efforts collapse.

The European Union and Iran scheduled what Tehran billed as "an emergency summit" for Monday to try and break the deadlock in the talks, which are aimed at convincing Iran to abandon efforts to restart the nuclear activities it suspended late last year.

But the Bush administration, whose support for the EU's diplomatic approach was never more than lukewarm, is now struggling to decide where U.S. policy should go if Iran chooses, as it has threatened several times this week, to end its voluntary moratorium on uranium enrichment.

Immediate options range from diplomatic moves like the pursuit of economic sanctions through the U.N. Security Council, to more aggressive tactics like funneling support to armed groups opposed to Iran’s clerical government, according to a State Department official who requested anonymity.

But, the source said, "we're not sure where this issue would go in the Security Council, and so other things are also on the table."

Diplomatic track
The lack of solid, viable options is one reason the Bush administration had been so patient with the stalled European diplomatic initiative, which began with a November 2004 voluntary moratorium by Iran on uranium enrichment activities and was meant to lead to an agreement trading western aid and diplomatic concessions for a permanent, verifiable halt.

At the U.N., for instance, it remains unclear whether the Europeans would support a call for economic sanctions against Tehran in the Security Council, or if Russia or China would block such a move. Russia has its own lucrative nuclear relationship with Tehran, legally supplying fuel for an Iranian reactor project monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. 

Studying options
Other diplomatic moves might include an increase in funds for U.S.-backed Persian language broadcasting, pressure on Iran through Iraq's U.S.-allied government or other friends of the United States in the region.

Another approach, led by an administration ally in Congress, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., is contained in a bill that would tighten sanctions and prevent the U.S. from offering incentives to Iran, as it did recently by approving the sale of parts Iran wanted for its aging fleet of Boeing airliners. The House bill is largely symbolic at this point, but reflects unhappiness on the Republican Right with the Bush administration's willingness to let the EU talks drag on.

More forceful options also exist. The United States could begin funneling support to armed groups opposed to Iran’s clerics like the controversial Mujahedin al-Khalq or MEK, which Ros-Lehtinen and other members of Congress support.

The president could, of course, also order American air strikes on suspected Iranian nuclear facilities. According to military analyst William R. Arkin, plans for such a strike already exist. Dubbed “CONPLAN 8022,” and described in Arkin's book "Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9/11 World," the military option calls for pin-point bombings of selected targets, along with destruction of key communications and energy facilities in the vicinity.

"Iran's nuclear program has been dispersed and hidden over a period of decades, and there's simply no magic bullet with regard to military moves," says David Phillips, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who until recently was an advisor to the State Department on the region. "Senior military commanders say this often, though of course they plan for contingencies. But the fact is, the window of opportunity to halt Iran's program with pin-point strikes closed some time ago."

The Israeli card
“There is just no good military option of the kind Israel chose when it attacked and destroyed Iraq’s nuclear weapons program in 1981,” says Judith Yaphe, a senior fellow at the Pentagon’s National Defense University who spent 20 as a CIA Middle Eastern analyst. “The Iranians learned from that and they’ve dispersed their facilities all over the country, in underground bunkers and in populated areas.”

For that same reason, Yaphe says, talk of “letting the Israelis do it” is misguided.

“Some Israelis will tell you, ‘It doesn’t matter if we don’t get everything, all we have to do is delay Iran until we think of something else,’” Yaphe says. “But they certainly don’t want to be in a position where they feel they have to act.”

In recent days, Iran’s conduct has been the subject of front page headlines in Israel, where across the political spectrum there is broad agreement that a nuclear-armed Iran is something that Israel could not take lying down.

“By its very existence, the Iranian threat justifies Israeli preparations to frustrate it,” an editorial in the normally dovish Ha'aretz daily said Monday. “As far as tactics are concerned, the government's approach is correct -- not to lead the global efforts to thwart the Iranian threat.”

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