Economy, Military Shape US Iran Strategy
Feb 04, 2013
Associated Press| by Steven R. Hurst
WASHINGTON
-- President Barack Obama may have to decide this year whether to use
military force to fulfill his vow to prevent Iran from being able to
build nuclear weapons, foreign policy experts say.But America's economic
and military realities argue intensely against attacking the Islamic
republic and for muddling through by, perhaps, further tightening
sanctions that have cut deeply into Tehran's economy.
Americans
are weary of war after more than a decade of military involvement in
Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. economy, while recovering from the Great
Recession, still is weak. The military could face deep cuts this year as
Congress considers massive reductions in government spending.What's
more, Iran is far stronger militarily than either Iraq or Afghanistan
and would undoubtedly strike back by hitting Israel and attacking U.S.
soldiers in neighboring Afghanistan. Also, Iran has put much of its
nuclear program deep under ground, making it uncertain how much damage
could be done by American airstrikes.
Beyond
that, the prime advocate for attacking Iran, Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, just suffered a significant setback in elections and
is in a weakened position. Even before the Israeli election, Obama had
rebuffed Netanyahu's calls for an attack, saying there's still time for a
diplomatic solution.But time is running out. Experts say Iran has
uranium enriched to 20 percent, a level from which it can be converted
to weapons-grade fairly quickly. The U.N. International Atomic Energy
Agency says the Iranians are preparing to install faster centrifuges
that would speed the process.
"Many
people think 2013 is the year of decision as to the question of whether
to go to war or strike a conclusive deal to end Iran's nuclear
ambitions," said Suzanne Maloney, senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy.A new report by
scholars at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think
tank warns that "the current limited crisis ... may well escalate to a
major conflict or a new form of Cold War."
During
Obama's first term, the U.S. and its allies imposed damaging economic
sanctions on Tehran, but so far the leadership there has shown no
willingness to talk seriously about altering a uranium enrichment
program that could provide fuel for nuclear weapons. Iran denies it
wants to build a bomb, insisting it is creating fuel for
electricity-generating reactors and medical research.Iran has been
reluctant to engage, refusing to set a location for a new round of talks
that were to have taken place in January, until it announced it would
meet on Feb. 25 in Kazakhstan with the U.S., Britain, France, Russia,
China and Germany. That group is known as the P-5 + 1, short for the
five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany. It has
been trying to convince Iran to give up its nuclear
activities.
Israel,
which Iran has vowed to wipe off the map, sees a nuclear-armed Iran as a
threat to its existence and has threatened to unilaterally launch a
first strike again Tehran's nuclear facilities. Such an attack would
almost certainly draw the United States into another military conflict
in the region. But Obama and most Americans have shown no appetite for
another war, a fact shown by the president's reluctance to act
militarily now and his refusal to involve U.S. forces in the Syrian
civil war.
Syria
has proven a major distraction for Tehran. If President Bashar Assad is
driven from power, Iran could lose its foothold in the Arab world. It
uses Syria to funnel arms and money to the anti-Israeli Hezbollah
organization that controls southern Lebanon along Israel's northern
border and Hamas, the Palestinian faction that controls the Gaza Strip
on the south.But Israel's Netanyahu is also distracted after last
month's elections, which saw moderate politicians replace some
right-wingers in parliament."I think that Netanyahu has been
sufficiently weakened so that he won't be able to successfully lobby the
United States for a green light to attack," said Chris Dolan, a
political scientist at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania.
Karim
Sadjadpour, an Iran specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, said Israeli pressure is no longer, if it ever was,
driving Obama's decision-making."Our policy toward Iran's nuclear
program has been defined by Obama's red lines, not Netanyahu's, meaning
that the U.S. isn't likely to use military force unless and until it's
clear that Iran is taking active steps to weaponize its program," he
said. He was referring to Netanyahu's U.N. speech in September in which
he said Iran had already crossed the red line that required military
action.
Also,
Obama realizes that Iran will have a new president after elections in
June, a fact that possibly is causing Iran to drag its feet. The next
president will replace hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who denies the
World War II Holocaust in which Hitler's Germany killed 6 million
Jews.But in Iran, real power is in the hands of supreme leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei. Students of Iran believe that Khamenei is undecided on
using the country's nuclear fuel to build a nuclear weapon. He has said
such a weapon was in conflict with Iran's Islamic foundations.
Any
future talks will hang on Iran's demand for specific guarantees about
easing sanctions in return for dialing back its nuclear
program.Sadjadpour said the outlines of a deal are clear to both sides.
He said the unspoken U.S. position is: "You can have a nuclear program
which includes uranium enrichment, but not a weapon. If you don't go for
the bomb, we won't bomb you."But, he said, sanctions will not be eased
without meaningful compromises. "The problem is that there remains a
very large gap in our respective definitions of the word `meaningful.'"
And
that could be very dangerous, said Maloney, should there be a deal that
goes bad. If that happens Obama "will be forced to put his money where
his mouth is," meaning he would be forced to launch a military strike to
make good on his vow to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
-- Steven R. Hurst is AP international political writer and has covered foreign affairs for 30 years.
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