Tuesday, December 18, 2007

The Table

Laura Rozen's new Mother Jones article on the impact of the NIE report lends credence to what I pointed out here, namely that a diplomatic resolution to this stand-off depended on the Iranian threat being taken seriously. By reducing the sense of urgency of the threat, the NIE's immediate effect is to remove the military option from the table. But by reducing the urgency of the threat, it also undermines the diplomatic track. Which ultimately means that if a non-NPT compliant, nuclear-capable Iran really is as unacceptable as everyone says (a claim I agree with), the only way to prevent it from happening will be the military option.

The problem is that the Bush administration never made the effort to actually educate people about what the actual threat is. So perhaps the intelligence community thought it was doing us a favor by releasing a document that forced it to be more honest. But as Matthew Yglesias seems to be catching on, the report itself has made a third round of UN sanctions unlikely or ineffective. It has also thrown France, which was holding a very tough line compared to Germany's reticence, for a loop. As Matthew put it, Bad news.

Posted by Judah in:  Iran   

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