What To Do With Iran

Both The New York Times and The Washington Times have editorials today regarding the Iranian nuclear program. Both recognize the problem: Iran with nuclear weapons is an unacceptable risk to the security of the US and the world. Yet, the New York Times exhibits exactly the thinking of a possible Kerry Administration:

If no agreement is reached soon, this apparent drive to build nuclear weapons should be recognized as a threat to international peace and security and taken up by the United Nations Security Council later this year.

So the prescription of the NY Times to a threat to world security is, in effect, to continue talking about it, while the mullahs continue to develop their weapons.

The Bush Administration policy has not exactly been clear on this issue. Up to now they have deferred to the Europeans while making fairly quiet threatening noises. The Kerry approach, though has been even worse. As the Washington Times writes:

Mr. Kerry has actually attacked the Bush administration for being too tough on the dictatorship in Iran. In his Dec. 3 speech, for example, he said: "It is incomprehensible and unacceptable that this administration refuses to broker an arrangement with Iran." Mr. Kerry touted the EU's effort as a superior alternative to the Bush approach. In February, Mr. Kerry's national security issues coordinator, Rand Beers, accused the Bush administration of blocking U.S.-Iranian talks. That same month, the Kerry campaign sent a letter to the Tehran Times (a mouthpiece for Iran's Islamist government) suggesting that the Bush administration is to blame for many of the world's problems.

Mr. Kerry's formulation is quite simply false. When it comes to Iran policy, the fundamental problem thus far is that Washington has deferred to Mr. Kerry's ideological soulmates in Europe, whose diplomatic approach to Iran has yielded absolutely nothing and given the regime more time to develop nuclear weapons. There are few better recent illustrations of the bankruptcy of Mr. Kerry's foreign-policy approach.

It is clear, at this point, that the next administration will have to confront Iran. Iran has sensed, due in large part to the "ant-war" stance of the Democrats, that the US has very few alternatives and has, in effect, challenged the US. It is also clear that Kerry is not up to this challenge.