The West must avoid making an Iraq of Iran because Teheran has Washington by the cojones
NOW we face the next big test of the West: after Iraq, Iran. As the Islamic revolutionary regime breaks the international seals on its nuclear facilities, and prepares to hone its skills in the uranium enrichment that could, in a matter of years, enable it to produce nuclear weapons, we in Europe and the United States have to respond. But how? If we mishandle this, it could lead not only to the edge of another military confrontation but also to another crisis of the west. The European policy of negotiated containment, mistrustfully backed by America and ambiguously accompanied by Russia, has failed. It was worth trying, but it was not enough. The Europeans did not carry sufficiently credible sticks and the Americans did not wave large enough carrots to sway the theocrats in Teheran. Neither half of the old transatlantic West could induce oil-hungry China and energy-rich Russia to play the diplomatic game sufficiently clearly our way. The new Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, would probably regard a cost-benefit analysis as an invention of the Great Satan and a prime example of western secular decadence. Yet if cooler heads in the regime behind him are making a cost-benefit analysis, they could still conclude that this is a risk worth taking. Iran is floating high on an ocean of oil revenue: an estimated $36bn last year. This money can be used to buy off material discontent at home.
They know that the US is deeply mired in neighbouring Iraq, where the Iranians wield growing influence in the Shia south. As President Bush might privately put it, Teheran has Washington by the cojones.
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