by Stephen Quigley

Created on: March 04, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

Threats needed in Iran Crisis not Invasion

The only way economic and diplomatic sanctions on Iran will work is if Iran understands that the possibility of a military strike is real.
An attack on Iran would have disastrous consequences for security and would further exacerbate regional and global tensions in world. Iran seems to think that the US is weak and that Iran is in the ascendancy in the Middle East. That is why Iran's leaders do not feel the pressure or the need to work with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), who are overseeing Iran's uranium enrichment programme. A new harder-edged diplomacy needs to be in force, one aimed at further isolating Iran, with the ultimate hope perhaps that there will be a change of government. Whether such an approach will develop into something military remains to be seen.

The US says it wants a peaceful solution at the moment which is correct because an attack would not only risk Iranian retaliation, it would be hard to justify legally. The negotiating road is hard but could be improved if Iran was offered a regional security assurance and the United States became more directly involved to reduce the issues between themselves and Iran through bilateral talks. Iran has been offered a co-operation package to develop its civilian nuclear programme as well as the participation of the US in talks, but first it has to suspend enrichment. The main idea of the U.S. is that this suspension should become permanent until such time that Iran can gain the trust of the international community. American accusations against Iran are becoming more specific by the day, raising a question about how far this confrontation will go.
The West is so worried because they fear that Iran secretly wants to develop either a nuclear bomb or the ability to make one. The West says that Iran cannot be trusted because it long hid an enrichment programme. Iran says its policy is "Yes" to enrichment but "No" to nuclear weapons and there is even a fatwa against nuclear weapons issued by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. One other possibility is that Iran wants to develop the capability, but has left a decision on whether to actually build a nuclear weapon for the future. The sceptics argue that Iran has no need to make its own nuclear fuel as this can be provided by others, so they conclude that Iran must be intending one day to make a bomb.
Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a country has the right to enrich its own fuel for

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