... from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
OBAMA’S IRAN STRATEGY: FDD’s Mark Dubowitz and Reuel Marc Gerecht explain what it is now and how it should quickly ratchet up. They write that
few in the administration now believe that Khamenei will compromise unless sanctions endanger his regime….
The contentious issue in Iran policy isn’t the goal -- do we want Khamenei and his Revolutionary Guards to fall? Democrats and Republicans differ on this far less than they did when President George W. Bush saw an “axis of evil.” The issue is timing: Can we put enough pressure on Khamenei and his praetorians to either crack the regime or make the supreme leader believe that the nuclear program actually threatens his rule? …
A negotiated “deal” with Tehran that concedes Iranian enrichment is a face-saving way for the West to avoid confessing that it would rather risk Khamenei’s having a nuke than face the two alternatives: a crippling sanctions regime, which could spike the price of oil, or an American preventive military strike. ...
And unless Benjamin Netanyahu and much of Jerusalem’s political elite are just bluffing, the countdown for an Israeli preventive strike starts when the West concedes uranium enrichment to the supreme leader and his Revolutionary Guards. …
The U.S.-led sanctions regime has shown that Washington can still have a significant impact on the Islamic Republic’s economy and politics …
The near-miraculous attack of the centrifuge-destroying Stuxnet virus has bought the administration time and further strengthened those who want to use sticks to stop Khamenei’s nuclear aspirations….
Washington needs an incremental approach -- implemented rapidly -- that does not spook the oil markets and that allows for the market and increasing oil supplies from Iran’s competitors to dull the effect of less Iranian crude being traded. …
Gary Samore, the White House’s nuclear proliferation point man has already let it be known that more sanctions are on the way [He did that at FDD’s recent Washington Forum.] Yet it is one thing for the administration to know intellectually that Khamenei will not buckle without the severest pain; it is another matter to overcome the State Department’s love of diplomatic gradualism. …
[T]he key to successful diplomacy with Khamenei’s Iran is to view engagement as the supreme leader does: All scenarios are win-lose. If the West is to stop Tehran’s quest for a nuke, it must convince the supreme leader, and the Revolutionary Guards who oversee Iran’s nuclear program, that their pursuit of the bomb will destroy the regime. …
Current sanctions and the regime’s atrocious economic management have brought hard times. For the United States and its allies to be successful, the times need to be made a good deal harder still.
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