Sanctions Now

[Dore Gold]
NRO

A day after Pres. Barack Obama disclosed that Iran has been operating a covert uranium-enrichment plant, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards air force announced that large-scale military exercises were about to begin.These exercises will include the simultaneous firing of Iranian ballistic missiles — the same missiles that were paraded in Tehran a week ago and likely will be outfitted with nuclear weapons when the Iranian nuclear program comes to fruition.

After being caught red-handed concealing yet another underground nuclear facility, Iranian leaders might have been expected to lower their country’s profile and act in a less provocative manner. Yet the message they heard from Western leaders at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh apparently had little if any impact on their decision-making.

It is not hard to understand why the Iranians were underwhelmed. After Obama revealed the startling fact that the Iranians had built a secret uranium-enrichment facility — the “size and configuration” of which, according to Obama, showed it was not designed for peaceful purposes — one might have expected him to announce a dramatic shift in U.S. policy toward Iran, away from the policy of engagement that he has promoted. But, unfortunately, Obama’s bottom line was simply a repetition of his longstanding position: “We remain committed to serious meaningful engagement with Iran to address the nuclear issue though the P5-plus-1 negotiations.”

Some more details about the West’s response came from Pres. Nicolas Sarkozy of France: “If by December there is not an in-depth change by the Iranian leaders, sanctions will have to be taken.” At the last G-8 meeting, in July, Obama and the leaders of the industrial world declared September a firm deadline for the Iranians to make a serious offer to negotiate over their nuclear program. But when the Iranian offer came on September 10, it was described as inadequate by a State Department spokesman. Nevertheless, a day later, it was announced that the U.S. would join the “P-5 plus 1” (the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany) and negotiate with Iran. The September deadline evaporated. It is probable that Tehran is not worried about the December deadline, either.

If negotiations get dragged out to December and then the West begins experimenting with sanctions, precious time will have been lost. And if further sanctions depend on obtaining a consensus in the U.N. Security Council, Iran will work furiously to complete its race to the nuclear finishing line. When I researched my new book, The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West, I found that numerous Iranian diplomats admitted in Farsi that they used negotiations to play for time and move their nuclear program forward. For this reason, severe sanctions must begin immediately and be tested quickly to see if they have any impact.

The U.S. and Iran speak very different diplomatic languages that cannot be bridged by a dictionary alone. In the West, candor is central to confidence-building; for the diplomats of the Islamic Republic, deception is a way of life. Last March, Obama tried to reach out to Iran with videotaped remarks on the Iranian New Year, called Nowruz. But magnanimous language out of Washington was only greeted with disdain in Tehran. Indeed, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad responded: “We say to you today that you are in a position of weakness. Your hands are empty . . .”

The Iranian nuclear program must be stopped. It is reaching a critical point, with the Iranians already possessing enough low-enriched uranium for two atomic bombs (if they took this material to the next stage of weapons-grade fuel). The revelation of a clandestine enrichment plant points to the likely possibility that there are other secret plants. The Sunday Telegraph, known for its good ties to British intelligence, reports that Western sources say there are five more suspected nuclear sites in Iran; others believe there may be as many as twelve.

Under these circumstances, immediate and severe sanctions are necessary to indicate that the West is serious and has the political will which Iran thinks it lacks. The time for a firm line is now — not in December.

— Ambassador Dore Gold is the author of the newly released The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West. He is a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations..