Skepticism about Iran's nuclear intentions is well warranted. Iran has cheated on past agreements, and all signs point to the fact that the regime, backed by a vast majority of Iranian public opinion, wants nuclear weapons. The real question, however, is not whether Tehran can be trusted—it can't—but whether our policies can help persuade Iran to forego rather than build nuclear weapons. And Washington's current policy of refusing to back the European approach—while offering no realistic alternatives to it—is leading nowhere. Even worse, the refusal to join with the Europeans to engage Iran because such an approach will not succeed risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy: the approach to Iran might well fail, but in large part because of America's refusal to support it.
There are several reasons why the United States and Europe must quickly put forward a common package of incentives and disincentives designed to convince Tehran to accept a verifiable end to its nuclear program. First, no one should doubt that a nuclear Iran would be a major disaster for the Middle East and the world. A nuclear Iran would have a free hand to pursue a more aggressive foreign policy—including support for terrorism—that the West could do little to stop. In addition, acquiescence to nuclear-armed Iran could spur nuclear proliferation throughout the Middle East. Because the Indian and Pakistani nuclear programs, however regrettable, were primarily pointed at each other (and already-nuclear China), they will not necessarily prove to spur proliferation elsewhere. An Iranian bomb, on the other hand, could easily lead many of its neighbors—Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and eventually Iraq—to seek nuclear weapons of their own. Contrary to American charges that Europeans are seeking to engage Iran because they are indifferent to these dangers, they are not. On the contrary, it is because they are convinced both that Tehran wants nuclear weapons and that a nuclear Iran could destabilize the Middle East that they believe great efforts are required to increase the costs to Iran of doing so and the benefits of not doing so.
Second, although many Americans blithely assert that all Iranians—hardliners and reformists alike—are unswervingly committed to acquiring nuclear weapons, Iran's internal debate suggests otherwise. Iran's faltering economy is the Achilles' heel of the theocratic regime, creating widespread unhappiness that threatens its hold on power. Iranians know that they must have huge doses of foreign trade, aid and investment if their economy is going to recover, and some are arguing that this should be a higher priority than acquiring nuclear weapons. The European proposal is a preliminary, and so far inadequate, effort at what is our best of hope of derailing Iran's nuclear program: convincing Iran that its economy will sink or swim based on whether it is willing to give up its drive for nuclear weapons. Just as other potential or actual nuclear-weapons states—including South Africa, Egypt, South Korea, Ukraine, Taiwan, Argentina and Brazil—have in the past been persuaded to forego or give up the bomb, so could Iran—if presented with the right mix of benefits and costs.
Third, America and Europe must work together because the goal of persuading Iran to give up its quest for the bomb cannot realistically be accomplished by Europe alone. Changing Iran's incentive structure requires the involvement of both Europe and the United States for the simple reason that each side has practically exhausted its positive (in the case of Europe) or negative (in the case of the U.S.) incentives. Europeans cannot offer many more carrots since they already talk and trade with, invest in and buy oil from Iran, while the United States has few more sticks since it already refuses to do any of those things. The only conceivable way of increasing the impact of the Western approach is if the United States is willing to throw in some carrots and the EU is willing to apply more sticks.
As former U.S. government officials charged with policy toward Iran and Europe, we are painfully aware that the Europeans have had a bad track record of talking tough about Iran and doing nothing. Throughout the 1990s, European governments refused to threaten Iran with sanctions or otherwise hold Tehran's feet to the fire to convince it to desist from behavior that Europeans agreed was dangerous—despite considerable evidence that Iran was terrified that Europe would join the United States in imposing multilateral sanctions.
For this reason, the determination of France, Germany and Britain to refuse Iran's attempted exclusion of 20 "research" centrifuges from the latest deal, while relatively minor in substance, is an important reversal of previous European practice. Europe's threat to take Iran to the UN Security Council over the centrifuges—and Iran's agreement to back down in the face of European pressure—suggests that the Europeans may finally be willing to get serious about Iran and bolsters the argument that sticks can work with Tehran. At a minimum, it suggests that we should be willing to test whether a deal could be crafted with Tehran that would include a robust inspections regime and the kind of major sanctions that could convince the Iranians to uphold the agreement.
Finally, the unfortunate reality is that the United States has very few viable alternatives to some form of engagement with Iran. An invasion of the country, more than three times as big and populous as Iraq, and with the U.S. army fully occupied in Iraq, is currently implausible and could be disastrous given the rabid nationalism of most Iranians. Targeted air and missile strikes might be able to set back the nuclear program, but we currently lack the intelligence to know how meaningful such a setback would be. What we do know is that undertaking such strikes would almost certainly provoke painful retaliation by Tehran—like unleashing a covert war to destabilize Iraq or supporting terrorist attacks on the United States. Any use of military force, moreover, would transform a contingent, cautious and gradual Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons into an all-out, determined race in that direction, requiring an American readiness to use such force over and over again.
The best way for Washington to help persuade Iran to get out of the nuclear weapons business for good is to end its policy of malevolent neglect and join forces with its European allies to present Tehran with a clear choice: Iran can become an impoverished, isolated, pariah state with nuclear weapons or it can begin to reintegrate with the international community, meet the needs of its population, and preserve its security in exchange for foregoing them. The current European effort is far from perfect, but the right answer is for the United States to get involved and help fix it, rather than standing on the sidelines and criticizing—fiddling like Nero while Rome burns.