Reshaping our Iran policy.

• Author: Saxton, Jim
• Position: Viewpoint essay

IN RECENT issues of The National Interest, there has been an ongoing discussion as to whether Iran can be deterred as the Soviet Union was during the Cold War. I have serious doubts. The ideology that governs Iran is as noxious as the radicalism that fuels Al-Qaeda. Moreover, the resurgence of the fanatical spirit of the Iranian Revolution, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's commitment to exporting the revolution to Lebanon, the greater Middle East and the entire Muslim world, calls into question whether we can expect a nuclear Iran to be a rational state actor disciplined by deterrent doctrines such as "mutually assured destruction." Maurice R. Greenberg, who met with Ahmadinejad in New York this past September, summed it up: "We can't deal with him. You can't deal with this guy. I do not believe that we should let him come into possession of the capabilities to manufacture a nuclear device, or achieve it by an indirect means, such as buying it from somebody else." (1)

While no one truly knows if a nuclear Iran would target Israel--though President Ahmadinejad continues to give this assumption credence--it is clear that a nuclear Iran will mean an emboldened Iran. Iran has taken full advantage of the break-up of the Soviet Union, and the void left in Central Asia and the Middle East, to make its bid for regional supremacy. The regime already uses surrogate terrorist organizations like Hizballah and Hamas to spread terror, while avoiding direct links to these cowardly activities. Proxy wars, like the battle this past summer between Hizballah and Israel, will become the rule--not the exception-and this could lead to increased clashes between Iranian-trained and financed groups and U.S. forces, a pattern already evident in Iraq.

In short, a nuclear Iran translates into a bellicose Iran which--given these assumptions about the intentions of the Iranian regime--poses a direct threat to U.S. national security.

Iran's intransigence over its nuclear weapons program is just one symptom of a regime replete with conduct that defies the norms and values that underlie the international community. Focusing exclusively on the nuclear issue may distract the United States and the international community from the litany of security concerns posed by Tehran, most alarmingly its brazen use of terrorism. Simply put, Iran is different from other states, like Pakistan or India, that have developed nuclear programs in violation of the NPT. Moreover, Iran's penchant for mixing radical ideology and terrorism makes Tehran a problem more complex and challenging than the world's most recent renegade proliferator--North Korea. By treating Iran as just another nuclear case, we risk losing sight of the fundamental threat posed by Tehran: not the capability, but the regime that controls the capability.

It amazes me that our Defense Department can spend billions of dollars in the fight against terrorism, but our diplomatic arm is unable to spend capital on making the United Nations confront states, like Iran, that support terrorism. To its credit, the administration has at least persuaded the main bodies of the United Nations--the Security Council, the General Assembly and the Secretariat--that Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization that poses a threat to world peace. One may wonder why this is an achievement, but one only has to recall that it was in the UN where terrorism was legitimized as an acceptable form of popular resistance (the history of the PLO in the...