WarSclerotic

Editorial: Obama must outline plan to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions | detnews.com | The Detroit News.

The Detroit News

President Barack Obama will outline tonight his strategy for a troop surge in Afghanistan that hopefully will curtail the violence and allow for the building of a sustainable political infrastructure. Meanwhile, there’s still Iran.

Developing an effective response to Iran’s nuclear ambitions is as important as stabilizing Afghanistan and keeping Iraq moving toward self-government.

The Iranians have proved impervious to international pressure to suspend their uranium enrichment work. Iran demonstrated its defiance again this week by revealing plans to build 10 more centrifuges to produce the material necessary for a nuclear weapon.

On Iran, the Obama administration seems torn between moving forcefully to deny it nuclear capability and developing a strategy to contain the nuclear threat if it manages to build a weapon.

At this point, the United States must be prepared to do both.

Time is running short to impose an effective, iron-clad sanctions program punishing enough to discourage Iran from pursuing its nuclear goals. The Obama administration must push for a stronger commitment from China and Russia to participate in sanctions.

The sanctions must be tightened soon. Iran has demonstrated its intent to rapidly accelerate its uranium enrichment efforts. Once all of the centrifuges are built, a bomb won’t be far behind.

The other option, of course, is a military strike. But neither the United States nor its allies, except possibly for Israel, seem to have an appetite for bombing Iran. And the effectiveness of stopping the Iranians through a military attack is questionable.

So the administration must demonstrate that it is prepared to counter and deter the Iranians if they do develop a nuclear weapon.

This starts with building a stronger defensive shield around Israel and other potential targets. It also involves developing and deploying new weapons of our own specifically designed to deal with Iran’s nuclear program — including the so-called bunker-busting bomb that the Pentagon says will be ready in months and will be capable of destroying Iran’s underground nuclear sites.

Iran must be persuaded that we are prepared to stop it by any means necessary from wielding its nuclear program as a club over the civilized world.

This entry was posted on December 1, 2009 at 4:30 PM and is filed under Iran / Israel War. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.