Diplomacy Exits Stage Left

Here is a surprising example of self-awareness from the political class in the EU. They have admitted that the pursuit of a political solution to the Iranian nuclear program has been a failure. Of course they deem the Iranian bomb an inevitability, which of course ignores all possible approaches. To their thinking, political solutions are the only solutions and we must now live with the idea of a nucelar armed regime that threatens its neighbors and starts proxy wars. I doubt the Israelis will see the same inevitability that the EU's political elite see.

I have no concrete basis for this aside from discussions with people who are relatively knowledgable about that part of the world and my own observation, but I think a strategy to deal with Iran is emerging and it will become more visible now that the downstage diplomatic activity fades away. The strategy is this...Israel will be responsible for planning and carrying out any direct military strikes of Iran's nuclear facilities if those become necessary. In the interim period, the US will be responsible for Cold War tactics including economic disruption and covert operations to harass the Iran government. As a starting point, the approach to Iranian meddling in Iraq will begin to resemble a zero-tolerance policy. Iranians will be killed and Iranian assets destroyed if they are found operating on Iraqi soil. We could well see covert operations just over the Iranian border. On the economic front, we have increased the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, put sanctions on Iranian banks, and denied them access to key industrial parts required for infrastructure maintenance. We could see additional economic pressure focused on Iran's gas vulnerability, namely we will be more aggressive in twisting the arms of allies, like India, not to invest in Iranian oil and gas infrastructure projects. We might even see an attempt to slow the flow of refined fuel products into Iran by interdicting tankers in the Gulf for "inspections."

This Cold War Lite strategy will either bring the Iranian rgime to the table or force it to lash out. If the conventional wisdom in Washington is right that there are rational actors within the Iranian power elite, the increased pressure should result in the former. If the conventional wisdom is wrong, it will have been good to have established that definitively and have the basis for ratcheting up the pressure.