Iran in Iraq's Shadow: Dealing with Tehran's Nuclear Weapons Bid
Abstract
Soon after the United States has removed a major threat to American and regional interests with the defeat of Saddam Hussein's regime, Washington has to come to terms with the looming challenge of Iran's quest for nuclear weapons. The good news is that assertive multilateral diplomacy still has some running room for negotiating a stall or derailment of Iran's nuclear weapons program. The bad news is that the prospects are dim for achieving this end without the resort to force over the coming years. The Iraqi War is the backdrop for the evolving policy debate on Iran. The Iraq situation pits competing views of U.S national security strategy after 9/11 against one another. On one side, critics of the Iraq war are posturing that if weapons of mass destruction (WMD) failed to be a sufficient justification for waging war against Iraq, then concerns about WMD have even less merit for forcibly challenging the Iranian regime over its nuclear weapons aspirations. On the other side, the threat posed by WMD -- with the associated risk that terrorists might get their hands on WMD -- is emerging as a worldview to replace the grand unifying scheme of containment that governed American and Western policy during the Cold War. Those in this camp view the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq as models for other policy challenges that involve WMD and potential support for terrorist groups coming from the likes of Iran and North Korea. There are pitfalls, though, of viewing the Iran policy debate entirely through the Iraq policy prism. Just as a prism bends rays of light, Iraq and Iran, while they share many features, are distinct problems that require the modulation of policy tools. This article seeks to illuminate the commonalities and variations between past Iraq and today's Iran as well as the strengths and weaknesses of American policy options for dealing with the growing security challenge posed by Tehran's quest for nuclear weapons.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA597227
Entities
People
- Richard L. Russell
Organizations
- Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies