As The New York Times reported, “This is the most important development in the three and a half years since the US has offered negotiations with Iran,” quoting Nicholas Burns, the Bush administration's chief strategist on Iran. Mr. Burns said Washington “now has much greater leverage to organize an international coalition to confront” the country's leaders with sanctions should the negotiating effort fail, the paper reported.What can the West do? Is there any measure, short of war, to stop Iran from acquiring enriched uranium? There are no easy answers to these questions. But one thing is certain: with the exception of Israel, no country believes in launching a military option against Tehran. The consensus seems to be pointing at the fact that bombing the nuclear facilities will only strengthen the Islamic regime. The timing will also be bad because the regime is experiencing what looks like some serious domestic legitimacy issues. Yet the clock in Iran concerning political change and the clock in the West concerning Iran's nuclear program are running at different speeds. Will the West be patient enough?
The Obama administration appears determined to pursue the path of economic coercion with sanctions before resorting to any military option. Washington is likely to sit at the table with Tehran and ask that all nuclear enrichment sites be opened to international inspectors. The US administration will also tell Tehran that inspectors must have full access to the key personnel who put together the clandestine plant and to the documents surrounding its construction. If Iran fails to show significant cooperation by the end of the year, establishing what officials say is effectively a three-month deadline, there will be much tougher economic sanctions to follow. In other words, Iran will be told that to avoid sanctions, it must adhere to an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) agreement that would allow inspectors to go virtually anywhere in the country to follow suspicions of nuclear work.
The good news is that on Saturday, Iran's nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, said the IAEA would be invited to visit the site near Qom. This is the facility that American intelligence agencies believe was designed to house 3,000 centrifuges, enough to produce about one bomb's worth of material a year. The bad news is that Salehi did not say when such a visit will be allowed.
Iranian officials have long maintained that their nuclear program is designed to produce energy, not weapons, and they said the facility near Qom is for peaceful purposes. Washington, on the other hand, finds such Iranian claims hard to believe. In interviews and public comments, the Obama administration's tone has clearly changed in recent days, becoming tougher and more confrontational. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the recently revealed hidden facility was “part of a pattern of deception and lies on the part of the Iranians from the very beginning with respect to their nuclear program.” “My personal opinion is that the Iranians have the intention of having nuclear weapons,” Mr. Gates concluded, though he said it was still an open question “whether they have made a formal decision” to manufacture weapons.
In the meantime there are also signs that the IAEA will also get tougher with Iran. In May 2008, the Vienna-based agency issued an uncharacteristically blunt demand for more information from Tehran and, even more uncharacteristically, disclosed the existence of 18 secretly obtained documents suggesting Iran's high level of interest in atom bombs.
The implications of all these developments for Turkey are significant. There are clear signs that new economic sanctions against Iran are on the horizon. And this time, Russia may also be on board with the West thanks to a new honeymoon and “reset” in relations with Washington. If there is a transatlantic consensus on Iran that involves Russia, what will Turkey do? Will it side with China at the UN Security Council and risk alienating its NATO and EU partners? In short, a time of reckoning is fast approaching for Ankara.
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