I don’t think you have to agree with everything Jackson Diehl says in this Post oped about Iran to see the logic of his central observation. That, as I understand it, is that Iran has little real incentive to cooperate with the US or Europe on the nuclear question as long any conversation or diplomatic dialog we have with them is on the basis of their remaining a pariah regime in the eyes of US foreign policy.
That observation doesn’t necessarily point to an obvious policy conclusion. But it may isolate the real stumbling block in the way of any good resolution of the current slow-motion stand-off.
I think what Diehl is saying comes very close to what Michael Levi wrote back in April at TPMCafe, though on the surface they were discussing entirely different aspects of the question.
The Iranians want nukes because nukes are the ultimate in regime security, at least from external military threat. Why after all do countries want nukes? In most cases, I think, because being a nuclear weapons state is something like the equivalent of becoming a made-man in the mafia.
Levi’s point back in April was that there was an essential problem with all the clever plans about how to resolve the Iran-nuclear stand-off. And that was how do you provide the Iranians with what, presumably, they really want: guarantee against attack. (That and recognition as the regional power in the Gulf.) We can speculate that having nuclear weapons is their way of guaranteeing it unilaterally for themselves. As long as they remain on the regime change list, what real basis is their for lasting agreement?
