What To Do About Iran

Unfortunately, while it's very easy to describe incredibly wrongheaded approaches to non-proliferation policy ("bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran," for example, or "faster, please"), outlining a sounder course tends to be a more complicated undertaking. To get a flavor for what a serious (as opposed to "serious") might look like, though, take a gander at Jessica Matthews:



As she says near the beginning, this really needs to be put into a broader context. If we really want the international community to hold Iran to its NPT commitments, we need to demonstrate some real commitment to the arms control process. That means ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and starting to work in a cooperative way with Russia. In principle, all of the existing nuclear powers have a pretty clear interest in there not being any more nuclear powers, so it should be possible to work with Moscow on the Iran front. But that would mean not picking fights with Russia on other strategic issues.