The United States Finds Itself without Any Tricks to Stop Tehran

In spite of a report of an Iranian-backed conspiracy to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington and commit other acts of terrorism, the United States up to now has not been able to form a solid international coalition to retaliate against the Islamic regime. The White House spokesperson Jay Carney assured yesterday that his country continues its effort to isolate Iran and that it will do so by “concentrating on tools of an economic nature.”*

The immediate military withdrawal from Iraq makes it more urgent that the U.S. administration act against Iran to keep this country from trying to fill the void the United States left and gain weight as a regional power. But the arguments put forward up to now by Washington have not been sufficient to gain allies in favor of approving new trade sanctions by the UN Security Council. The United Kingdom has joined the unilateral sanction that at the time put the United States against Iranian citizens presumably implicated in the conspiracy against the Saudi ambassador; but the European countries have reacted more coldly, and Russia and China, with strong economic interests in Iran, have resisted punishing the Tehran government.

The U.S. government has never officially ruled out the use of military retaliation against Iran, although this is a possibility that is currently very remote for economic, political and strategic reasons. And so for the moment, Washington is seen as incapable of energetically responding to the eventual threat that Iran could be.

This threat could become more visible in the coming weeks if, as is expected, the International Atomic Energy Agency presents a report in which it reports on the plausibility of the suspicions that the Islamic regime could be gearing its nuclear program towards military purposes. The risk that Iran could come to possess nuclear arms represents, obviously, a first-rate worry for the United States, and also for Europe and Russia. A call to attention from the IAEA could mean a considerable change in the international community’s current attitude towards Iran.

But there are other factors that the United States is taking into account that help mitigate the feeling of alarm. One of these is the slowness of scientific development in Iran. Even though the government had opted to create a nuclear arsenal, various experts have considered that it would not be in conditions capable of achieving its goals sooner than two or three years. According to this calculation, Iran has lost access to the material and technicians from other countries who could help its national program progress and, at the same time, the sanctions that have been placed upon it in the last few years have tremendously limited its capacity to compensate for this loss with domestic products.

On the other hand, during the last few months the Iranian regime has shown signs of an internal divide that reduces its capacity to act decisively in all areas. Although the nuclear program is the responsibility of the religious authority, which has the last word on the most transcendental issues, the recent friction with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has weakened the popular support to act with the aggression that is required to construct an atomic bomb.

Economically debilitated and politically divided, today Iran is, in the opinion of the United States, a somewhat lesser danger than it was a few years ago. This doesn’t mean that the U.S. administration lowers its guard with Tehran or that it doesn’t stand in solidarity with Israel’s worry in respect to an eventually nuclear Iran.

On the contrary, Iran continues to be a principal foreign policy problem for the United States, and it probably will be even more so to the extent that Washington continues freeing itself of its responsibilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and the fight against al-Qaida. Iran continues to be the most visible foreign enemy remaining for the U.S., apart from the Islamic terrorist groups, and it will be a prime goal of any future security strategy.

But a direct military confrontation with Iran does not seem to be something that, for the moment, is in the plans of a president like Barack Obama, who tries to build a more multilateral foreign policy with less military presence than what was involved in previous years. Also, Obama will soon arrive at the ballot boxes precisely to try and reinforce that direction.

* Editor’s note: Though accurately translated, quote could not be verified.