The Foreign Service Journal, June 2006

both Egypt and Jordan have recog- nized Israel’s right to exist and con- cluded peace treaties with her. There is, in fact, little chance that an Iranian nuclear weapon would oper- ate as a “Muslim bomb,” or be com- fortably accepted as such by its neighbors. Finally, there is the fact that the presence of nuclear weapons in Israeli, Indian, Pakistani and, eventu- ally, Iranian hands will certainly cause some hard and specific thinking in the Arab world. Would a rich state such as Saudi Arabia try to produce its own nuclear weapons? Would Egypt or Syria, or some other Arab state do so? And as these governments think about it, would such an effort not seem cost- lier and riskier in terms of their politi- cal relationships than seeking nuclear protection elsewhere? In fact, could not such Iranian armament actually provide an incentive for some of these states to seek the protection of the American nuclear deterrent? Tehran might usefully ponder that idea. Such considerations should pro- vide a degree of comfort to Western governments. They might eventually provide arguments to persuade Iran that developing nuclear weapons is not worth the political cost. They should refocus diplomacy on the direction of civil society in the Middle East and the relative place of Iran in the broader picture. The Right Side of the Rubicon Given how murky our understand- ing of Tehran’s inner policy-making process is, I am not arguing against current efforts to dissuade it from crossing the technical Rubicon in pursuit of nuclear weapons. This is particularly true if, over the next months and years, new options should develop (changes in the region or in Iran’s domestic situation, for exam- ple). Rather, I am suggesting that Iran’s leaders have a more complicat- ed decision to make than perhaps they (or we) now recognize. This recognition should enable us to resist the growing media-fueled panic. Instead, the situation calls for using a combination of containment, pressure and engagement not unlike that which Western governments learned to practice to good effect in the last years of the Cold War. In the present case we might even get effec- tive Russian assistance — if Moscow finally chooses broader cooperation with the West, and if Iran’s historical suspicion of Russia is overcome now that the two no longer share a com- mon border. As a start, American policy-makers should consider that, however the current mess in Iraq resolves itself, it has reminded everybody in the region of the historic Sunni-Shia split within Islam — and the fact that Iran is not on the majority side of that fault line. This will hold true in spite of any efforts that Tehran may make to appear as a peacemaker in Iraq’s growing Sunni-Shia conflict. Second, U.S. policy-makers should recognize the centrality of facilitating a settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, which would defuse many tensions in the region. Instead, as a result of Washington’s hands-off atti- tude, and the absence of diplomatic competition from prestigious Arab leaders in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, or even Saudi Arabia, Tehran currently enjoys a special opportunity in the Palestin- ian problem. It has been getting con- siderable mileage out of its self- appointed role as a defender of the Palestinians (even though most of them are Sunni or, indeed, Christian). It has been providing moral and financial assistance to suicide bomb- ing, both directly and through the (Shiite) Lebanese Hezbollah. It has recently given $50 million to help the Hamas-led government in Palestine survive U.S., Israeli and European 16 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 6 S P E A K I N G O U T