The Iranian Challenge

The Iranian nuclear project is fast approaching a critical watershed. Iran has continued to develop a range of nuclear capabilities that under optimal technical circumstances will allow it to build its first nuclear device as early as the beginning of 2011. In the coming months, Iran will have to decide whether, for now, to stop at the nuclear weapons capability threshold or to break out and build these weapons. The United States and Western governments have labored to stop Iran before it achieves nuclear weapons by enticing it with incentives, applying pressure on it, and imposing sanctions against it. To date these efforts have failed to yield satisfactory results and the American administration may have to choose between difficult options: to pursue a military option against Iran or give Israel a green light to operate militarily, or alternately, to accept uranium enrichment in Iran and subsequently a nuclear Iran and prepare for the associated risks. Given that Iran has not been stopped, Israel too will have to decide in the immediate future whether conditions are suitable for a military move against Iran’s nuclear sites. Against this background, the most severe internal crisis in the history of the Islamic regime has assumed center stage, with implications primarily for the nature of the regime and its future but also for the nuclear question.