Iran in Iraq's Shadow: Dealing with Tehran's Nuclear Weapons Bid

Summary

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Russell examines Iran's sojourn into the world of nuclear power and its impact on the Gulf region. He tells that Iran emerged from its war with Iraq a broken power (militarily). He adroitly points out that in Iran's geopolitical landscape and strategic calculus, America remains the "demon" threatening its vision of the Middle East region.

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Iran in Iraq's Shadow: Dealing with Tehran's Nuclear Weapons Bid

As the old military adage has it, no good deed ever goes unpunished. And so it would seem with American security interests in the Persian Gulf. Soon after the United States has removed a major threat to American and regional interests with the defeat of Saddam Hussein's regime, Washington has to come to terms with the looming challenge of Iran's quest for nuclear weapons. The good news is that assertive multilateral diplomacy still has some running room for negotiating a stall or derailment of Iran's nuclear weapons program. The bad news is that the prospects are dim for achieving this end without the resort to force over the coming years.

The Iraq war is the backdrop for the evolving policy debate on Iran. The Iraq situation pits competing views of American national security strategy after 11 September 2001 against one another. On one side, critics of the Iraq war are posturing that if weapons of mass destruction (WMD) failed to be a sufficient justification for waging war against Iraq, then concerns about WMD have even less merit for forcibly challenging the Iranian regime over its nuclear weapons aspirations. On the other side, the threat posed by WMD-with the associated risk that terrorists might get their hands on WMD-is emerging as a worldview to replace the grand unifying scheme of containment which governed American and Western policy during the Cold War. Those in this camp view the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq as models for other policy challenges that involve WMD and potential support for terrorist groups coming from the likes of Iran and North Korea.

There are pitfalls, though, of viewing the Iran policy debate entirely through the Iraq policy prism. Just as a prism bends rays of light, Iraq and Iran, while they share many features, are distinct problems that require the modulation of policy tools. This article seeks to illuminate the commonalities and variations betw...

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