We Should Strike Iran, but Not With Bombs

But if Tehran refuses to back down, it must pay a price. And while Russia and China may not go along, Europe, Japan and the United States should not hide behind their refusal. The argument that sanctions won't work without China, Russia and India on board is overstated. Only Western companies at present possess the sort of expertise and technology that Iran's energy sector needs, and in an integrated world oil market, whatever oil China and India purchase from Iran liberates supplies elsewhere. Iran could, of course, retaliate by pulling its oil off the world market, which would cause a price spike. But if Americans and Europeans are unwilling to run the risk of a temporary rise in oil prices as part of what it takes to prevent an Iranian bomb, then they had better be prepared to live with the consequences as well.

The Iranian government believes, as Ahmadinejad put it recently, that "you [the West] need us more than we need you." Do we really want to encourage him in this belief?

There is no guarantee that making the threat of sanctions more credible or actually imposing them will have an immediate and positive effect, but given the alternatives it certainly makes sense to find out. And even if sanctions don't work in the short term, they would still be useful to give future Iranian leaders an incentive to cooperate and to send a message to other potential proliferators. At the very least, serious sanctions would slow the nuclear program by squeezing the Iranian economy and cutting off key technologies, would further strain the already disgruntled middle classes who might one day push the current regime aside, and would serve as leverage in the future if Iran ever does decide to engage the West.

Iran must be presented with a clear choice: It can become an impoverished, isolated pariah state with nuclear weapons -- like North Korea -- or it can begin to reintegrate with the international community, meet the needs of its people and preserve its security in exchange for forgoing this capability. The choice will be for the Iranians to make. But we must force them to make it.

Authors' e-mails:

pgordon@brookings.edu, idaalder@brookings.edu

Ivo Daalder and Philip Gordon are senior fellows in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. They are editors, along with Nicole Gnesotto, of "Crescent of Crisis: U.S.-European Strategy for the Greater Middle East," which has just been published by Brookings.