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Thursday 24 July 2014Cut Obama some slack on Iran
The Obama administration is getting grief from the usual quarters for extending nuclear talks with Iran beyond this month's deadline for four additional months. The conditions for the extension, however, are sensible. Iran agreed to convert more of its 20 percent enriched uranium into fuel for its research reactor and to dilute more of its 2 percent enriched uranium into natural uranium. These steps diminish Iran's ability to produce material for a bomb. In exchange Iran gets access to another $2.8 billion in frozen assets. These are small steps. An agreement that provides assurances that Iran won't develop a nuclear weapon is still a long way off and the prospects of success still seemingly remote. But what's the alternative? The odds are even longer that the United States could facilitate and make stick an international sanctions regimen that would make Iran capitulate. The United States isn't going to take military action to keep Iran from getting a bomb. The threat to the United States isn't direct enough to warrant it and there would be no domestic support for it. The threat to Israel is monumentally larger. But confidence within Israel that it can take military action on its own that would meaningfully set back the Iranian nuclear program has waned. And the Israeli military has its hands full at the moment. This is one subject on which the critics should cut the Obama administration some considerable slack. Negotiations are the only realistic hope for a containable threat. Reach Robb at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @RJRobb. |