Iran's bellicose rhetoric and Gulf wargames in recent days have given rise to the question of whether Tehran could close the Strait of Hormuz. As many analysts have observed, the answer is no -- not for a meaningful period of time. Less frequently addressed, however, is whether Iran would even try. The answer to that question is also "no" -- even the attempt would have devastating strategic consequences for Iran.

The presumable target of an Iranian effort to close the Strait would be the United States. However, while we would of course be affected by any resulting rise in global oil prices, the U.S. gets little of our petroleum from the Gulf. The U.S. imports only about 49 percent of the petroleum we consume, and over half of those imports come from the Western Hemisphere. Less than 25 percent of U.S. imports came from all the Gulf countries combined in October 2011 -- far less than is available in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, were Gulf supplies to be interrupted.  

China, on the other hand, would find its oil supplies significantly threatened by an Iranian move against the Strait. China's most significant oil supplier is Saudi Arabia. China also happens, however, to be Iran's primary oil customer and perhaps its most important ally: Beijing provides Iran with its most sophisticated weaponry and with diplomatic cover at the United Nations. Thus a move to close the Strait would backfire strategically by harming the interests of -- and likely alienating -- Iran's most important patron and cutting off Iran's own economic lifeline, while doing little to imperil U.S. supplies of crude.

It is perhaps no coincidence, then, that China quickly dispatched Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun to Tehran in the wake of Iran's bellicose statements. In typically opaque fashion, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said only that "China hopes that peace and stability can be maintained in the Strait;" this is essentially diplo-speak for "Cool it."

Even if Iran ignored these considerations and proceeded with an effort to close the Strait, the U.S. and others would move to keep it open, and would be unlikely to stop there. As Iran has crept closer to a nuclear weapons capability, the possibility of military action against Iran has also become more imminent. President Obama has been reluctant to threaten Iran militarily, and any U.S. president would think long and hard before engaging in another armed conflict in the Middle East. 

An effort by Iran to shut down the oil trade in the Gulf, however, would make such a decision straightforward. The U.S. would react with force, and once engaged in hostilities with Iran, would likely take the opportunity to target Iran's nuclear facilities and other military targets. It is difficult to envision any scenario beginning with an Iranian effort to close the Strait of Hormuz that does not end in a serious strategic setback for the Iranian regime.

Recognizing that Iran is neither able nor likely to try to close the Strait, the U.S. could simply sit back, confident in our superior firepower. This would be a mistake. The real danger in the Gulf is lower-level activity by Iran to harass shipping and confront the U.S. Navy. Iranian commanders in the area are increasingly brazen. If not deterred, Iran's sense of impunity -- rather than its nuclear progress -- may be the spark that ignites a conflict in the region. 

Iran's navy -- especially the naval arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards -- has invested in vessels and armaments that are well-suited to asymmetric warfare, rather than the sort of ship-to-ship conflict which Iran would surely lose. Thus, they have purchased, with Chinese and Russian help, increasingly sophisticated mines, midget submarines, mobile anti-ship cruise missiles, and a fleet of small, fast boats. In addition, they have reportedly sought to develop a naval special warfare, or frogman, capability.

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Iran's alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington was brazen, sloppy, but, regrettably, entirely plausible. While its tactics vary, the Iranian regime has engaged in direct terrorist attacks in the past, and recent events in the Middle East and changes to Iran's own military command and control structure have raised the likelihood of such attacks. The Obama Administration will be careful to avoid a war of escalation with the regime, but should resist the temptation to confine its response to sanctions.

On its face, the details of the Iranian plot seem amateurish and provoke deep skepticism. An Iranian-American who claims his cousin is a "big general" in Iran makes contact with what he thinks is a Mexican drug gang to blow up a Washington restaurant in a frantic effort to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, heedless of the innocents who will surely perish or the risk of US retaliation. This hardly seems to fit the modus operandi of the Quds Force, the external operations arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The Quds Force has recently tended to operate below the radar, through trusted proxies such as Hezbollah, and while its activities are global, it concentrates its most nefarious activities in Iran's immediate environs, most notably Iraq.

Nevertheless, this conventional wisdom glosses over a significant variability in the IRGC's tactics. In Iraq, Quds Force commanders have been caught red-handed aiding militants. This includes Mohsen Chizari, the Quds Force operations chief who was caught and released by US and Iraqi forces in Baghdad in 2006 and was more recently designated by recent US sanctions for aiding the Assad regime's crackdown. Further in the past, the IRGC did the dirty work itself in bombing the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994. One of the Iranians wanted for that attack is Iran's current defense minister, and another ran unsuccessfully against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the presidency in 2009.

Recent developments may have spurred the IRGC to return to such tactics. While Iran initially seemed buoyed by the uprisings in the Arab world, which it touted as anti-American, Islamic revolutions, the regime was stung by events in Bahrain. The GCC, led by Saudi Arabia, successfully intervened in Bahrain to shore up the Khalifa monarchy against a largely Shiite uprising, while Iran -- which sees itself as defender of Shiite communities worldwide and occasionally asserts an old Persian territorial claim to Bahrain -- stood by impotently. This humiliation may have convinced the regime of the need to act. And the Saudi ambassador may have been seen in Tehran as a fitting target, as he is a close confidant of King Abdullah and a key conduit between Saudi Arabia and the United States, two powers whose hands the paranoid Iranian regime sees in all of its troubles.

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The Iranian regime regularly serves reminders of its malevolence: its support for Hezbollah and Hamas terrorism, its killing of American troops in Iraq, its support for Bashar al-Assad's massacres of Syrian dissidents, its brutality to its own citizens during the Green Movement protests, or its persecution of religious minorities such as Bahais, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Christians.

In the latter category is the urgent case of Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, an Iranian Christian pastor in the city of Rasht who this week was found guilty of the "crime" of apostasy for his conversion from Islam to Christianity. Under shari'a law apostasy is a capital offense. Knowing this, Pastor Nadarkhani on three consecutive days this week still refused before the court to renounce his Christian faith and return to Islam. Many reports indicate that Pastor Nadarkhani faces the very real possibility of execution.  Even if the court releases him, he would not be spared danger. Religious freedom advocates remember the cases of Iranian pastors such as Mehdi Dibaj (also a convert from Islam), Haik Hovsepian-Mehr, Tateos Michaelian, and Mohammad Bagher Yusefi who were all abducted and murdered in the 1990s, very likely by Iranian intelligence agents.

The White House, State Department, and Speaker of the House Boehner have all issued statements calling on the Iranian Government to spare Pastor Nadarkhani's life, as have other Members of Congress and world leaders such as British Foreign Minister William Hague. These are welcome steps and serve notice to Tehran -- which does care about its international image - that its oppression does not go unnoticed. There are several additional diplomatic measures that can be taken. U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice should remonstrate with her Iranian counterpart at Turtle Bay, Mohammad Khazaee. Related, the Obama Administration can demonstrate the utility of America's renewed membership in the U.N. Human Rights Council by pushing in Geneva for an emergency Council resolution condemning Iran's treatment of Pastor Nadarkhani and calling for the preservation of his life and his immediate release. And though the United States does not have diplomatic relations with Iran, the State Department can work to mobilize other nations that do -- such as the United Kingdom, France, and Germany -- to issue protests through their embassies in Tehran. Finally, Obama and Clinton can speak out publicly and in person to call for Pastor Nadarkhani's release.

The Iranian Mission to the U.N.'s website rather audaciously proclaims that "as a founding member of the United Nations, Iran believes deeply in the ideals of the organization and the purposes and principles of its Charter." Would that it were so -- especially since Article 18 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief."

Though he is just one man, Pastor Nadarkhani's case exemplifies the situation faced by many other Iranians of all faiths, who desire only to believe, worship, and live peaceably without the oppression of the state. As the world watches, will the regime in Tehran do right?

Last month, three members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) -- Chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Subcommittee Chairman Connie Mack (R- FL), and freshman member David Rivera (R-FL) sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing their concern over information they had received on suspicious activity involving Argentina, Venezuela, and Iran and asking the State Department to investigate whether any nuclear cooperation is at play between the three countries.

Rather than making any serious effort to look into the matter, however, State dismissed the legislators' queries within a matter of days with a perfunctory: "We have no reason to believe that Venezuela serves as an interlocutor between Iran and Argentina on nuclear issues, nor that Argentina is granting access to its nuclear technology."

Well, the members didn't have any reason to either -- until information started to coming to light that has raised disturbing questions.

Argentina-Iran nuclear ties are nothing new, dating from the 1980s. The reactor in Tehran is largely of Argentinean design and Argentina was shipping highly enriched uranium to Iran as late as 1993. That relationship, however, ended under intense U.S. pressure in the early 1990s and seemingly was severed forever as Iran's role in the terrorist bombings against Jewish targets in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 came to light.

Still, Tehran never lost hope about restoring nuclear ties with Argentina and has made it a priority since. In 2009, the Iranian representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency publicly reaffirmed, "We are interested in buying [nuclear fuel] from any supplier, including Argentina."

Enter Hugo Chavez.

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Analysts here in New Delhi, as everywhere, are consumed by the unfolding developments in the Middle East. There is confusion over what might happen next, and how developments will affect U.S. standing in the region. Many have concluded that Iran, simply by standing pat, has emerged the winner yet again.

They take seriously the notion of a "Shia arc", first identified by Jordan's King Abdullah over a decade ago. They fear that even if the Saudis bail out Bahrain's chestnuts, the Shi'a on both sides of the causeway that links the two states will feel emboldened and empowered, and will provide Tehran still new opportunities to make mischief. They worry that Syria is the one presidential dynasty that looks secure, while Hezbollah's ascendancy in Lebanon adds to Iran's increasing footprint in the Mediterranean -- most recently underscored by the first deployment of Iranian warships through the Suez Canal since 1979. India retains decent ties with Iran -- the cultural and economic relationship goes back centuries, if not millennia--and there can be little doubt that what Indian analysts are asserting in New Delhi is what Iranian policy makers are concluding in Tehran. With the United States seen as poised to depart Iraq and Afghanistan, thereby both expanding and deepening the Shia arc, it is no wonder that the ayatollahs seem to be sitting pretty.

The Obama administration has done little to convey a different impression to the mullahs, much less to make them recalculate their strategic position in the region. The administration has not exactly been assertive in the face of the upheavals that are shaking the region. Its policies seem more the product of bureaucratic consensus, invariably conservative and risk-averse, than of real leadership, which calls for bold decision making. While it may perhaps be possible -- if one is exceedingly generous -- to excuse Washington for its inconsistent responses to the jasmine revolutions in Tunisia in Egypt, there is no excuse for the inaction that has marked its response to Qaddafi's brutality. It seems as if unless the United States can deploy troops on the ground to the Middle East, there is not much else it can do to influence events in the region.

As one senior U.S. diplomat recently put it to me, "we are increasingly being perceived in the region as the Soviets once were -- all we have to offer are military solutions, nothing more." There appears to be no creativeness coming out of the Obama administration, only words. Yet as he fires on his own people, it is highly doubtful that Qaddafi worries terribly much about whether the United States, or for that matter, the European Union or the U.N. Security Council, "condemns" his actions or merely "deplores" them. Moreover, imposing sanctions will have little effect on the mad dictator, especially in the short term, when it is short term results that are urgently required.

In fact, the administration seems hamstrung even when it comes to military action. When Qaddafi's stooges bombed a nightclub in Germany, the Reagan administration did not hesitate to launch an air strike in the Gulf of Sidra, targeting Qaddafi's home in the process. Today, claiming that it might endanger Americans seeking to escape Libya, Washington hesitates to mount a no-fly zone that would both prevent Qaddafi's ability to call on his air force and encourage further defections from all branches of his military. And it is not as if the U.S. Navy and Air Force's resources are consumed by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem isn't a shortage of aircraft; it is a lack of U.S. will.

So Qaddafi continues to kill his people, and the ayatollahs sit back, and watch, and wait. And, apart from issuing "strong statements," the Obama administration continues to do nothing to persuade them that they are wrong. No wonder Iran believes that time in the region is on its side.

Signals from the White House indicate that President Obama's State of the Union (SOTU) address tomorrow night will focus heavily on domestic and economic policy. Understandably so, as domestic and economic issues spurred the GOP's massive Congressional gains, and remain the nation's predominant concerns. The SOTU is President Obama's best platform to regain the political initiative and point the country towards his preferred course over the next two years.

Yet the president should not neglect national security policy in the SOTU, for two reasons. First, while the American people are his primary audience, we are not his only audience. Foreign leaders -- friends, foes, and fence-sitters alike -- will be watching keenly for signs from Obama about strategic priorities and U.S. resolve. Second, while domestic and economic policy has thus far defined this presidency, the future by its nature will surprise, and national security could reemerge as a defining concern.

Here are three issues President Obama should address tomorrow night:

Afghanistan. The administration continues to send conflicting and conflicted signals about the Afghanistan war and the meaning of July 2011 as a "drawdown" date. As Peter Feaver has argued, the White House's rhetorical neglect of Afghanistan threatens to erode tenuous public support. Meanwhile, key actors -- ranging from our NATO allies, India, and the Afghan people and government to Pakistan and the Taliban -- all remain uncertain about the United States' commitment to success in the Afghan mission. And all will in their own ways hedge accordingly. The Congressional audience tomorrow night will be essential for supporting and continuing to fund the war effort -- and needs to know it is a priority for the president. Most important, U.S. forces currently deployed in theater need to hear from their commander-in-chief that he is resolved to see their efforts through.

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NATO's 28 member states are in the final stages of negotiation on a new ballistic missile defense system -- the replacement for an earlier design that the Obama administration cancelled last year in deference to Russian complaints. But Turkey's about to spoil the party.

The new system is likely to be the attention-getter at this weekend's NATO summit, which will otherwise be consumed with attempts to wring commitments to stay in Afghanistan until 2014 and the approval of a new strategic concept  (a topic which none but the most tenacious NATOphile has any interest in). Without missile defense, the news will be about President Barack Obama hiding behind NATO to walk away from his July 2011 Afghanistan withdrawal commitment. 

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had already set two conditions that must be met for Turkey to host essential missile defense radar components: any system must cover all of Turkish territory (a demanding operational standard), and all references to Iran as the threat must be eliminated (what should be an easy hurdle for the alliance, given its history of "dual track" decisions of deploying nuclear forces while negotiating their removal). But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has upped the ante, stating that Turkey should have command of the system. Turkey commanding NATO's missile defenses is surely a deal breaker, not least because of questions about the political reliability of their government. There are alternatives to sitting the radar in Turkey, but there will be a messy dispute and another international disappointment for the Obama administration if a different site must now be chosen. It sounds as though what the Turks are actually asking for is a visible role in a defense system that will be based on their territory. Surely an alliance with NATO's celebrated history of chimera can find a way to accommodate Erdogan's sensitivities.

The new demand will no doubt aggravate an Obama administration -- which was looking forward to a celebratory NATO summit -- already short-tempered by the frustrations of dealing with Turkey. Administration officials have apparently mythologized a pre-democratic Turkey, when its military ran the country and was compliant to U.S. wishes. It is one more verse in the hymn about the unbearable difficulty of problems they inherited. This narrative not only neglects that Turkey has always been a difficult ally (ask anyone involved in the 1992 NATO exercise accident, or Iraq in 2003, it also neglects that the Obama administration volunteered for the job.

Math class is hard and it always has been. While the Turks are behaving badly, we are giving them no positive agenda to work with us on. The Obama administration needs to think anew about how to make this ambitious and difficult Turkish government successful in foreign policy. Give them constructive roles that capitalize on their desire to be seen as the Brazil of the Middle East, find terms on which we can support them, and showcase their successes. In other words, polish up on alliance relations.

This post has been updated.

The New York Times is highlighting the Iran angle in the latest dump from Wikileaks. That doesn't appear to be generating as much commentary as the question of civilian casualties but I think it may be more important for shedding new light on the war.

In particular, the Iran reports draw attention to an underappreciated part of the surge in 2006-2007: the ratcheting up of efforts against the Iranian-backed Jaysh Al Mahdi (JAM) terrorist cells and, indeed, on the Iranian agents themselves who had been operating with near impunity inside Iraq for much of 2006. The surge was designed to buy time to accomplish five tasks: 1) pruning the accelerants of the sectarian violence, Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) on the Sunni side and the Iranian backed rogue militias on the Shia side; 2) building a larger and more reliable Iraqi security force (ISF) -- in the language of Jaws, building a bigger boat; 3) fostering local, bottom-up accommodation (as with the Tribal Awakening -- a marked departure from the top-down, Green Zone centric approach that preceded the surge); 4) connecting these localized, decentralized efforts to the central Iraqi government, making the Iraqi government relevant to the regions; and 5) pushing the top-down reconciliation steps, the famous "benchmarks."

The first were two sides of the same coin: no one expected the surge to "win" the war, but it was designed to beat the problem down, while building the solution (Iraqi forces) up, until the two were matched again, permitting an American withdrawal. Beating the problem down involved significantly ramped up kinetic operations by "Stan McChystal's guys" against these groups.

Most of the attention of outside commentators focused on the Sunni accelerants of the violence -- how the Tribal Awakening and accelerated raids reversed AQI's momentum. But those inside the administration with responsibility for this issue were just as concerned about the Shia side, especially the Iranian connection. The trove of intelligence reports about rogue Shia and Iranian operations helps explain why.

There is a cottage industry among academics and some pundits attempting to discredit the surge as either a total failure or as irrelevant to what progress there has been in Iraq. The latest Wikileaks dump poses a real problem for them, and I haven't seen any of them yet adequately rise to the challenge: how would any of their preferred options in 2006 have dealt with the Iranian challenge in Iraq more successfully than did the surge that President Bush ordered?

In negotiating tradecraft, the distinction between positions and interests is a fundamental one. Parties with divergent interests can unite behind common positions, like the environmentalists and trade unions who opposed NAFTA in the 1990s. Just as often, parties with opposing positions fail to perceive their common interests, like divorcing parents whose acrimony blinds them to what is best for their children.

It is neglect of this vital distinction that now has the United States scrambling to salvage Middle East peace talks, which are threatened by a resurgent dispute over Israeli settlement activity. The Obama administration initially viewed the settlements issue as "low-hanging fruit" -- the Palestinians, Arab states, international public opinion, and frankly even many Israelis were against settlement activity, whereas a seeming minority on the Israeli right favored it. Thus, the White House viewed insistence on a settlement freeze as a way to restore confidence in U.S. impartiality while jump-starting the peace process. As is now well-known, precisely the opposite occurred -- U.S. relations with all sides have been strained, and the peace process has yet to take flight.

To understand what went wrong, one must look past the Israelis' and Palestinians' positions on settlements and understand how they define their interests.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in a June 14, 2009 speech, provided insight into his opposition to a settlement freeze. In his remarks, Netanyahu asserts that "The simple truth is that the root of the conflict has been -- and remains -- the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish people to its own state in its historic homeland." In his view, Arab efforts to eliminate Israel began in 1947 with the United Nations proposal to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, and have not truly ebbed since despite Israel's peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. That those efforts began before Israel took the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, and that rocket fire from southern Lebanon and Gaza continued after Israeli troops withdrew from both territories, are to Netanyahu and many Israelis evidence that the presence of Israeli troops in the West Bank is not the cause of the animosity toward them.

It is this interest-- defending the continued existence of a Jewish state that has been under attack since its founding -- that leads not only to Netanyahu's insistence that the Palestinians explicitly acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state, but also to his rejection of a settlement freeze. If the Palestinians and Arabs will not do the former, Netanyahu and his allies view the latter as pointless at best and at worst dangerous succor to those who would delegitimize Israel. While many Israelis do not share Netanyahu's position on settlements, they do share his interest in defending Israel's legitimacy, and thus have reacted negatively to what they view as Washington's harsh approach.

The Palestinian narrative is quite different. For Palestinians, the events of 1948 constituted a catastrophe which left them scattered and displaced. In the nations which received them, they were -- with few exceptions -- refugees or guest workers with few rights and little respect, despite the lip service paid to the Palestinian cause. For years, Palestinians themselves had scant voice in that cause, and there was little support among leaders in the region or elsewhere for the independent state envisaged in 1947.

For Palestinians, these twin interests -- justice for refugees who have been the region's second-class citizens for sixty years, and ensuring that the emergence of a Palestinian state remains viable -- motivate deep opposition to continued Israeli settlement activity. In their view, it makes little sense to engage in negotiations aimed at satisfying these interests while simultaneously acceding to activity which undermines them.

On Monday, Netanyahu offered to extend Israel's settlement freeze if the Palestinians would recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and the Palestinians immediately refused. Given the interests described above, one can see why Israel made the offer, as well as why the Palestinians rejected it. Israel is ready to modify its position on a settlement freeze if its interests are otherwise satisfied; but Palestinians likewise wish to see their interests fulfilled, and not merely their position on a settlement freeze conceded. For this reason, the Palestinians for their part have insisted that Israel and the United States declare that the basis for negotiations over the borders of a Palestinian state will be the "1967 lines" to ensure a Palestinian state's viability.

Thus the fight over a settlement freeze is in reality a conflict by proxy over the competing interests of each party. But because those interests will only be satisfied through negotiations, and not conceded by the other side prior to the talks, no sustainable compromise can be found as long as the freeze remains an issue. For this reason, temporarily extending the freeze as the United States is reportedly seeking to do can only postpone a crisis for another day, if that. Moving forward will require that the Obama administration acknowledge that its early emphasis on settlements was mistaken in order to deflect blame and anger that might otherwise be directed at Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Abbas for changing their stances.

The good news is that while Israeli and Palestinian positions on a settlement freeze are seemingly irreconcilable, the interests underlying their positions are not. Indeed, polling data and anecdotal evidence suggest that the people on both sides are ready for a two-state solution. What's more, the parties have other interests -- such as the desire for peace and quiet for their people and to sideline extremists sponsored by Iran -- which enhance the motivation of each to find common ground. This is where American mediation must play a role -- helping the parties see past their conflicting positions, and to recognize their mutual interests.

The freedom section of President Obama's address to the United Nations General Assembly yesterday deserves applause -- two cheers at least. It was the most extensive, fulsome, and compelling defense of human rights and democracy of his presidency, and it strategically placed political freedom in the context of economic freedom and development. To be sure, it was also a long overdue statement; Obama's relative silence and inaction on such issues until now has been a major disappointment. Whatever the reasons may have been for the prior reticence -- an immature "Anything But Bush" reflex, a relative disinterest in foreign policy, an enervated and miscast "realism," -- they have now been supplanted. With this speech, the historically bipartisan U.S. commitment to supporting liberty and human dignity abroad has returned, and on the world stage of the United Nations General Assembly.

Why not three cheers? While presidential rhetoric matters, to have enduring meaning it must be backed up by action. As strong as it was as a statement of principles, President Obama's speech did not point to a policy course going forward. Tellingly, the first third of his speech in the "what we have done" section reviewing his first two years contained not a word on the cause of freedom. It was only in the looking ahead, "what are we trying to build" section at the end that he turned to human rights and democracy.

But it is a welcome turn, and fortunately comes at what could be a propitious time for the advance of liberty. As powerful as the presidency is, it is still in the service of events. George W. Bush did not set out to be a wartime president until September 11th; Harry Truman did not assume office intending to be America's first Cold War president. The challenge a president faces is to read events and respond by seizing the initiative, to steer history's tides rather than merely be swept along.

What of events today? Even a cursory glance around the globe shows a number of nations that are in tyranny's crucible, and whose citizens may find the possibility of freedom within their grasp. Sometimes this grasp can be aided by presidential attention or even a few strategic gestures that tip the scales. Such can be the opportunity for President Obama.

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Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of [nuclear] weapons.

-President Obama, Prague, April 5, 2009

Iran has not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the Agency to confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities. Iran is not implementing the requirements contained in the relevant resolutions of the Board of Governors and the Security Council, including implementation of the Additional Protocol, which are essential to building confidence in the exclusively peaceful purpose of its nuclear program.

-International Atomic Energy Agency, September 6, 2010

The latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran's nuclear program is circulating in Vienna among governments, but has not yet been released officially. Media reports have highlighted Iran's conflict with inspectors, but other developments are more troubling. While couched in the calm tones of international civil servants, the report's message is unmistakable: Iran continues its steady march towards nuclear weapon capabilities, and no recent progress has been made in halting it. 

Since the current U.S. administration took office, extending its hand to the leaders in Tehran, Iran has: continued to violate a series of U.N. Security Council Resolutions, now numbering six; increased its declared capacity to enrich uranium by about one-third -- despite U.N. Security Council Resolutions requiring that it halt enrichment; nearly tripled its stocks of low-enriched uranium; begun production of small quantities of uranium enriched to 20 percent, versus earlier production at 3.5 percent; revealed a secret, underground enrichment facility near Qom, while announcing plans for several more; and continued to chip away at the IAEA's ability to monitor nuclear developments. 

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David Ignatius appears to have been convinced that the Obama administration is deftly playing its Iran hand. I am not so easily persuaded, but I did see in Ignatius's report one thing worth praising: President Obama now appears to understand that the sanctions track is the diplomatic track.

There are basically three schools of thought regarding diplomatic engagement with Iran. One school thinks the prospect is hopeless from the get-go and not worth doing. I understand this school's pessimism -- for 30 years, anyone betting that diplomacy with Iran would fail made money -- but I have not been in this school because of its naiveté. That's right, naiveté. It is hardly naïve about the intentions and stubbornness of the Iranian regime, but it is naïve about everything else regarding American foreign policy options regarding Iran. Everything else we might have to do with respect to Iran -- whether it is the hawkish option of military strikes or the dovish option of learning to live with an Iranian nuclear weapon -- is easier to do if we have thoroughly tried and exhausted other diplomatic options. So pragmatism requires that we try diplomatic engagement, even if pragmatism also leads us to be bearish about its prospects for success.

The second school thinks that diplomatic engagement is hard but doable, provided that the United States faithfully makes ever larger concessions and offers ever larger carrots. This school believes that the Iranian regime has several times made sincere offers that belligerent Bush officials foolishly ignored or rejected. This school wanted Obama to reset Iranian relations and pursue an approach that began with unconditional carrots and only threatened vague and imprecise sticks should the Iranian regime reject U.S. concessions. The problem with this school is that it offers no hedge against Iranian negotiators pocketing the concessions, moving the bargaining space accordingly, and stringing out the negotiations while the Iranian nuclear weapons program inches ever closer to a fait accompli. Like the quest for the Holy Grail, the quest for Iranian moderates who would cut a deal was tantalizing and never-ending. Not surprisingly, this school ends up consistently arguing against applying sanctions, and instead proposes new concessions as the way out of diplomatic impasses. The best gimmick this school has in this regard is pretending that sanctions are the alternative to diplomacy rather than acknowledging that they are part and parcel of a robust diplomatic approach. Thus, second school apologists consistently argue "let's give diplomacy a chance and not pursue sanctions just yet," which is sort of like arguing "let's try to swim the English Channel but let's not use our legs just yet, let's wait until we are drowning first."

During the campaign, a careless answer to a gotcha question in a foreign policy debate put candidate Obama partially in the second school. When asked whether he would sit down for an unconditional face-to-face with Ahmadinejad, Obama gave the reflexive "if Bush is against it, I must be for it" answer and said yes. Hillary Clinton pounced. Under the onslaught of criticism from both Republicans and Democrats, Obama doubled down on and elevated it to a pseudo-doctrine during the campaign: For Obama, diplomacy would mean unconditional face-to-face meetings with tyrants, without regard to diplomatic preparation or prospects for success.

Of course, once in office, the Obama administration had to retreat from that unsustainable position. Face-to-face meetings with the president are too precious to be granted without adequate diplomatic preparation -- without getting something guaranteed and up front. But they were stuck with enough of the ideology of this second school that they felt obligated to adopt the Bush carrots-and-sticks strategy on Iran with one crucial difference: sequence the carrots-and-sticks by leading with carrots and waiting a long time -- over a year -- before recognizing that it was time for sticks.

To my eyes, the praiseworthy piece of the latest report on Obama's thinking on Iran is that he has apparently now moved into the third school, where I have been hoping he would end up long ago. This third school thinks that diplomatic engagement is hard and only doable if the United States and our international allies have sufficient leverage over the Iranian regime. The necessary-but-not-sufficient condition for diplomatic success is for the Iranian regime to believe they are on a negative trajectory. The longer they delay, the worse things get for them; the deal they could get today is better than the deal they could get tomorrow. To borrow a hackneyed idea from the Cold War, diplomatic engagement means first setting the conditions so that the correlation of world forces runs against the Iranian regime -- and that they perceive this to be the case. To be sure, this must be done deftly so that the Iranian regime does not grow so pessimistic that it launches its own preventive military strike. The deftness requires consistently offering a plausible set of carrots that would change the trajectory in a positive direction, but ensuring that the Iranian regime sees those carrots as the alternative to their eroding status quo. All of this requires leverage.

There are many elements to establishing this leverage. For instance, reversing the negative trajectory in Iraq helped. Likewise, forging closer cooperation now among our Gulf allies who would be the most adversely affected by an Iranian nuclear weapon could further isolate the regime. But of greatest import, I believe, is activating what diplomats call the "pressure track" -- meaning ratcheting up the economic pain that the Iranian regime is suffering -- and doing so before, or in tandem with, offering carrots.

For diplomacy to work, the Iranian regime has to confront the choice of sticks-now-but-carrots-in-the-future-if-they-get-onside. This is the opposite of the second school, which offers the choice of carrots-now-but-sticks-in-the-future-if-they-stay-offside. The third school's approach has a higher chance of success because it tightens with time. The more the Iranian regime dithers, the more pain it experiences.

The approach also is slightly less vulnerable to mischief from weakly committed partners on the U.N. Security Council (such as the Russians and Chinese) who consistently drag their heels on sticks and demand that more time be given to carrots. The third school hedges against this weakness by offering the Russian and Chinese this bargain: in exchange for the United States offering more carrots to Iran, you must first ratchet up the sanctions. Russian and Chinese cooperation will always be the Achilles heel of any Iranian strategy, but our best shot requires prioritizing their sticks over our carrots, and taking advantage of every opportunity to further that priority.

The Obama administration squandered the best opportunity they had in this regard -- the smoking gun evidence of Iranian cheating on uranium enrichment, which the administration dramatically revealed last September. At that moment, the optimal strategy would have been to seize the temporary diplomatic advantage in the Security Council, push for immediate sanctions, and then re-launch the various offers of carrots and concessions. Instead, Obama, perhaps still under the sway of the second school' thinking, re-launched the carrots and concessions.

The predictable (and predicted) result was diplomatic failure and a full year was lost. Now the Obama administration has belatedly started to apply the approach advocated by the third school. It may well be too late now, but it is still worth trying.

The U.N. Security Council today passed resolution 1929 attaching further sanctions to Iran for pursuance of nuclear programs condemned by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The Obama administration is doing its best to put a good face on a major disappointment: After sixteen months' effort, they have succeeded in delivering less international support than did the Bush administration for a problem everyone agrees is growing rapidly worse.

Sanctions have been the centerpiece of the Obama administration's approach. Secretary Clinton proclaimed last summer we would coalesce the international community around "crippling sanctions." President Obama more recently reaffirmed that sanctions would be "significant." Yet the sanctions outlined in Resolution 1929 are so modest that even the White House sounded sheepish in its announcement of the resolution's passage:

The resolution reaffirms the international community's willingness to resolve international concerns over Iran's nuclear program through negotiations, while laying out the steps that Iran must take to restore international confidence in its nuclear program, thereby allowing for the suspension or termination of these sanctions.

The Resolution does show the handiwork of Stuart Levy's superb team at the Department of Treasury: the Iranian Central Bank is mentioned, companies linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are cited, and the lead scientist in the Iranian nuclear program is listed by name. But even though the number of entities ostensibly affected is twice that previously listed in U.N. resolutions, Tehran should be celebrating all it achieved.

Russia's vote was bought by exempting Russian firms from the restrictions. President Putin has announced the Bushehr reactor will come on line with Russia's continued assistance this summer. Russian Parliamentarian Mikhail Margelov, Head of the Federation Council's Foreign Affairs Committee even said the deal will permit deployment of S-300 missile systems to Iran, which the Untied States has worked for years to prevent. All this in addition to canceling NATO missile defense deployments and going silent on the strangulation of freedoms within Russia.

Turkey and Brazil voted against the resolution, Lebanon abstained. A treaty ally of the United States whose territory borders on Iran, and which President Obama visited to showcase his new approach to the so-called muslim world could not be persuaded by the Obama Administration to cast its vote with us.

And the Administration seems to have no strategy for what to do next. Sanctions aren't a strategy, they're a tool for achieving the strategic objective of preventing Iran becoming a nuclear weapons state. We're over-reliant on sanctions to deliver that weighty objective and need to be thinking much more creatively about how to impose costs on the Iranian government -- internationally and domestically -- for their choices.

When pressed to accede to his country being ruled by Macedonia, the Greek statesman Demosthenes refused, saying "I do not purchase regret at such a price." It could be that the Security Council Resolution will do the trick and Tehran will reconsider its current course. But I doubt it. It seems instead that we have purchased regret at the price of re-establishing Russian cooperation with Iran's nuclear and missile programs, demonstrating our inability to deliver both a NATO ally and an increasingly important rising power, and revealing that we have no cards to play except enfeebled sanctions.

The end of the NonProliferation Treaty Review conference provides an opportunity to assess how well President Obama's "Yes, But" strategy is working. My provisional assessment: not as well as I might have hoped.

Recall that Obama's foreign policy efforts of the past 16 months can be summarized as one long effort to neutralize the talking points of countries unwilling to partner more vigorously with the United States on urgent international security priorities (like countering the Iranian regime's nuclear weapons program). 

Despite a determined and focused effort at forging effective multilateralism, the Bush administration enjoyed only mixed success on the thorniest problems. The Obama team came in believing that more could have been achieved if the United States had made more concessions up front to address the talking points of complaints/excuses would-be partners offered as rationalizations for not doing more. Yes, Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon is a problem, but what about Israel's? The Bush administration tended to view these talking points skeptically as a distraction and was not willing to pay much of a price in order to buy a rhetorical marker to offer in rebuttal. By contrast, the Obama Administration embraced them and devoted themselves to buying markers to deploy in response: Yes, but we have gone further than any other U.S. administration effort to publicly delegitimize the nuclear program of our ally Israel, so what about it, why don't you do more to help us on Iran?

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