Iran: Zero Margin for Error

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

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Why all the hand-wringing over the latest National Intelligence Estimate on the status Iran’s of nuclear weapons program? The response to the report, both in the press and in diplomatic circles, has been almost gleeful in its interpretation of it as a national mea culpa. Oops, America got it wrong again. The Iranian nuclear program is nothing to worry about.

Has anyone actually read the report? Because, in fact, if the report is clear about one thing it is that sustained diplomatic and economic pressure, including the credible threat of military action, has been, and remains to be, essential to preventing Iran from developing the bomb. In other words, our current policy is working and it would be dangerous to let Iran off the hook.

Specifically, according to the report:

• “Until fall 2003, Iranian military entities were working under government direction to develop nuclear weapons;

• “Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure;

• “Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so;

• “Convincing the Iranian leadership to forgo the eventual development of nuclear weapons will be difficult given the linkage many within the leadership probably see between nuclear weapons development and Iran’s key national security and foreign policy objectives, and given Iran’s considerable effort from at least the late 1980s to 2003 to develop such weapons; and

• We “do not have sufficient intelligence to judge confidently whether or not Tehran is willing to maintain the halt of its nuclear weapons program indefinitely while it weighs its options, or whether or not it will or already has set specific deadlines or criteria that will prompt it to restart the program.”

So, Iran’s nuclear program was directed toward developing a nuclear weapon until international pressure, led by America, caused Iran to back off building a bomb, but not back off its overall nuclear program.

Indeed, Iran’s ongoing nuclear program continues to grow Iran’s technical ability to develop a bomb in the future — a goal which would be difficult for the Iranian leadership to abandon given Iran’s self-defined national security and foreign policy objectives and its long investment in developing nuclear weapons.

Here in the center of the terrorists’ bull’s-eye, the debate over Iran’s nuclear weapons program is not an academic one, nor a diplomatic parlor game.

Sitting on the Assembly committee with jurisdiction over homeland security in New York state, I am privileged to see how extraordinarily devoted our law enforcement and emergency preparedness agencies are to preventing the next terrorist attack and planning for the possibility that prevention may not always succeed.

Our state, city, and federal governments are coordinating like never before, and both Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Spitzer have stocked our homeland security related agencies with the best and the brightest. When my constituents in my corner of Queens ask me if New York is doing everything it can to keep us safe, I confidently report that yes, we are.

But I also see how utterly small and futile all our efforts are when the contemplated terrorist attack is not a potentially hijacked airplane, or a backpack laden with explosives, or an isolated release of chemical weapons, but is instead a nuclear weapon smuggled in the bowels of a cargo ship, or the luggage compartment on an airplane.

Here, in New York City, therefore, we view the margin for error in getting it wrong on Iran’s nuclear program as zero. Here, in New York City, the old saying that all politics are local includes all foreign policy as well.

Given Iran’s long efforts to develop the bomb, its standing down only in the face of sustained international pressure, its continued expansion of its technical ability to build a bomb if it chooses to do so, the likelihood that at some point in the future it will choose to pull the on switch for its weapons program, and the aggressive anti-Western posture of the Iranian regime would be contrary to the report’s conclusions.

If this National Intelligence Estimate were used as a justification for letting up one inch on the pressure against Iran’s nuclear ambitions, it would be incredibly tragic.

Mr. Lancman is an assemblyman of the 25th District in Queens.


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