The Hill News

It has become increasingly fashionable in Jerusalem and Washington to advocate a military strike on Iran. Central to the case for war is the argument that a nuclear-armed Iran, unlike the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War or North Korea today, would be impossible to contain, and therefore attacking Iran is the “least bad option” to prevent an intolerable threat. Ehud Barak, Israel’s Minister of Defense, told an audience at the annual Herzliya security conference in early February that military action may soon be needed because “dealing with a nuclearized Iran will be far more complex, far more dangerous and far more costly in blood and money than stopping it today.”

Echoing this theme, former Bush administration official and current Mitt Romney adviser John Bolton recently called for an immediate bombing campaign on the grounds that attempting to contain Iran was futile. “The mullahs,” Bolton asserted, “do not buy our theories of dete! rrence.” And last Thursday, on Capitol Hill, 32 senators introduced a resolution urging President Obama to “oppose any policy that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat.” Explaining the rationale, Senator Joe Lieberman said: “We . . . want to say clearly and resolutely to Iran: You have only two choicesâ€"peacefully negotiate to end your nuclear weapons program or expect a military strike to end that program.”
 
Yet, paradoxically, the most likely road to containment is the very course war proponents advocate: a near-term preventive strike on Iran's nuclear program.

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