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Iran refuses to blink

With Iran refusing to meet a gun-to-its-head `deadline' to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, the debate over sanctions is virtually guaranteed to flare up again in the United Nations Security Council. The United States, the United Kingdom, and France are pressing other members of the Council to pass a resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which covers threats to peace, breaches of peace, and acts of aggression. Such a resolution is expected to provide a figleaf of legality to the George Bush-led move to resort to sanctions or even military action against an Iran that seems determined to stand up to intimidation and pressure. The U.S. President's recent clarification that his administration remains committed to the diplomatic option provides some relief to a world that is fed up with his reckless unilateralism in disregard for international norms and law. Since Russia and China are apparently in no mood to support stringent measures, a Security Council resolution imposing sanctions appears unlikely. However, Washington has signalled that it can operate outside the ambit of the U.N. and ask allies and fellow-travellers to consider punitive economic measures. The other side of the story is that the theocratic regime in Teheran has done little to help its own cause, especially in recent weeks. While President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent statements have been unnecessarily provocative, Supreme Religious Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei added fuel to fire by offering nuclear know-how to Sudan.

A few weeks ago, The New Yorker and The Washington Post published reports to the effect that the Bush administration was contemplating military action against Iran. Seymour Hersh, a respected investigative journalist, wrote that military planners were not ruling out recourse to tactical nuclear weapons. According to these reports, the attacks were not likely to be confined to the Isfahan uranium conversion plant or the Natanz enrichment facility. The Bush administration was apparently thinking of a broad-based air campaign against Iran's conventional military forces as well, with some officials taking the view that the action could lead to a regime change. The Ahmadinejad regime, it was speculated, would have no choice but to quit. Sober analysts, of course, did not fail to draw attention to the explosive consequences of military action: Iran could instigate Shia militias in Iraq to join the insurgency; send its own troops across its western borders to attack the bogged-down U.S. military forces; reactivate Hizbollah's rocket warfare against Israel; attack shipping in the Straits of Hormuz; or, as the last resort, launch long-range missiles against Israel. Mr. Bush's denial of the reports aside, there are reasons to believe that a military strike is unlikely. Washington's military, and Mr. Bush's political, resources are so stretched by Iraq that the opening of a second battlefront will be akratic in the extreme.

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