Here’s what I think is going to happen in regards to Iran:  the international community will condemn and point to treaties and international law and there may be some sanctions imposed.  At the end of the day, and amidst  loud complaints the Iranians will eventually develop both nuclear energy and, almost certainly, a nuclear weapon.   And then, like other nuclear powers, they will not use the weapon because they don’t all want to die.¹

The best that we can hope for is that via various diplomatic means that the process can be slowed.

Now, understand:  I am not a proponent of nuclear proliferation and would certainly prefer that Iran not acquire such a device.  However, as I continue to point out:  there is ultimately very little that can be done to stop a state which has sufficient economic means from eventually acquiring the needed technology to produce a nuclear weapon.

The only possible route available for stopping an Iranian nuclear program would be a massive military invasion and occupation.   Sanctions, “crippling” (quotes both because it is a quote and because I think that scare quotes are appropriate) or otherwise, won’t work.  First, it is wholly unclear that there is sufficient international support for such a move.  Second, I can think of no historical example in which sanction worked on this kind of scale.  Third, the likelihood is that sanctions will simply increase Iranian resolve.

Indeed, after writing the above, I noted the following from Jim Walsh of MIT writing at the NYT:

Research on the effect of sanctions is difficult to assess, but some scholars conclude that sanctions work about half the time. They are most effective when applied over a long period of time on small countries that are dependent on the outside world Iran is a big country with oil, and it can build centrifuges faster than the international community can impose sanctions. The Islamic Republic is also a proud country, the kind for which sanctions are as likely to elicit defiance, as they are cooperation. Indeed, the Islamic Republic has been under one kind of sanction or another since its founding 30 years ago. Any objective assessment would have to conclude that sanctions have completely failed to alter Iran’s nuclear policy.

Indeed.

I would also note that being isolated and poor (the goals of sanctions are to isolate and impoverish) does not mean that a state cannot develop nukes (see:  North Korea).

This takes us to war, and that way is madness.  Let us consider a few specific facts.

1)  The US military is already rather heavily vested in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  Where are the resources going to come from for a war against Iran?   Are we going to reinstitute the draft to populate the military?

2)  War in the Persian Gulf would create a dramatic increase in oil prices.  The global economy is currently teetering between recovery and continued recession.  A massive spike in oil prices might very well cause a global depression.²

3)  An invasion of Iran would, no doubt, spark a wave of terrorism from groups like Hezbollah.

Further, there are no guarantees that a) the invasion would be successful (Iran is not Iraq, either in terms of military capacity or geography), and b) that an occupation could be maintained.    And then what happens once the occupation forces leave?  How long before some post-invasion government decides that what it really needs to protect Iran from future invasions is a nuclear weapon?

One of the things that too many people are missing in this debate:  there are reasons other use for the acquisition of said weapons.  Not only are there defensive reasons for wanting such a weapon, but perhaps more importantly, there are prestige reasons for wanting such a weapon.  Can anyone doubt that states with nukes aren’t treated differently than are states without?

1. The same reason, by the way, that the Cuban Missile Crisis ended as it did, and the same reason why there has been no nuclear war between Pakistan and India, and the same reason that the North Koreans haven’t used their nukes, etc. [↩]
2. Correction: I originally wrote “recession,” but meant “depression” [↩]