Abstract
President Barack Obama's choice of toughened sanctions as the means to prevent Iran achieving nuclear weapons status is discussed. It is argued that that choice is explained less by any belief in their likely effectiveness than by the unattractive and risky nature of the alternatives. The use of force would not eliminate Iran's nuclear programme and risks pitching the region into even deeper turmoil; the ‘Grand Bargain’ with Iran advocated by others would alienate allies and domestic interests and undermine the administration's wider objectives in the Middle East. The attraction of sanctions, in contrast, is that though unlikely to work they pose little threat to US interests while allowing the Obama administration to stave off demands to adopt high risk alternatives and creating a breathing space for the administration to consider the future evolution of its Iran policy.
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Notes
An Additional Protocol provides the IAEA with more information on a state's nuclear programme and increased rights of access for inspectors.
Iran wants the fuel rods for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) which they use to produce isotopes for medical research.
Although it is beyond the scope of this article to provide a detailed comparison, the failure of US and UN sanctions to prevent North Korea's development of nuclear weapons reinforces the argument being made here (Frank, 2006; Kim and Chang, 2007; Noland, 2009).
The study has been through three editions, with further case studies added in the second and third editions, but the claimed one-third success rate has remained consistent in each volume.
Kimberley Ann Elliott responded to Pape's critique but, if anything, her attempt to defend the conclusions of HSE only serves to reinforce Pape's claims. Her response rested primarily on the claim that HSE's criteria were whether sanctions make military force more effective, rather than whether they were a viable alternative to force. As Pape pointed out, that was not in fact what was originally claimed in HSE and if it had been it would have amounted to quitting of the field of combat before it started, since the fundamental basis upon which sanctions have been advocated is precisely as a viable alternative to the use of force (Elliott, 1998; Pape, 1998).
The United States is viewed by the Iranian government as an inherently hostile state bent on toppling the Iranian republic. Nor is this reasoning without foundation given the American role in the 1953 coup in Iran, its rejection of the Islamic Revolution, aiding of Saddam Hussein's regime during the Iran-Iraq War, the shooting down of an Iranian Airbus in 1988, 30 years of sanctions and more or less veiled threats to invade or attack by the George W. Bush administration. American support for the overthrow of Colonel Gadaffi in 2011 has also confirmed that abandoning a nuclear programme will not stop the United States from supporting regime change.
A policy of containment, which is advocated by some, obviously implies an acceptance that Iran will develop nuclear weapons.
The GCC states are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
It is not the only tool, however. The United States is also engaged in a campaign of espionage designed to slow the Iranian nuclear programme. The Stuxnet virus that infected Iranian centrifuges in 2010 was almost certainly a product of that effort (Broad et al, 2011). Whether the Obama administration has had anything to do with the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists (Dehghan, 2011), however, is unknown.
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I would like to thank the participants at the American Politics Group conference in Oxford, January 2011 and the anonymous referees for the journal for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.
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Hurst, S. Obama and Iran. Int Polit 49, 545–567 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2012.20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2012.20