Very interesting recap, thanks again, Rith.
Not surprisingly given his background, the speaker talked a quite a bit about the "military option." There's at least one major problem with this thinking: America has no credible military options regarding Iran at this time, and Iran knows it. That means that "keeping it on the table" -- as in, talking about it -- will simply irritate rather than put real pressure on anyone.
To elaborate: the American public isn't in the mood for another ground war, and the military -- especially the Army and Marines -- are already fully committed, if not over-committed, between Iraq and Afghanistan. The American surface fleet is extremely vulnerable in tight waters like the Persian Gulf. That means that the only thing America could do is an air campaign -- and given that Iran's nuclear program is dispersed, hidden, and hardened, this would be at most a temporary setback to it. And, of course, Iran would make the USA pay a very high price for it on all fronts. It's also virtually certain that such an attack would cause the Iranians to drop their differences and rally around the flag; hoping for a spontaneous uprising and revolution is a pipe dream.
So, until these things change, the USA simply does not *have* a military option vis a vis Iran, which makes "keeping it on the table" rather pointless IMO.
Second, I believe the odds of being able to successfully deter Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon are low, and until the structural reasons that make them want it change, they're as good as nil. They want the bomb because Israel has the bomb, and they perceive (rightly, IMO) that of all the nuclear countries in the world, Israel has the itchiest trigger finger. From the Iranian POV, nuclear weapons are a deterrent against a first strike by Israel.
That means that if we want Iran to give up the bomb, we must somehow get them to believe that Israel will never use theirs against it, even if they have no retaliatory capacity of their own. I have no idea how we could do that, but it certainly can't be done without resolving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict -- and quite likely not even then.
A possible alternative is that Iran is given explicit security guarantees against an Israeli nuclear strike by a third country. For example, if Russia gave credible guarantees that it will retaliate with a nuclear strike against Israel should Israel make a nuclear strike against Iran, the picture might look rather different. However, I don't think this is realistic, and even if it was, the Iranian paranoia about foreign interference make it less than certain to succeed.
So, in my opinion:
(1) Yes, we should most definitely continue to use all diplomatic avenues to pressure, bribe, cajole, or trick Iran to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions. I think the odds of this succeeding are fairly slim, though.
(2) No, I don't think there's any point keeping the "military option" on the table, for the simple reason that there isn't one available right now.
(3) I believe our best remaining option is to make it as costly as possible for Iran to actually test a nuclear weapon -- which is something they cannot do in secret. This, I believe, is an achievable objective. (Of course, it's impossible to get to the final stage of having a deployable weapon without testing a proof-of-concept device first.)
First, we should integrate the Iranian economy with the global economy as deeply as possible, and engage with the Iranian government as broadly as feasible. Iran should receive immediate and tangible benefits from this engagement. The less they have to lose, the less leverage we have, so we must give them something to lose. This is why North Korea is such a PITA -- they don't WANT to engage with anyone, which means they can do whatever the hell they want, and there's not a whole lot we can do to pressure them to do otherwise. The huge difference is that Iran WANTS to engage with the world. This is something we have totally failed to exploit, and should.
Second, we make it absolutely clear that if they ever test a nuclear weapon, all these benefits will be immediately taken away, and the country will be put under sanctions every bit as tight as North Korea's.
Third, we should work as hard as possible to defuse the tensions motivating Iran to pursue a nuclear weapons program, and to build confidence with it, in the hopes of getting it to deprioritise it, and then allow better and more stringent inspections. If we're successful, by the time Iran does have nuclear capability, it won't be much more dangerous than France's.
And fourth, we should prepare for the eventuality where, despite our best efforts, Iran does get a nuclear weapon. That won't be the end of the world. When it comes to nukes, two are better than one: the only use of atomic bombs in anger happened when one country had the global monopoly on them. Israel has had nuclear weapons for a quite a while now, it's in a very bad neighborhood, and it hasn't used them. Nuclear parity between Israel and Iran would have a deterrent effect, and therefore Iranian nukes might not spell the end of the world after all.
