The “time has come” for the world to condemn Iran’s nuclear program, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a taped interview with Al Jazeera English. …. “We have spent time listening and working hard to create this common ground and these common interests, and we’ve done it out of a sense of mutual respect,” she said. …”But we do feel like at a certain point, the international community must speak with one voice, and we think that time has come with respect to Iran’s nuclear program.”
The wind is shifting on Iran — first Secretary Gates said that sanctions were coming, now Clinton says something vaguely resembling the tough talk she used to serve up on the campaign trail. J Street pops a statement endorsing sanctions on Iran and all of a sudden the administration springs into action! (Actually the administration was about to spring into action and J Street at least had the good sense to adopt an ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ approach to the issue.) Will sanctions work? Maybe, and there aren’t a lot of other palatable options, but what remains of the anti-sanctions coalition is making its last stand, and Laura Rozen perfectly channels their argument:
But the administration should take care to keep its eye on the goal as it turns to the pressure route, participants in a recent Harvard Iran simulation caution. As the simulation played out, Washington focused so aggressively on the effort to get a new round of international sanctions, while Congress pushed for unilateral sanctions that would target foreign countries’ companies doing business in Iran, that it drove two Security Council members to make side deals with Iran, and the international alliance quickly unravelled. Iran, which hadn’t paid too much attention to the flurry of western energy spent on getting sanctions, ended up “winning” what began with it holding the seemingly far weaker and more isolated hand.
Just fyi — Stephen Walt played Secretary Gates in that war game, and coincidentally, the U.S. almost ended up in a war against Israel rather than joining Israel in a strike against Iran. I understand they tried to get Chas Freeman to play Obama, and Rev. Wright to play Secretary Clinton, but those two were unavailable on such short notice.
