The Obama administration’s increasingly aggressive sanctions against Iran will likely fail to stop Tehran’s quest for nuclear warheads and may well fail to prevent a pre-emptive attack by Israel on nuclear facilities, U.S. officials and analysts said.
The president signed an executive order Monday placing the most stringent sanctions against Iran’s Central Bank in decades. In a letter to Congress, Obama said the sanctions would allow broad asset freezes of Iran’s finances “in light of the deceptive practices of the Central Bank of Iran and other Iranian banks to conceal transactions. …”
The tighter sanctions, part of the administration’s strategy to find solutions beyond military escalation in the region, follow reports that Israel is preparing to launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran in the upcoming months. Israel has sent increasingly strong signals that its military is prepared to act without U.S. approval in its efforts to halt the Iranian weapons program. The Obama administration has spent much of its time over recent months trying to dissuade Israel from striking Iran, officials told the Washington Examiner.
Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in national security and defense issues, said the sanctions are working. But, he added, “Any success is provisional and inherently subject to change. They can guarantee punishment of Iran for its transgressions, but cannot guarantee keeping it from the bomb.”
Iran maintains that its nuclear program is purely for civilian purposes. A visit to Iran by U.N. inspectors last week was considered a failure by U.S. officials, who noted that the inspectors did not visit any nuclear sites and that Iran did not answer questions related to a November report by the International Atomic Energy Agency suggesting that Iran was working on technology to build nuclear weapons.
Although the recent sanctions have increasingly put pressure on the Iranian regime and its people, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Friday that any attack on Iran would lead to severe damage to the U.S. and Israel. He also pledged to defeat Israel calling the nation, a “cancerous tumor that should be cut and will be cut,” according to the Associated Press.
On Friday Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who was visiting troops in Germany, said the international community must remain “unified in keeping that pressure on, to try to convince Iran that they shouldn’t develop a nuclear weapon, that they should join the international family of nations and that they should operate by the rules that we all operate by,”
“If they don’t, we have all options on the table, and we’ll be prepared to respond if we have to,” Panetta said.
Last week, a Washington Post column by David Ignatius disclosed that Panetta believes Israel will attack Iran in April, May or June. And Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned last week that if the West waits too long to take measures to stop Iran from developing its nuclear weapons program it “may find that later is too late.”
“The world today has no doubt that the Iranian military nuclear program is slowly but surely reaching the final stages, and will enter the immunity stage from which point the Iranian regime will be able to complete the program without any effective intervention and at its convenience.” Barak said in a speech published by the Financial Times. “Dealing with a nuclearized Iran will be far more complex, far more dangerous and far more costly in blood and money than stopping it today.”
O’Hanlon said the leaks regarding an Israeli strike and Barak’s statements are open to at least two interpretations.
Israel may be trying to keep up the pressure on the world, including Iran, to make sanctions work and “reconsider pursuit of weaponization,” he said.
Or Israel is “preparing to act and is giving fair warning — and this is all the warning we will get.”
President Obama said Monday in an interview with NBC’s “Today” show that he doesn’t believe “Israel has made a decision on what they need to do.”
A U.S. official who has worked on Iran issues told The Washington Examiner, “This year is going to be critical for either staving off war with Iran, or seeing dramatic changes in the region if Israel strikes to defend itself.”
He added, “Israel will not hesitate. They certainly have made it clear publicly — whether they act on their words will have a lot to do with how the U.S. handles this delicate situation. They won’t be asking for permission.”
Sara A. Carter is The Washington Examiner’s national security correspondent. She can be reached at [email protected].
