Following years of frustrated talks, flaccid declarations, and conspicuously ineffective sanctions, the Bush administration seems to have recognized that all is not right with its Iran policy. But observers may reasonably doubt whether administration’s answer – more sanctions – is likely to strike terror in Tehran. .... There’s one problem with the new sanctions: they aren’t at all new. .... What is surely beyond dispute is that the Bush administration’s reliance on diplomacy backed by sanctions stands little chance of succeeding. In its unblushing defiance of the international community and its not-so-clandestine operations in Iraq, Iran has signaled that it won’t be deterred by anything so routine as sanctions. That means that the next administration will have to come up with a more realistic means of containing the Iranian threat. The irony is that, for all the caricatures of the “warmongering” Bush administration, its legacy may be to show that, at least where Iran is concerned, traditional diplomacy is not the answer.
Diplomacys Dead End
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- Written by RC_Anderson
Following years of frustrated talks, flaccid declarations, and conspicuously ineffective sanctions, the Bush administration seems to have recognized that all is not right with its Iran policy. But observers may reasonably doubt whether administration’s answer – more sanctions – is likely to strike terror in Tehran. .... There’s one problem with the new sanctions: they aren’t at all new. .... What is surely beyond dispute is that the Bush administration’s reliance on diplomacy backed by sanctions stands little chance of succeeding. In its unblushing defiance of the international community and its not-so-clandestine operations in Iraq, Iran has signaled that it won’t be deterred by anything so routine as sanctions. That means that the next administration will have to come up with a more realistic means of containing the Iranian threat. The irony is that, for all the caricatures of the “warmongering” Bush administration, its legacy may be to show that, at least where Iran is concerned, traditional diplomacy is not the answer.
