Bomb, Bomb Iran: Lessons From Iraq Unlearned (Jeremy R. Hammond)

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Dec. 26, 2009 (Foreign Policy Journal) -- In a New York Times op-ed this week that advocates bombing Iran, the author, Alan J. Kuperman, director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin, begins by suggesting that President Barack Obama should “sigh in relief that Iran has rejected his nuclear deal.”

In fact, Iran has said it is still open to discussion with the United States about its nuclear program, but that if meaningful dialogue is to continue, the threats of sanctions and military aggression must first cease.

The United States, however, continues to threaten yet further sanctions, while also insisting that the threat of force must remain “on the table” -- a threat of aggression that itself violates the U.N. Charter, which forbids member nations from threatening the use of force as a tool for leverage in international relations.

Kuperman’s reason for why Obama should be happy is that the deal, under which Iran would export uranium to Russia, which would enrich it to 20 percent (not the 90 percent required for weapons-grade uranium) and return it as fuel rods for use in Tehran’s research reactor, “was ill conceived from the start” since Iran would “thus be rewarded with much-coveted reactor fuel despite violating international law.”

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