| Pollack Says Containment, Not Bombing, Best Fallback Plan |
| Written by Lloyd Chebaclo | |
| Wednesday, 14 October 2009 | |
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Washington, DC - Deeply skeptical about the prospects for progress in US-Iran relations with the current Iranian government, Kenneth Pollack said last Wednesday the Obama administration would do better to "contain [Iran] until it works out its own problems and - like the Soviet Union - changes into something where we can have a better relationship." At the Columbus School of Law, Pollack, Director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at The Brookings Institution, said he supports the Obama administration's policy of engagement with Iran, noting that he was an early proponent of a "carrot and stick" approach. However, he now has little faith that the current Iranian government will be able to produce a working compromise. Formerly, according to Pollack, reformist and moderate voices were tolerated within the Iranian political discourse, whereas they are now largely silenced by hardliners. The current Iranian government is acting only to ensure its political survival, Pollack said, as both its longevity and its legitimacy have been called into question in the wake of the June 12 elections. Pollack reiterated the need for the US to prepare for the day when Iran reaches the nuclear threshold, and to understand the implications of it crossing that threshold. Iran is a rational actor, he said, but an Iran with nuclear weapons would be emboldened in its regional decision-making and would likely cause the Persian Gulf states to pursue their own nuclear programs. Pollack said he supports efforts to engage Iran and believes that the US should give Iran every chance to engage with the US in good faith, but he maintains his skepticism about the current government's willingness to make amends with the US. Thus his "suspicions are that engagement will go nowhere, that even sanctions will prove meaningless." Should his prediction prove correct, he argued, the Obama administration's fallback plan should be a policy of containment; not military aggression. In spite of the progress made at the Geneva talks, Pollack was not optimistic about negotiations going forward with the current Iranian government. Iran and Western leaders are set to meet once again on Oct. 19 and 20 to follow up on the Geneva talks; according to Pollack, unless Iran acts swiftly to live up to its promises, the negotiations will begin to unravel. |
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