Panel warns of looming nuclear crisis with Iran

The United States has reached a dead end in its nuclear talks with Iran, Sir John Thomson said yesterday in Dodds Auditorium. Only two options remain, and both lead to disaster. The United States can forcefully stop Iran from manufacturing nuclear weapons, or America can cede nuclear decisions to Iran.

Thomson, the former UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations, was one of four panelists who spoke at a roundtable discussion titled "Iran: A Looming Crisis with Possible Solutions?"

He told the audience that Western policy, while justifiable, has begun to lose momentum.

"It seems logical to ask for whatever we like," Thomson said. "But there does come a point when you really have to assess whether you're going to get it or not. In general, the more we've gone on with a particular policy, the more we've continued to not get the Iranians to accept the policy."

Thomson said that economic sanctions and other pressures placed on Iran "are not very juicy"; in other words, they are not sufficiently severe to cause Iran to change course.

Gabrielle Rifkind, a security analyst with the Oxford Research Group, called the United States self-centered and recommended that it focus on the interests of other countries as well.

"People are ultimately self-seeking," she said. "Now, it's time to think of mutual self-interest. The West has thought that we can set the agenda in terms of negotiations. As far as the Iranians are concerned, they want to talk unconditionally. Instead of taking a position of trying to isolate [Iran], and give her the 'spoiler' role, what if some of her concerns were addressed?"

Rifkin supports compromising with Iran by either placing a cap on the number of Iran's centrifuges, which would increase the time necessary to make a bomb, or by creating an agreement where Iran can no longer keep stores of radioactive materials that could produce a bomb.

Thomson agreed with Rifkin's idea of compromise. He said, however, that President Bush has already clearly defined the three resources that Iran cannot have: a nuclear bomb, machinery to make a nuclear bomb and the technology that allows them to make the machinery.

"The last two things mentioned are ridiculous because the Iranians already have the machinery," Thomson said. "The Pakistanis who provided [the machinery] made them work and produced a bomb. The Iranians can do the same, and I don't know of a single expert who thinks that they will not do it."

Another panelist, James Gow, co-director of the International Peace and Security Programme at King's College, compared the tensions between the United States and Iran to two trains heading toward each other along the same track. He said that he had anticipated "the crash" to occur last summer, but now he anticipates it within the next 15 months.