The Obama Administration is preparing a package of sanctions against Iran just in case:
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Obama administration is working on a substantial sanctions package against Iran in case current diplomatic efforts to curb its nuclear program fail, top officials told Congress on Tuesday.
Under Secretary of the Treasury Stuart Levy, who developed some of the existing financial sanctions against Iran under the Bush administration, said at a Senate Banking Committee hearing that the “comprehensive” plan would target “key vulnerabilities and fissures” in Iran to show Tehran that it would face “serious costs” for thwarting international demands.
“It takes into account that no single sanction is a ‘silver bullet’; we will need to impose measures simultaneously in many different forms in order to be effective,” Levy said.
He stressed, however, that the United States would be mindful of actions that would harm the Iranian people or undercut the opposition battling the Iranian government.
At this point I’m pretty skeptical that any package of inducements (the approach favored by the Russians), sanctions regime, or even military action at a scale that’s politically acceptable in the United States will prevent Iran from producing a nuclear weapon, an eventuality that both Presidents Bush and Obama have characterized as “unacceptable”. I’ll confess that I haven’t posted as much about this as the situation warrants, in all likelihood because I’m suffering from Iran fatigue—I’ve posted so much about Iran over the period of the last five years that I just don’t have the heart to post.
So, I’ll throw the question open to the OTB commentariat. What should we do about Iran? Please state what you see as the desired outcome, the approach you would advocate to produce that outcome, and how political support for your desired approach can be built.
