Why Iran seeks nuclear weapons

The model Iran may follow is China, which pursues a policy best described by Jeffrey Lewis and others as "minimum deterrence." Apart from fielding the largest army in the world, China maintains perhaps 200 nuclear weapons and declares a no-first-use policy. China enjoys a level of respect and consideration Iran's leaders have never enjoyed, but to which they logically aspire.

Let’s go back to the box in which Iran’s policymakers have placed themselves. After at least two decades, Iran got caught, publicly, in 2002, and had to submit to inspections of items never declared to the IAEA. Libya renounced its nuclear program around the same time. If you’re the Supreme Leader in Iran, what do you do? You pretend to co-operate with inspectors, work your Non-Aligned Movement allies in the UN system and slow-roll the slow-response mechanisms of the UN - all the while not compromising the strategic decision made decades ago. This is predictable, not radical behaviour. Iran can always hang opposition to its actions from the US and others on outsiders and “Zionist tendencies,” and pin IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei’s technical statements on the fact that he’s an Egyptian, and therefore suspect. (Nobel Peace Prize winner ElBaradei must have the patience of Job.)

So what’s to be done? The only way out of this mess is more of the same: call a high-level Middle East peace conference; think creatively about the kind of no-first-use nuclear policies that have served China well; include Israel while protecting its strategic interests; find ways to guarantee Israeli and Iranian borders; and, most important, focus on nuclear issues before it's too late.

No one can doubt the commitment of the US to Israel’s security, nor should anyone question the value of a prospective region-wide commitment to security behind currently-agreed borders. Israel might even rethink its own nuclear posture in light of such developments.

Iran would likely participate in any regional conference devoted to Middle East peace. Such a meeting would mark its undeniable influence in the region and perhaps mitigate the toxic relations existing with the US since 1979. It might just reduce the nuclear impulses that Iran cultivates as a counteraction to US and Israeli military power, as well as those they may harbor in a long-range analysis of a nuclear Turkey or Saudi Arabia. Why not? Absent an acceptable, overarching alternative, accepting Iran’s ambiguous nuclear power may all we’re left with.