You Don’t Have to Be a Harvard Think Tank

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In a significant paper at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Jeffrey White and Loring White discuss the results of war games on the Iranian nuclear program conducted by three think tanks — at Harvard, Tel Aviv University, and the Brookings Institute — all of which ended in defeats for the U.S. and Israel. The common results were:

• The United States did not obtain meaningful cooperation from other countries.
• Sanctions did not seem to work.
• The United States was unwilling to use military force or support Israeli military action even after other measures failed.
• U.S.-Israeli relations deteriorated dramatically.
• Iran continued toward a nuclear weapons capability.

The paper concludes that the U.S. needs to “play” much differently in the coming months if it wants to avoid those results, and time “is running out.”

The signals sent by the State Department since the expiration of Obama’s “deadline” have only reinforced the sense that the administration has no Plan B. On January 12, the department spokesman emphasized that recourse to the “pressure track” would be “a very long process,” starting with discussions of “ideas that any of the [P-5+1] partners have on how we can get Iran to live up its international obligations.”

The “discussions” have largely been phone calls, since the administration cannot get the Chinese to send their political director to a meeting...

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