How to deal with Iran

"Three of the most pressing national security issues facing the Obama administration—nuclear proliferation, the war in Iraq, and the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan—have one element in common: Iran," write William Luers, Thomas Pickering and Jim Walsh in the New York Review of Books.

"The Islamic Republic has made startling progress over the past few years in its nuclear program... Setting aside recent, misleading reports that Iran already has enough nuclear fuel to build a weapon, the reality is that Tehran now has five thousand centrifuges for enriching uranium and is steadily moving toward achieving the capability to build nuclear bombs.  Having the capacity to build a nuclear weapon is not the same thing as having one, and having a large stock of low-enriched uranium is not the same as having the highly enriched uranium necessary for a bomb. But the Obama administration cannot postpone dealing with the nuclear situation in Iran, as President Bush did."

(An abbreviated version of this article appears in today's International Herald Tribune.  The authors' work in Iran has been supported by Ploughshares Fund.)