Does Obama Finally Have the Wind at His Back on Iran?

The first 18 months of President Obama's efforts to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb verged on the disastrous.

Though the media sought mostly to insulate Obama from tough criticism, even the Washington Post couldn't sugarcoat the June 2009 sanctions vote that, despite the weakness of the sanctions themselves, could not even get the entire U.N. Security Council on board.

Post reporter Glen Kessler's first paragraph asked: "How could an administration that first tried reaching out to Iran and then spent months working with its allies end up with less international unity than when George W. Bush was president?"

It was a good question. The administration played the juvenile game of deriding Bush's phantom "unilateralism" and "cowboy diplomacy," assuming it would get more cooperation from our allies if Obama showed the faux-humility of criticizing his own country while offering unprecedented concessions to those sworn to our destruction.

He was wrong, and his record in international affairs paled in comparison to that of Bush—who had always received unanimous votes for sanctions at the Security Council, extended U.S. influence in Asia, increased our ties with Western Europe and the Eastern European countries in Russia's near-abroad, solidified our relationship with Israel, increased both economic and anti-terrorism cooperation with Colombia, took a stand against the U.N. human rights commission's deceit and corruption, and kept the U.S. safe at home while keeping our enemies on the run from their own turf.

Cue the reports out of Jerusalem and Foggy Bottom this week, leading to Jeffrey Goldberg, one of the most influential Mideast journalists on the planet, saying the following about Obama: "He did the difficult work of pulling together serious multilateral sanctions against Iran; he has convinced the Israelis—at least he has partially convinced some Israelis—that he has placed the prestige of his presidency behind this effort, and that he sincerely and deeply understands why it is in no one's interest to see Iran with a bomb, and he has supported, in ways that I only know the most general way, some very hard-edged counterproliferation programs, programs whose existence proves, among other things, that he is capable of real and decisive toughness."

The occasion for such praise? The announcement by outgoing Mossad chief Meir Dagan that Iran was probably four years away from getting nuclear capability. This "revised" estimate was seen as producing some breathing space for Western governments hoping for some more time to stop the program through diplomatic measures or sabotage before having to decide whether to use force.

Both those techniques—sanctions and sabotage—seem to be working, buying some much-needed time. How the sanctions are doing so is less clear than the sabotage. The Stuxnet virus seems to be—based on the reactions to it by top programmers and techstars—the most complex and sophisticated computer worm ever discovered. Without going into the nitty-gritty, here's a basic explanation of what it does, from The Weekly Standard's Jonathan V. Last: "A computer worm is distinct from a virus. A virus is a piece of code which attaches itself to other programs. A worm is a program by itself, which exists on its own within a computer. A good (meaning really bad) worm must do several things quite subtly: It must find its way onto the first machine by stealth. While a resident, it must remain concealed. Then it must have another stealthy method of propagating to other computers. And finally, it must have a purpose. Stuxnet achieved all of these goals with astounding elegance."

And it wreaked slow but steady havoc on its target: the centrifuge system at Natanz. Last explains that Stuxnet made changes to the speed of the equipment in such a way as to ensure the machinery wears out quickly and corrupts the uranium being enriched, all the while sending back signals that everything was working perfectly.

We don't know who was behind Stuxnet, but it has been a tremendous gift to the West thus far. But is 2015 really a date in which we can be confident? At Commentary magazine's Web site, Evelyn Gordon notes that Dagan vehemently opposes an attack on Iran's nuclear sites, and that we should be mindful of that when reading his assessment. It's not that Dagan isn't a complete professional, Gordon writes, but he is human.

"Nobody is suggesting that Dagan deliberately falsified the evidence to reach this conclusion," Gordon writes. "But when intelligence is evaluated with a particular desired outcome in mind, it is human nature to magnify the importance of information that supports this outcome and downplay the importance of information that contradicts it."

Elliot Abrams, current senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and former deputy national security adviser for the Middle East in the Bush administration, introduces another wrinkle into the situation by pointing out that before the new date of 2015, Iran will have another presidential and parliamentary election, in 2013, and that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei may not still be in power then.

"Rumors of Khamenei's poor health have circulated for years," Abrams writes at the CFR Web site. "Moreover, increasing sanctions may damage the Iranian economy in ways that create additional political tension. So with a four-year time line, the notion that this regime may become unstable or even fall becomes thinkable, as does the notion that faced with doom the regime might be willing to compromise its nuclear program away to concentrate on survival."

The key, Abrams writes, is pressure. Increase sanctions and support dissident movements within Iran's political structure. Its leadership must be considered as a cracked windshield—with just the slightest bit of pressure, that crack slowly increases until the windshield shatters.

For now, though, Obama finally has the momentum going his way.

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Does Obama Finally Have the Wind at His Back on Iran?

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