The point is that even the image of Iran as a nuclear power carries with it very dangerous consequences, including that the Middle East might become a nuclear-armed region. It is not an accident that the British, the French, and the Germans have sought to get the Iranians to stop their nuclear program. Similarly, it is not an accident that two U.N. Security Council resolutions have imposed limited sanctions on Iran to get it to stop its enrichment efforts.
Consider the irony that the sanctions resolutions adopted by the Security Council were not about Iran’s covert nuclear arms program. The Russians, among others, have not believed that the Iranians had one. Instead, the international community in these resolutions was making it clear that it saw Iran’s enrichment program--and its rejection of offers of light water reactors for purely civil nuclear purposes--as indicators that Iran intended to develop a nuclear weapons capability at some point.
While nothing theoretically has changed, the NIE has created a new story line. It framed the issue differently and shifted the attention away from enrichment to the weapons program. Well, if the weapons program has been halted, can’t we relax? Certainly, that is the conclusion that the Chinese are drawing, given their mercantilist approach to Iran and foreign policy in general. They are now saying there is not a need for another sanctions resolution against Iran. The Russians, too, are joining them, no doubt reflecting, at least in part, Putin’s desire to demonstrate in the Middle East and on the international stage that Russia is an alternative to America.