The Intelligencer

There are few scenarios more chilling than the notion of an aggressive, radical Islamic regime getting its hands on nuclear weapons. Iran boasts it is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, which the regime very well may use as blackmail to control the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf — or do far worse.

Merely jawboning the Iranians seems unlikely to work any better in the coming critical weeks and months than it has up to this point, which is to say not at all. What can the United States and its allies do about the situation?

Military action should not be ruled out. A series of well-placed strikes could deliver a serious, long-term setback to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But other pressures should be applied first, particularly measures that would hurt Iran’s leadership rather than the Iranian people.

Sanctions against international travel by Iranian officials would be a good start, along with freezing government assets abroad and imposing other narrowly focused sanctions. More generalized economic sanctions could be incrementally imposed, combined with aggressive public diplomacy to ensure that the Iranian people know the problem is their government, not them. Such measures would require the cooperation of America’s European allies.

These admittedly would be last-ditch efforts to avoid an act of war against Iran. If efforts to stop Iran from fulfilling its nuclear ambitions fail, then the civilized world will have a choice to make: Risk military action, or await the day when Iran’s mullahs (or whomever might gain control of the country’s nukes following a coup) unleash a nuclear weapon.

Unfortunately, there are no good alternatives.