(Washington, DC) - Congressman Gary L. Ackerman, chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, delivered the following statement today (4/17/08) on the challenge of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons:

 Within the next two years, there is a real possibility that Iran will have the means to make an atomic bomb. Let me say that again. Within the next two years, there is a real possibility that Iran will have the means to make an atomic bomb.

 The reason for this awful truth is that they wanted it more than we wanted to stop them. They have risked war. We decided to fight the wrong country. They have risked sanctions. We have failed to get the international community to embargo so much as a box of cereal. They have committed the resources needed to create an extensive, hidden and hardened nuclear infrastructure. We can’t even get the Senate to debate measures to toughen our own sanctions laws.

 They are serious and we are not. They will probably have the ability to make an atomic bomb within the next two years and then we will have to deal with it.

 The dynamic at work is no mystery. It is a simple matter of cost / benefit analysis. For the Iranians, the benefits of having the ability to make nuclear weapons are immense. They can deter the United States. They can threaten their neighbors in the region, and even states in Europe. They can contend for hegemony in the Middle East behind a nuclear shield. They can continue their sponsorship of terrorism from a position of unassailable strength. They can intimidate their neighbors in OPEC and toy with the world’s economy. These benefits are huge.

 On the cost side, they have to endure mild and mostly painless sanctions. Worse than that, they must absorb endless self-righteous lectures from European diplomats. And they have to be patient for just a little while longer. That’s it. The benefits are gigantic, the price they pay is puny.

 So why on earth would we expect them to give up on their nuclear ambitions? Looking out from Tehran, they must think we are rather childlike, or stupid.

 Here’s a simple question: If the world’s businesses were forced to choose between access to the United States economy and doing business with Iran, how many would choose Iran? My guess is somewhere between zero and none.

 Another simple question: Why have we not forced that choice on the world’s businesses? Maybe our witnesses from the Administration can answer that one.

 The President has been aware of the threat of Iranian nuclear proliferation from day one of his administration. He has known, and done next to nothing. Future generations of Americans will neither understand, nor forgive this appalling foreign policy failure. To guess wrong is always the risk in making choices. To know the right choice and do nothing is just incompetent.

 Using the Iran Sanctions Act, the Administration has put [Iran-related] sanctions on no one, no where, no time. That means no cost to developing the bomb that will soon yield unthinkable choices.

 In the case of Iraq, a neighboring oil-producing nation, that had a history of state-sponsored terror, and nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11, the Administration was willing to use sanctions, to work with international community to strengthen and sustain those sanctions and, ultimately, to use force to achieve our objectives. To this day, the Administration maintains that its Iraq policy has been worth the lives of over 4,000 American heroes, the dismemberment of 30,000 soldiers’ bodies, and the immiseration of tens of thousands of mourning spouses, mothers, fathers and children, and a cost of more than half a trillion dollars.

 There has been only one beneficiary of this ongoing and tragic disaster. Who else? Iran. But as for Iran’s nuclear aspirations, in truth, we’ve scarcely even begun to fight.

 I don’t want to completely dismiss the work done by the Departments of State and Treasury to convince the world’s banks to stop doing business in Iran. This work was well-done and much appreciated here in Congress. Nevertheless, this effort has to be considered in the context of the overall effort to stop Iran’s nuclear program, and that effort is failing. When Switzerland’s Foreign Minister feels free to stop by Tehran, to throw flowers at the feet of Iran’s lunatic president, and to jostle for position in the photos commemorating a $15 billion dollar oil deal between a Swiss company and Iran, I think we have to admit our policy of constraining and sanctioning Iran doesn’t appear to be on the fast track for success.

 For that matter, the Bush Administration has not only utterly failed to use U.S. sanctions laws against foreign companies investing in Iran’s oil sector, the Administration has actively worked to prevent Congress from making those laws more stringent and more compulsory. Presumably, their logic is that the slow-motion multilateral diplomatic track–that in four and a half years has produced absolutely no change in Iranian behavior–is just to about to make a huge breakthough. I, for one, can’t wait to be surprised by a massive but completely unpredicted success in this policy.

 But the fact is, the multilateral sanctioning effort is moving at a glacial pace. Iran’s enrichment program is in the home stretch and sprinting. We’re moving in inches and they’re advancing in yards. The mullahs are not only ahead in this race, they’re expanding their lead.

 So again, we come back to the reality that within the next two years, there is a real possibility that Iran will have the means to make an atomic bomb.

 So the only question that matters is, what are we going to do between now and then to stop Iran? With so little time, our thinking about this problem needs to change. Options that years ago would have seemed reckless–discussing embargoes and blacklists, and highlighting and emphasizing of our military capabilities–have now become essential leverage if we are going to be successful in peacefully getting Iran to back down. Likewise, continuing doggedly and patiently on the diplomatic path alone, which years ago may have seemed wise, today looks like a roadmap to disaster. With Iranian proliferation on the horizon, what is feckless is in fact reckless. Toothless diplomacy in this case makes military intervention by ourselves, or by others, more, rather than less likely.

 I am not calling for another war. I want to prevent one. But we may have to go right up to very brink if we are going to be considered serious and credible when we call an Iranian nuclear weapon “unacceptable.” President Bush has used this word, unacceptable. Based on policy to date, I’m not really sure he knows what it means.

 Shakespeare’s three witches warned Macbeth that “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Our options for dealing with Iran may be seen in much the same way. What has seemed wise may be foolish, and what has seemed foolish may be wise. Let us hope that we can parse the witches’ warning better than Macbeth. And in the mean time, Iran’s nuclear cauldron continues to boil and bubble. 

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