Why Iran can't be contained - Danielle Pletka, Washington Post opinion.

Why Iran can't be contained - Danielle Pletka, Washington Post opinion.

Iran is proceeding with an aggressive nuclear weapons program, and a few dogged holdouts notwithstanding, much of the Obama administration has come to terms with that reality. Official Washington has resigned itself to pursuing a containment policy that some argue will limit Iran's ability to proliferate, terrorize and otherwise exploit being a nuclear power. But it is wrong to think a nuclear Iran can be contained. The containment argument runs along Cold War lines: The price of breakout is too high; the regime cares only about power, not about using weapons; containment will be simple because the Arabs are so scared of Iran they'll do anything to help us; President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad doesn't have his finger on the button. In fact, these arguments are either false or misleading. The Shiite regime in Tehran is far more skilled than its Sunni counterparts in the world of nuclear aspirations and sponsoring terrorists. A careful student of history, it surely realizes that the international community has meted out little punishment to nuclear transgressors. Tehran probably sees itself more in the mold of India, a great power whose nuclear weapons are acknowledged and now accepted, than of North Korea, a lunocracy without serious global aspirations or influence. Those Iranian officials who advocate withdrawal from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty do so not because they see Iran becoming the Shiite hermit kingdom but because they think Persia no longer needs to be constrained by status-quo powers and their status-quo treaties.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/14/AR2009121402713.html