CIAO DATE: 08/2012
May 2012
Center for Strategic and International Studies
As the world works to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, there is widespread agreement on what failure looks like. It is an Iranian bomb—or, more likely, a number of Iranian bombs—that emboldens the Iranian government, threatens the Middle East, and prompts many of Iran’s neighbors to develop their own weapons, thereby raising tensions in the most energy-rich part of the world. It is harder, though, to define success. For some, success can come only when the Iranian nuclear problem is “solved.” That is to say, success is when the government of Iran convincingly renounces any effort to develop nuclear weapons, opens all of its nuclear facilities to international inspection, and reveals the sources for its technology and materials. Anything short of that, they argue, represents an intermediate step in the “failure” category, and failure happens every day until success is achieved.
Resource link: Gulf Kaleidoscope: Reflections on the Iranian Challenge [PDF] - 1.7M