Keeping focused

While Iran’s defenders are pooh-poohing the charge that Iran’s Quds force backed a plot to murder the Saudi ambassador to the United States, its detractors see escalation in the covert war with the United States.

Certainly if the charges are true, it is hard not to see the plot as escalation.  But it is important to remember that there are at least two, if not more, belligerents in the covert war.  Murder of Iranian nuclear scientists, the Stuxnet virus that seems to have slowed the nuclear program, U.S. capture of Iranians who claim diplomatic immunity working inside Iraq, and support to ethnic rebellions inside Iran all indicate that paranoid Iran really does have enemies.

It is important now for Washington to show some cards.  The alleged plot supposedly involved Iranian hiring of Mexican drug cartels to carry out the dirty work.  A cooperating alleged perpetrator seems to have identified Quds force operatives and arranged financial transfers from them.  Putting at least some of the evidence into the public domain would go a long way to removing skepticism, which is rife even among those who are no friends of Iran.

This development comes at an awkward moment.  Iranian President Ahmedinejad has been flashing an offer that some American analysts would like to take up, if only to call his bluff:

[Ahmedinejad] has stated on a number of occasions that his country will cease domestic efforts to manufacture fuel for one of its nuclear reactors if it is able to purchase the fuel from abroad. The United States should accept this proposal — publicly, immediately and unconditionally.

That seems highly unlikely at first blush: how do American diplomats make nice with Ahmedinejad while announcing to the world that Iran’s security forces have been plotting murder, even mass atrocity if one version of the alleged plot had taken place, inside the United States?  But it is precisely at a moment like this–when Iran is going to find itself weakened and isolated–that the international pressure might be sufficient to force progress on the nuclear issue, with the added potential benefit of further fragmenting a regime whose president and “supreme leader” are already on the outs.  Maybe taking up the offer privately, cautiously and conditionally would work too.

Preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons is a vital American interest, all the more so if the regime there is prepared to contemplate mass atrocity on American soil.  We need to not lose sight of that objective while holding Iran accountable for whatever role it had in the alleged plot to murder the Saudi ambassador.  Focusing on two objectives at once is not easy, but nonetheless necessary.