Soft approach to Iran won't work

Hanging over this past week's meeting between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was one overriding question: Can the president's strategy of diplomatic engagement persuade Iran to cease its efforts to develop nuclear weapons? Unfortunately, history offers little cause for hope — especially if the United States remains focused on trying to reassure Iran of America's benign intentions. Successful denuclearization of hostile states is most likely to occur as a result of regime change, coercive diplomacy or military action, not U.S. pledges of mutual respect.

Consider: South Africa surrendered its nuclear arsenal in 1990 only after the apartheid regime began unraveling. Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine abandoned nuclear weapons after they emerged as independent states in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse. In the 1980s, the decisions by Brazil and Argentina to end nuclear weapons programs were linked to their transitions from military dictatorships to liberal democracies.

Cases of successful nuclear reversal in the Middle East underscore the importance of coercion. In December 2003, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi accepted an American offer of rapprochement in exchange for giving up his nuclear weapons infrastructure — after U.S. troops had provided him with the compelling example of deposing and capturing Gadhafi's fellow Arab dictator Saddam Hussein.

Stopping Saddam's own nuclear ambitions required even more extreme measures. In 1981, Israeli jets destroyed Iraq's Osirak reactor just before it began producing plutonium for nuclear weapons. Ten years later, U.S. success in the Persian Gulf War led to the dismantling of Saddam's crash program to enrich uranium for an atomic bomb.

Military force also proved necessary against Syria's rogue nuclear activities. In September 2007, Israeli planes bombed a nearly completed reactor that Damascus had been secretly building with North Korean assistance.

As for Iran, the facts are that America's greatest success in setting back Tehran's nuclear program came not as the result of any negotiation but in response to intense diplomatic and military pressure. The 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate noted that in 2003 Iran halted its nuclear weapons design work (while continuing efforts to enrich uranium and develop ballistic missiles) because of increasing international pressure resulting from exposure of its covert nuclear program. Most observers noticed that Iran's decision coincided with the U.S. invasion of its neighbor Iraq and the toppling of Saddam's regime after three weeks of fighting.