No one should doubt that US President Barack Obama is prepared to use military force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon if sanctions and diplomacy fail, the president’s former special assistant on Iran said Monday.

Obama has “made it very clear” that he regards a nuclear-armed Iran as so great a threat to international security that “the Iranians should never think that there’s a reluctance to use the force” to stop them, Dennis Ross, who served two years on Obama’s National Security Council and a year as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s special adviser on Iran, said in an interview.

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“There are consequences if you act militarily, and there’s big consequences if you don’t act,” said Ross, who in a two-hour interview at the Bloomberg Washington office laid out a detailed argument against those who say Obama would sooner “contain” a nuclear-armed Iran than strike militarily.

The administration considers the risks of permitting a nuclear-armed Iran to be greater than the risks of military action, said Ross, who last month rejoined the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research group.

His comments came the day after Obama’s top civilian and uniformed defense officials said that developing a nuclear weapon would cross a red line, precipitating a US strike.

“They need to know that if they take that step, they’re going to get stopped,” US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Jan. 8 on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” On the same program, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he has been responsible for planning and positioning assets to be ready if ordered to take military action.

Challenging Iran’s claim

Iran, the world’s third largest oil exporter, insists its nuclear program is for civilian energy and medical purposes only. The International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report last Nov. 8 detailing nuclear activities it said had no other use than for military purposes, bolstering the US case that Iran is seeking the capability to produce nuclear weapons even if it hasn’t yet made a decision to do so.

While some Iran analysts have suggested an alternative to military strikes would be to “contain” a nuclear Iran, much as the US managed to live with a nuclear-armed Soviet Union, Ross said the analogy doesn’t translate to the situation in the Mideast. Countries in the region, he said, lack equivalent Cold War-era “ground-rules,” lines of communication, and a protected second-strike nuclear capability, which deterred a surprise attack during US-Soviet tensions.

A nuclear-armed Iran would set off a atomic arms race among neighbors, pose a risk of proliferation to other states or terrorist groups, and increase the chances of a nuclear strike resulting from miscalculation, he said.



Potential for miscalculation

“You don’t have any communication between the Israelis and the Iranians. You have all sorts of local triggers for conflict. Having countries act on a hair trigger - where they can’t afford to be second to strike, the potential for a miscalculation or a nuclear war through inadvertence is simply too high,” he added.

Ross acknowledged that a military strike would have serious consequences as well, including Iranian retaliation, either directly or through terrorist proxies around the world, a possible effort to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and a spike in oil prices.

Understanding those risks, “nobody uses military force lightly,” he said, and “nobody commits to using military force one minute before they have to.”

US credibility

Ross underscored that US willingness to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons affects decision-making in other countries that fear Iran, including Israel and Gulf states. If the White House abandoned a pledge to stop Iran made by Obama and former US president George W. Bush before him, the US would lose all credibility, he said.

“I wouldn’t discount the possibility that the Israelis would act if they came to the conclusion that basically the world was prepared to live with Iran with nuclear weapons,” he said. “They certainly have the capability by themselves to set back the Iranian nuclear program.”

Ross stressed he believes there is still time for diplomacy to work, as the financial pain of sanctions may yet persuade Iran to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program.

“Force is not inevitable,” he said. “Diplomacy is still the desired means. Pressure is an element of the means.”

Oil embargo

Coordinated efforts to tighten penalties, including the European Union’s preliminary agreement on an oil embargo, new US sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran, and pressure on Japan and South Korea to reduce their imports of Iranian oil, may finally persuade Iran’s leaders to give up the program rather than suffer a shutdown of their economy, Ross said.

The latest measures are the first “really affecting the core of their revenue, which is their sale of oil,” Ross said. Historically, “when they’re really pressured, they look for ways out.”

The leaders of Islamic Republic of Iran only accepted a cease-fire with Iraq, halted the assassination of Iranian dissidents in Europe, and abandoned the enrichment of uranium in 2003 when “it wasn’t worth the cost” anymore, Ross noted.

The latest round of punishing sanctions target oil sales, which fund a majority of Iran’s government revenues, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Iran is “feeling pain in a much more dramatic way” than ever, Ross said.

Iranian ‘Bluster’

He dismissed threats by certain Iranian officials to retaliate against oil sanctions by closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil transits, as “bluster” aimed to send a message at home and abroad, as Iranian leaders vie for power in a struggle that Ross said is as intense as any since the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The IAEA yesterday confirmed that Iran has begun enriching uranium to as much as 20 percent U-235 at the underground Fordow underground site near the holy city of Qom, as Iranian leaders had pledged to do last year. The site is monitored by IAEA inspectors to detect any attempt to enrich uranium to the 90 percent level necessary for a nuclear bomb.

“There really is no justification for it,” Ross said of the latest enrichment activities. “I don’t think there’s a whole lot of doubt that they are embarked on a program that can produce, at a certain point, weapons.” A nuclear-armed Iran would set off a atomic arms race among neighbors, pose a risk of proliferation to other states or terrorist groups, and increase the chances of a nuclear strike resulting from miscalculation, he said.