Replacing evil

Based on his State of the Union speech last night, president Obama is showing little enthusiasm for confronting the Iranian nuclear threat. The best strategy to fight the regime? Robert Kagan of The Washington Post says: replace it.

Regime change in Tehran is the best nonproliferation policy. Even if the next Iranian government refused to give up the weapons program, its need for Western economic assistance and its desire for reintegration into the global economy and international order would at least cause it to slow today's mad rush to completion and be much more open to diplomatic discussion. A new government might shelve the program for a while, or abandon it altogether. Other nations have done so. In any event, an Iran not run by radicals with millennial visions would be a much less frightening prospect, even with a nuclear weapon.

The clinching argument is pragmatic. What is more likely: that Iran's present leadership will agree to give up its nuclear program, or that these leaders will be toppled? A year ago, the answer seemed obvious. There was little sign the Iranian people would ever rise up and demand change, no matter what the United States and other democratic nations did to help them. If the prospects for a deal on Tehran's nuclear program seemed remote, the prospects for regime change were even more remote.

These probabilities have shifted since June 12. Now the odds of regime change are higher than the odds the present regime will ever agree to give up its nuclear program. With tougher sanctions, public support from Obama and other Western leaders, and programs to provide information and better communications to reformers, the possibility for change in Iran may never be better. As Richard Haass wrote recently, "Even a realist should recognize that it's an opportunity not to be missed."