Don’t Bomb Iran

Senator John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said a parallel option to diplomacy would be a strategy of deterrence, citing its success through Nato during the Cold War.

To dissuade Iran from developing nuclear weapons, an “option would be to begin planning a strategy of deterrence, as a parallel and supportive effort to diplomacy,” the Republican senator wrote in an op-ed article published by the Paris-based International Herald Tribune newspaper, as Nato’s parliamentary assembly met in the French capital.

“In the worst-case scenario, where diplomacy fails and Iran proceeds defiantly with a nuclear weapons program, how would the world respond?” he asked. “In preparing for such a scenario, we should reflect on the lessons of the Cold War, when deterrence succeeded, largely through the actions of Nato,” he said.

“The international community should begin devising the initial concept of a ‘ring of deterrence’ that would surround Iran and deter the use of actual force, as was done so successfully with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.”

Warner said that NATO should be at the heart of such a strategy, with an initial plan “limited to a stand-off naval force operating in international waters, and a stand-off air capability in international airspace.”

If Nato considered playing this future deterrent role, it would gain a place in the combined diplomatic efforts under way, he said.

“Planning for such an initiative would lend important support to the combined diplomatic efforts, by signalling that Nato’s 26 nations take the Iranian situation seriously,” he said.