Watching the Enemy Win

Bolton: Iran Won
Financial Times

Some commentators here have said the United States should learn a lesson from Britain’s handling of the detainees issue in respect to the standoff over Iran’s nuclear programme. ..

But if the outcome of the stand-off with Iran was a success for British diplomacy, “one hesistates to ask what would constitute failure,” Bolton wrote in the business daily. He said Iran was testing allied resolve and found that Britain responded with “not much of a reaction at all.”

“This passive, hesitant, almost acquiescent approach barely concealed the Foreign Office’s real objective: keeping the faint hope alive that three years of failed negotiations on Iran’s nuclear weapons programme would not suffer another, this time possibly fatal, setback.”

The lesson for Iran was that “it probed and found weakness.” Ahmadinejad could now “undertake equal or greater provocations, confident he need not fear a strong response,” Bolton wrote.

“Emboldened as Iran now is, and ironically for engagement advocates, it is even less likely there will be a negotiated solution to the nuclear weapons issue, not that there was ever much chance of one.

“Iran, sensing weakness, has every incentive to ratchet up its nuclear weapons programme, increase its support to Hamas, Hezbollah and others and perpetrate even more serious terrorism in Iraq.

“The world will be a more dangerous place as a result.

“The only thing risen from this crisis is Iranian determination and resolve to confront us elsewhere, at their discretion, whether on Iraq, nuclear weapons and terrorism.”