Henry Kissinger: A Creative Diplomacy Necessary to Deal with Iran

In an op-ed over the weekend, former Sec. of State Henry Kissinger maintained that Obama’s most urgent foreign policy priority is to make sure Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon. 

Looking at the pending disaster in Tehran through his years of experience, Kissinger warned that Iran has been stalling and evading oversight for a decade. All the while it’s been “expanding, concealing, and dispersing its nuclear facilities.”

Kissinger explained that there are three steps to acquiring the weapon: 1. a delivery system, 2. a capacity to enrich uranium, 3. the actual production of nuclear warheads.

He then pointed out that Iran has been working on a delivery system since 2006, when they began launching various missile launches. Their enrichment capabilities have been “expanded to thousands of centrifuges” — a level exceeding “any reasonable definition of peaceful uses authorized by the Non-Proliferation Treaty.” 

Kissinger pointed out that once steps 1 and 2 are finished, step 3 can be carried out fast enough to avoid detection “in a timely manner.”

As troubling as this news is, Kissinger doesn’t think diplomacy has fully run its course. In fact, he believes the danger posed by a nuclear Iran is so great that every diplomatic option ought to be fully exhausted. But it is not to be a diplomacy without teeth. Rather, he is convinced we have to make sure Iran knows what will follow the diplomatic approach, should it fail. 

Kissinger refers to this “creative diplomacy.”

Kissinger says the final decision on Iran rests with the President, but he thinks the President is going to get a lot of help from a “mobilized” citizenry in the U.S. and the world, should Iran acquire a nuclear weapon.