In its typically heavy-handed way, the Bush administration announced today that if Iran suspends its suspicious uranium activities, then the United States will engage in multilateral diplomacy to persuade Iran to do so. This is consistent with the kind of multilateral charade that the United States earlier performed regarding North Korea, with its neighbors, and Iraq, with the United Nations. We hope they mean it this time, though the record is not encouraging.
The continuing confrontation over Iran's emerging nuclear weapons program has been called a “Cuban Missile Crisis in slow motion” by Harvard's Graham Allison, recalling what historians still term “the most dangerous thirteen days in the history of mankind.”
