Option 1: Engagement/Pressure

Iran vs. Iraq

Proponents Say: Pursue Engagement with Iran, Pressure on Iraq.

• Actively seek improved relations with Iran in return for moderate behavior and full compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention (BWC), and the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
• Work with Iran to gain support of all permanent UN Security Council members to restore UN inspections in Iraq.

Opponents Say: Negotiations are Unlikely to Produce Results.

• Iran's supreme leader and his radical followers, not the country's more moderate president, control Iranian foreign and military policies. They are strongly committed to the terrorist groups challenging Israel and to Iran's WMD and missile programs. There is no difference between the commitment of Iran's supreme leader and the country's more moderate president to WMD and missile programs. Both parties want to sustain Iran's status as a leading regional power. At best, negotiations will improve the atmosphere between Iran and the United States, but they will not likely lead to agreements restricting Iran's WMD and missile programs.
• Iran will not be satisfied with diplomatic concessions from the United States. It will demand that Israel accept every restriction on WMD that Iran has accepted, including adherence to the NPT and the CWC. Israel is not prepared to take these steps in the absence of a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. This stalemate makes U.S.-Iran talks on WMD a dead-end that will not produce results.
• Even if the United States and Iran agree on additional restrictions on WMD and missiles, the United States could never be confident that Iran was living up to those agreements. The country is so large that cheating would be easy. Even in Iraq, where UN inspectors had total access, that country was able to hide important parts of its WMD activities, especially its biological weapons (BW) program. In Iran, inspections under the NPT and the CWC would be much more limited, and there are no inspections under the BWC. Iran would have little trouble hiding significant WMD activities.

Further Reading:

	The Atlantic Council, Kenneth Katzman, "U.S. - Iranian Relations: An Analytic Compendium of U.S. Policies, Laws and Regulations"
	CRS, Kenneth Katzman, "Iran: U.S. Policy and Options"
	The Nixon Center, Geoffrey Kemp, ed., "Iran's Nuclear Weapons Options: Issues and Analysis"
	The Nixon Center, Morton H. Halperin and Geoffrey Kemp, "A Report on U.S. Policy Options Towards Iraq"
	The Wisconsin Project, Iraq Watch

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