Tigerhawk discusses what he learned while attending a “roundtable” discussion on the Iranian nuclear crisis at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School last evening.  Participating were Ali Ansari (University of St. Andrews in Scotland), Johannes Reissner ( head of the Department for Near East and Africa at the German Institute for International Politics and Security in Berlin), Frank von Hippel (professor of public and international affairs and co-director of the Program on Science and Global Security in the Woodrow Wilson School), and Wolfgang Danpeckgruber (director, Liechtenstein Institute).

It is a long an interesting post that Tigerhawk concludes with this observation:

[…] the credibility of American deterrance, Ansari observed, required that the United States actually have a clear policy toward Iran. Thus far, it has failed to articulate one beyond the demand that Iran not complete the nuclear fuel cycle and that it stop sponsoring terrorism. America needs to be much more clear in its objectives and its basis for negotiation going forward.

That, it seems to me, is very true.

I, too, agree with this assessment, and I think it clear that China and Russia have (to use a Rumfeld phrase) not been helpful in helping the US articulate a clear policy, given their apparent unwillingness to go along with a strict sanctions program.

Which means the US is going to have to decide if it should finally give up and circumvent the Security Council in order to form a coalition of willing parnters to engage in sanctions, or else come up with another plan that communicates to Iran our seriousness.

From what I’ve been getting from reading between the lines in news accounts and speeches from Condi Rice and the President, this seems to be where the US is now:  settling on a clearly articulated policy, one that is being fashioned with the assumption that China and Russia will not be fully cooperative.

At least, I hope they’ve reached this point—if not passed it already.  Which, if that’s the case, we would expect to hear the policy clearly articulated sometime very soon.