Giving Iran One Last Chance | The Heritage Foundation

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

53% : If the U.S. is to join talks with Iran, it must first obtain ironclad guarantees from its allies that if Iran balks at negotiations or reneges on its commitments then they will immediately impose strong sanctions.
52% : Moreover, the U.S. must reach agreement with its allies on an acceptable timeframe for negotiations and the precise terms to be offered to Iran.
52% :Washington also must reach an agreement with its allies on the incentives and disincentives to be presented to Iran.
49% : If Iran continues on its present path, Rice's diplomatic strategy could work only if the United States has ironclad commitments from its European allies and Japan to impose strong sanctions, outside the U.N. framework, if continued Russian and Chinese foot-dragging makes that necessary.
48% : Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's offer today to join multilateral talks with Iran over its nuclear weapons program is meant to call Iran's diplomatic bluff and mobilize international support for tough sanctions on Iran.[1]
47% : Iran could conceal nuclear weapons development in clandestine facilities, as it has done before.
44% : Only if the U.S., Europe, Japan, and other allies present a determined and united front in support of strong economic sanctions will they have a chance of dissuading Iran from continuing its nuclear efforts, short of war.
41% : Neglecting these steps would give Iran an opportunity to subvert the talks for its own purposes and ensure that any talks will ultimately fail to stop its nuclear program.
41% : While Rice hopes to force Iran to choose between international sanctions and its nuclear weapons efforts, Moscow and Beijing will seek to help their Iranian friends to escape strong U.N. sanctions.
38% : Otherwise, Iran will seek to focus the negotiations on increasing the number of carrots to exploit differences between the allies and focus blame on the United States if the talks fail, as is likely.
37% : The United States and its allies must have a common understanding on an acceptable timeframe for negotiations that prevents Iran from using the talks as a ruse to run out the clock and forestall sanctions.
36% : Tehran may interpret the diplomatic offer as a weakening of U.S. resolve to block Iran's drive for nuclear weapons.
36% :Iran has used on-again, off-again diplomatic negotiations with the EU-3 (Britain, France, and Germany) to forestall concerted international action regarding its violations of its legal commitments under the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards agreement.
35% : There also is the risk that Iran may exploit diplomatic talks to buy time to overcome technological hurdles while it staves off sanctions.
32% : Any proposed deal with Iran must include much more intrusive inspections and monitoring to reduce this risk.
32% : If Iran rejects the talks, then Russia and China might be embarrassed into accepting stronger sanctions than they would permit otherwise.
28% : Even if Iran "fully and verifiably suspends its enrichment and reprocessing activities," as Secretary Rice has stipulated, there remains the risk that Tehran could continue secret nuclear efforts at undeclared facilities, albeit at a slower pace than today.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.