".... So what, exactly, does President Obama plan to do if, as everyone expects, these sanctions fail, just as the previous three did?
There is a Plan B — actually, a Plan B, C, and D — parts of which are already unfolding across the Persian Gulf. The administration does not talk about them much, at least publicly, but they include old-style military containment and an operation known informally at the C.I.A. as the Braindrain Project to lure away Iran’s nuclear talent. By all accounts, Mr. Obama has ramped up a Bush-era covert program to undermine Iran’s nuclear weapons infrastructure, and he has made quiet diplomatic use of Israel’s lurking threat to take military action if diplomacy and pressure fail.
But ask the designers and executors of these programs what they all add up to, and the answer inevitably boils down to “not enough.” Taken together, officials say, they may slow Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon, which has already run into far greater technical slowdowns than anyone expected. If the pressure builds, Iran might be driven to the negotiating table, which it has avoided since Mr. Obama came to office offering “engagement.”
But even Mr. Obama, in his more-in-sadness-than-anger description on Wednesday of why diplomacy has so far yielded nothing, conceded “we know that the Iranian government will not change its behavior overnight” and went on to describe how instead the sanctions would create “growing costs.”
That assessment sounds like the now-familiar combination of pragmatism and patience that Mr. Obama has tried to make the hallmark of his approach to foreign policy. But in the case of Iran, he is running up against ticking clocks. As Mr. Obama noted in April, once Iran passes a certain point, it may be impossible to know when it has taken the last steps to manufacture a weapon......... Some top officials in the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies say they wonder whether the White House has truly grappled with the question of how far Iran can be permitted to go, and what kind of risks Mr. Obama is willing to take beyond sanctions......... “because once you draw a line in the sand, you have to decide how you are going to act when the Iranians step over it.”....
... Washington swore for years it would stop India and Pakistan from joining the nuclear club and briefly turned off aid to them. Today it works secretly with Pakistan to secure its arsenal and has signed a treaty with India permitting it to buy nuclear material.....
Mr. Obama’s aides say they know sanctions are a limited tool and that military options are the last and the riskiest choices, so they have reached for others.
American-controlled antimissile systems have been quietly placed in Arab states around the Persian Gulf. This is classic containment, but it is of little use against the nuclear program. While Iran has a growing conventional missile arsenal, intelligence experts believe it will be years before it could make a nuclear weapon that could fit atop a missile. Their fear instead is a weapon that could be handed off to Hamas or Hezbollah in a truck, a threat against which the antimissile systems are of no use.
The administration has continued to support Iran’s opposition groups, but treading carefully for fear of appearing to meddle in internal Iranian politics. On Thursday, Senator John McCain argued anew for regime change, but he was careful to say it had to be “peaceful change, chosen by and led by the people of Iran.” That is the kind of change whose timing no White House can control.
The Braindrain program has lured defectors out of the country, sometimes with laptops full of data about Iran’s progress. .....“The big effect is psychological,” one former intelligence official said. “It tells the Iranians we are inside their program.”...."
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