Why Did Iran Halt the Weaponization Program?
When the NIE came out, some hawks like Norman Podhoretz just called it a lie, but others like Victor Davis Hanson said it was a vindication of Bush’s nonproliferation strategy — namely the invasion of Iraq. The argument had some superficial plausibility to it: we invaded Iraq in March of 2003, and Iran gave up its program in late 2003. Mark Leon Goldberg of UN Dispatch makes the argument* that not only die the NIE itself point at “international pressure” as the proximate cause of Iran abandoning its weaponization program, but that right before Iran called off the program, the IAEA board of governors found them to be in violation of its rules and promised some sort of unspecified consequences. International organizations, they can work!
*This is “dingalink” to a diavlog that Goldberg had with Matthew Lee. So don’t freak out when a video player opens.
