Talking and acting tough proved to work

I hate to disagree with the estimable James Forsyth, but I'm not sure he's right when he writes of the report on Iran's nuclear programme:At first blush, it appears to thwart any chance America and the EU-3 had of getting the UN Security Council to vote for tougher sanctions on Iran.Surely the people with severe egg on their faces are the appeasers of Iran? The lesson that any objective analyst has to draw is how necessary it is to be tough.

If the intelligence report is to be believed (and it's curious how those who continue to scorn the use of intelligence reports in regard to Iraq now embrace this latest US intelligence) then the conclusion is obvious. Why did Iran pursue a weapon until 2003 and then stop? Because it turned into a peace-loving nation? Because it saw the error of its ways? Of course not. It seems unlikely that it was an accident of timing that it put things on hold in 2003 - the very year when the US showed that it was serious about dealing with terror states when it took action against Saddam.

The message is that it's no use asking nicely. And it's no use making idle threats. The only words that work are words backed by the convincing threat that failure to comply will lead to serious and damaging consequences. In other words, the Iranians were convinced that the US meant business. (It's exactly the same process as when Libya caved in.)