Nuclear Iran?

As Iran edges closer to becoming a nuclear power, there has been some debate as to what action should be taken to prevent that from happening.  There has been speculation for a while as to whether or not Israel will respond with a military strike.  I do think it's fairly obvious at this point that American will not respond with a military strike, and there are some questions as to whether we will block airspace in the Middle East to prevent Israel from hitting Iran's nuclear facilities.

The seemingly 'easy' answer to the problem is some sort of severe economic sanctions.  Monday's Wall Street Journal ran an article by John Bolton addressing the issues involved in economic sanctions.  He points out what he considers the main problems in imposing strong sanctions on Iran.  The first problem is the fact that the chances of the UN supporting strong sanctions is very small.  Both Russia and China are unlikely to vote for sanctions due to financial interests in Iran, and either has the power to block them.  Any sanctions imposed are likely to be very weak, as too many western countries are linked economically to Iran--they don't want to hurt their own economies. 

The Iranian government has also watched the debate on sanctions.  Because they have realized that they are vulnerable in the area of refined petroleum products, they have begun to take steps to remove that vulnerability.  Gasoline prices are rising in Iran for the average consumer (the military will probably still have all the gasoline it needs).  Since the country has large natural gas reserves, they can move to natural gas powered cars fairly easily, thus lessening their dependency on refined petroleum.

Ambassador Bolton points out that sanctions might have worked a number of years ago, but the time for them has passed.  Please read the article, he has a lot of insight into the problem.