US President Barack Obama will have to resort to more constructive action rather than talk if he is keen to ensure that Iran doesn't get a fresh new cluster of ‘listeners' as it goes about pursuing its nuclear ambitions.
A new crop of sanctions are set to be imposed on Iran within weeks but this time President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government has resorted to a new tactic — the charm offensive. The Iranians realise that there are people who have time to listen to them, from Africa to Brazil, simply because they have navigated past their age-old rhetoric about Israel and Palestine and are focusing on the development of nuclear energy as a symbol of economic progress and modernity.
Ahmadinejad's government might manage to kill two birds with one stone — get their share of votes in the Security Council and even open the doors for possible economic cooperation with emerging countries. Iran might strengthen its argument by questioning who has the right to control advanced nuclear technology and this might see it getting some traction in the UN.
Intelligence on Iran's objectives thus needs to be more reliable to justify stronger sanctions. The world saw what happened in the case of Iraq. There is no room for two catastrophic errors in the same region.
