How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

Aside from Iraq (which is a pretty big aside), Iran is the most pressing foreign policy issue the United States currently faces, according to Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs.

At a March 21 conference, "Coping with Iran: Confrontation, Containment or Engagement?" Burns said, "My own view is that military conflict is not desirable, and it is absolutely unavoid— avoidable."

The audience at the RAND conference collectively drew in an anxious breath before Burns corrected himself.

While the intention of the conference was to stimulate debate regarding Iran, there turned out to be quite a bit of agreement: pre-emptive action against Iran in response to its growing nuclear program is a bad idea, panelists said. Even Danielle Pletka of American Enterprise Institute, who contended that a change of regime would be the best hope for the United States’ problems with Iran, stayed one step away from advocating pre-emption.

"If you’re looking to end [Iran’s] nuclear program, than most people agree military action is not going to provide an answer," Pletka said. "It may slow it down, but it would have a whole series of consequences."

Indeed, there should be "no doubt that Iranians will use any means necessary to strike a blow against those who assault them," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on the same day, in a televised address marking the beginning of the Persian New Year.

And yet, in a neatly laid-out chart, David Ochmanek, the Senior Defense Analyst for RAND, showed conference attendees how the U.S. is squarely on the path to confrontation with Iran. The United States’ current policies, he said, are moving things to the worst-case scenario: a hostile relationship with a nuclear-armed country.

Burns said he was confident that the latest sanctions on Iran currently being discussed by the U.N. Security Council would "tighten the vice around Iran."

The U.S. should stop pushing for sanctions, which "everyone knows will not work," said Javad Zarif, the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations. Zarif spoke at the conference via phone, since his travels within the United States are limited.

"The lack of distrust is pervasive," Zarif said. "We as Iranians should not expect the United States to start trusting Iran" and visa versa.

So even though policy experts from all points on the political spectrum agreed that military action would be a idea, the tensions between the U.S. and Iran are only increasing. Maybe, said James Dobbins, the director of RAND’s International Security and Defense Policy Center and the conference coordinator, the problem is "they’re talking to us and not each other."