ABSTRACT
As the old military adage has it, no good deed ever goes unpunished. And so it would seem with American security interests in the Persian Gulf. Soon after having removed a major threat to American and regional interests with the defeat of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Washington has to come to terms with the looming challenge in Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons. The good news is that unlike in the case in Iraq, diplomacy still has some running room for negotiating a stall or derailment of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The bad news is that the prospects are dim for achieving this end without resorting to force over the coming years.
