A New Red Line For Iran

The Iranian nuclear challenge was transformed on President George W. Bush's watch. Events in Iran have advanced faster than the policy community's thinking about the problem. The brute fact is that Iran has crossed a threshold that is painful to acknowledge but impossible to ignore: It has lost its nuclear virginity. Over the past eight years, the United States has insisted that Iran would never be allowed to develop the capability to enrich uranium, as that could be used to build a nuclear bomb. Three unanimous U.N. Security Council resolutions demanded that Iran "suspend all enrichment-related activities." That was a worthy aim. Technically, mastery of enrichment is the brightest red line short of nuclear weapons. Israelis have called it the "point of no return."