Stability in the Middle East is the new worldwide goal of international relations. While many barriers stand between realizing this goal, the fiery rhetoric of Iranian President Ahmadinejad and his continuing intransigence on the matter of nuclear enrichment have led to renewed pessimism about the region. As tensions between Iran and the West escalate, the past actions of our current administration lead many to speculate that this war of words will result in a war of nations. But with the bulk of American troops deployed in neighboring Iraq at the cost of $10 billion per month, can, and more importantly, should, the U.S. take military action against Iran?

Iranian development of nuclear weapons would throw off the entire balance of the Middle East. Many experts say that if Iran successfully developed a nuclear bomb, Saudi Arabia and Egypt would be quick to follow. Saudi Arabia currently possesses the longest-range missiles in the Middle East, purchased from China. These can be quickly modified to carry a nuclear payload, and if Saudi Arabia felt the need, it could easily purchase the technology and know-how to develop nuclear weapons. Egypt, which experimented with a nuclear program before dismantling it at the international community’s behest, could follow suit. Essentially, stopping Iran from getting the bomb is necessary to avert a full-scale arms race in the Middle East.

The real question, then, is whether Iran actually wants the bomb. Recently, Professor Gary Sick of the School of International & Public Affairs at Columbia University,and former Reagan-administration insider and Middle East politics expert, delivered a lecture at Dartmouth College about the future of Iran-U.S. relations. According to Prof. Sick, obtaining the bomb is more than just a strategic goal for Iran – it is a matter of national pride. Iran is a fiercely nationalistic nation, and Iran’s leaders have always been able to take this pride and channel it toward selfish political ends. Ahmadinejad is no exception. Iran’s leadership, however, is divided on the issue of possessing nuclear weapons.

The Iranian government, despite being quite authoritarian, basically runs on a “checks-and-balances” program, in which multiple power centers compete with each other – similar to that of the United States. The current President, Ahmadinejad, was the surprise winner of the last election, but his recent comments have been a product of his own maverick personal views, which make much of Iran’s old guard wary of him. Professor Sick theorizes that many are already privately looking for ways to remove him, including moderates under Hashemi Akbar Raf Sanjani (the leader of the centrist party and Ahmadinejad’s electoral opponent) and the clergy, which has handed down a religious edict stating that Iran may not store or use “nuclear devices.”

Iran has long been interested in a civilian nuclear program, though, and the IAEA has inspected Iran’s program more than any other country in the world. While this doesn’t prove the lack of a bomb, no one has yet found any evidence of a weaponized nuclear program. As our current administration’s “Slam Dunk” syndrome already fumbled the Iraqi adventure, it is definitely wrong to make the leap to Iran possessing nuclear weapons. However, Iran can see the world’s reticence to confront the issue directly, and certainly remembers the U.N.’s inaction against Iraq’s chemical-weapons violations during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Without fear of retribution, Iran could make the move toward joining the club of 40 nuclear-weapons-capable countries in six months.

What could the U.S. and its allies do in such a situation? Israel has been threatening to bomb production sites, but its Persian Gulf submarines would do very limited damage, and its planes could not reach Iran without U.S. refueling assistance.

For now, the U.S. is completely tied up in Iraq, with total estimated costs of the war project to reach almost $1 trillion. Iran is four times larger than Iraq both in terms of population and geography, and highly nationalistic to boot. No one in Iran will greet U.S. troops with flowers at their feet. Therefore, in order to muster enough troops to attack Iran, the United States would certainly have to institute a draft, which would be political suicide for an administration already plagued by domestic scandal. A U.S. carpet-bombing campaign could severely damage Iran’s facilities, but this would just result in the population rallying around the government’s hard-liners, which is exactly what doomed Saddam Hussein during the Iranian Revolution.

If U.S. policymakers get their hands off the trigger, they should consider the following solutions. First, the U.S. should attempt to cut a deal under which Iran is allowed a very minimum amount of enriched uranium, which would be surrounded by IAEA inspectors. This would give the U.S. ample advanced warning if Iran decided to pursue a full-blown nuclear program. Last year, the Iranians offered that exact deal to the Europeans, and everyone rejected it out of hand because it involved allowing Iran to enrich uranium. Now that Iran already has enrichment capability, the West is running out of chips to bargain with. The U.S. needs to decide whether it is dealing with a hostile regime or simply bomb possession. We cannot go into this situation assuming that the regime is composed of a bunch of bad guys who need to be eliminated. When the United States tried to influence Iranian politics by paying reform parties $85 million to encourage regime change, it resulted in all reform groups being seen as spies and traitors, further damaging the reformist movement. Our goal should be to bring the Iranians to the negotiating table. No U.S. administration from Carter on has ever held talks with the Iranians – all we’ve heard is empty rhetoric. It’s time we end this empty rhetoric and offer Iran real negotiations today; it’s the only way out of this mess.