the president’s former special assistant on Iran, said last Monday.
Obama has “made it very clear” that he regards a nuclear-armed Iran as so great a threat to international security that “the Iranians should never think that there’s a reluctance to use the force” to stop them, Ross, who served two years on Obama’s National Security Council and a year as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 
special adviser on Iran, told Bloomberg news service in an interview.
“There are consequences if you act militarily and there’s big consequences if you don’t act,” said Ross, who laid out a detailed argument against those who say Obama would sooner “contain” a nuclear-armed Iran than strike militarily. Ross appeared to fear that the Islamic Republic might conclude falsely that Obama was not prepared to confront Iran, based on what Republican critics are saying in the election campaign, where they try to portray him as a weakling.
The administration considers the risks of permitting a nuclear-armed Iran to be greater than the risks of military action, said Ross, who last month rejoined the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think-tank.
Ross said his conclusion from the recent report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA ) is that Iran has been careful “to not necessarily cross certain thresholds that they think could provoke responses, but I don’t think there’s a whole lot of doubt that they are embarked on a program that can produce, at a certain point, weapons.”
While some Iran analysts have suggested an alternative to military strikes would be to “contain” a nuclear Iran, much as the US managed to live with a nuclear-armed Soviet Union, Ross said the analogy doesn’t translate to the situation in the Mideast.
Nations in the region, he said, lack equivalent Cold Warera “ground-rules,” lines of communication and a protected second-strike nuclear capability, which deterred a surprise attack during US-Soviet tensions.
A nuclear-armed Iran would set off an atomic arms race among neighbors, Ross said, and pose a risk of proliferation to other states or terrorist groups, and increase the chances of a nuclear strike resulting from miscalculation.
“You don’t have any communication between the Israelis and the Iranians. You have all sorts of local triggers for conflict. Having countries act on a hair trigger where they can’t afford to be second to strike the potential for a miscalculation or a nuclear war through inadvertence is simply too high,” he said.
Ross acknowledged that a military strike would have serious consequences as well, including Iranian retaliation, either directly or through terrorist proxies around the world, a possible effort to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and a spike in oil prices.
Understanding those risks, “nobody uses military force lightly,” he said, and “nobody commits to using military force one minute before they have to.”
Ross underscored that US willingness to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons affects decision-making in other countries that fear Iran, including Israel and the Persian Gulf states. If the White House abandoned a pledge to stop Iran made by Obama and President George W. Bush before him, the US would lose all credibility, he said.
“I wouldn’t discount the possibility that the Israelis would act if they came to the conclusion that basically the world was prepared to live with Iran with nuclear weapons,” he said. “They certainly have the capability by themselves to set back the Iranian nuclear program.”
Ross said he believes there is still time for diplomacy to work, as the financial pain of sanctions may yet persuade Iran to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program.
“Force is not inevitable,” he said. “Diplomacy is still the desired means. Pressure is an element of the means.”
The latest measures are the first “really affecting the core of their revenue, which is their sale of oil,” Ross said. Historically, “when they’re really pressured, they look for ways out.”
The leaders of the Islamic Republic only accepted a cease-fire with Iraq in 1988, halted the assassination of Iranian dissidents in Europe in the mid-1990s, and abandoned the enrichment of uranium in 2003 when “it wasn’t worth the cost” anymore, Ross said.
Iran is “feeling pain in a much more dramatic way” than ever, he said.
He dismissed threats by certain Iranian officials to retaliate against oil sanctions by closing the Strait of Hormuz as “bluster” to send a message at home and abroad, as Iranian leaders vie for power in a struggle that Ross said is as intense as any since the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Ross served in senior Mideast policy positions under Presidents Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton and Obama, but was shut out during the George W. Bush era.
