The Elephant in the Room | Put aside politics to confront Iran

I spent much of the last year of my term in office talking about Iran. Whether because of its role as the prime sponsor of Islamic terrorism in the world - the creator of Hezbollah and the driving force behind Hamas - or as the chief foreign-power obstacle to a peaceful, democratic Iraq, Iran is our greatest national security concern.

Much is being made of the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that Iran, under pressure from economic sanctions, stopped its nuclear program in 2003. That same report, however, states that Iran is continuing to enrich uranium at a pace that would result in weapons-grade nuclear material by 2010 to 2015. Iran also announced last month that it had developed a missile that could deliver a nuclear warhead to Jerusalem. And Iran's negotiators last week in London announced that all past proposals to limit Iran's nuclear program were irrelevant and that further talk of curbing its uranium enrichment was unnecessary.

We must view this information in light of the continued obsession of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with the return of the Twelfth Imam. That's the ninth-century Shiite leader who, according to his view of Shiite theology, will return to earth to lead them after an Armageddon in which Islam has conquered Christians and killed the Jews. The Iranian president continues to maintain that one of the foundational reasons for the creation of Israel, the Holocaust, never happened, and he marked the occasion of last week's Mideast summit in Annapolis by again threatening Israel. Nice.

A consensus has developed that a nuclear-armed Iran would be our greatest national security challenge since the end of the Cold War. The NIE assessment also tends to support the consensus that a combination of economic sanctions, diplomacy and support for pro-democracy groups can be effective in getting Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions.

That is why I introduced the Iran Freedom Support Act in 2004. This bill became law last year. It funds pro-democracy groups and imposes tighter sanctions on Iran. Last month, the Bush administration, using authority granted in this new law, imposed the toughest sanctions against Iran to date. These sanctions are designed to make it more difficult for non-U.S. companies to do business with Iran - and pressure the regime to begin serious talks on ceasing its drive to acquire nuclear weapons. They've also contributed to the economic woes that have damaged the regime's popularity.