Before they go nuclear ... Iran and the question of preemption.

CONSPICUOUSLY absent from the West's diplomatic strategy in the Iran nuclear crisis is any mention of preemption. Avoiding this now-vulgar term may help alleviate the administration's image problem, but the U.S. is starting to give the impression that it has given up on a vital element of its national defense. Iran has taken this as an invitation to speed up its nuclear program.

The Security Council debate before the Iraq War and the subsequent debate over pre-war intelligence are the key to understanding what has gone wrong. After David Kay famously reported in January 2004 that "we were almost all wrong" about WMD in Iraq, columnist George F. Will proclaimed the end of preemption: "The doctrine of preemptive war ... presupposes a certain [amount of] certainty about what you're preempting."

This is incorrect. What argues for early preemption is the risk that self-defense may come too late if it waits too long. For preemption, the triggering threat is an unacceptable level of uncertainty. The reason we were considering preemption against Iraq was not that our intelligence misled us, but rather that Saddam Hussein never allowed for verification of Iraq's disarmament. Given the potential danger, what we needed was transparency.

But Security Council Resolution 1441, which sent the inspectors back into Iraq, never mentioned transparency or verification. Rather than placing the burden of proof squarely on Saddam, the resolution linked "serious consequences" to "further material breach," an issue on which the U.S. would naturally have to bear the burden of proof. So Secretary Colin Powell found himself back in the Security Council a few months later, presenting inferential intelligence assessments in support of specific claims about WMD, claims on which our case for war now suddenly depended. But this totally contradicted our strategic posture, which was that if we could not get clarity from Saddam, we would get it from Central Command: The burden of proof was on Saddam. Arguing about further material breach could only distract attention from what really mattered.

So long as the intelligence assessments could not confirm Iraq's disarmament, their particular conclusions were irrelevant. And the intelligence failure we have just wasted several years arguing about was just as irrelevant. Had the intelligence been perfectly truthful, the most it could have said was, "Mr. President, we don't know what's going on in Iraq. But it looks pretty bad." The decision facing the president would then have been exactly the same: Accept the unverified claims of a known liar, or remove the potential danger. And the potential danger was unacceptable--especially after 9/11 brought home just how dangerous the world had become.

By not first securing international acceptance of the general principles of the post-9/11 national-security strategy, we ended up arguing the case of Iraq on the basis of 20th-century norms that could not sustain the U.S. position. And when we went back to the Security Council in February 2003, we lost the case. All around the world, rogue states with lots of secrets to keep breathed a sigh of relief. The Security Council had refused to legitimize the enforcement of transparency through preemption--the only logical way to enforce it.

In an age of WMD, transparency is essential. The Europeans took the diplomatic lead on Iran's nuclear program because everything about it was so nebulous. Iran's "civilian" nuclear facilities are defended like strategic military targets, many of them buried thousands of feet underground, beyond the reach of bunker-busters. The program's justifications--energy insecurity and national scientific Pride--were never very convincing; after the discovery of large, clandestine uranium-enrichment facilities, nobody at all believed them. The facilities themselves were arguably permitted under the nuclear-nonproliferation treaty, but building them secretly was not. There could be only one reason Iran would go to such lengths to keep an otherwise-legitimate program secret: It was trying to develop nuclear weapons, and it knew that the facilities would be military targets.

Led at first by France, Britain, and Germany, the West has maintained unity in its confrontation with Iran. The diplomatic strategy is based on an ordered progression--from referral by the IAEA, to a non-binding letter from the Security Council president, to a sanction-less Chapter VII resolution, to a resolution imposing economic sanctions. This approach has so far proven remarkably successful not only in isolating Iran from the rest of the international community, but also in isolating any support the Iranians may enjoy in the Council.

Unfortunately, the strategy also eliminates what little deterrence there may be against Iran's nuclear-weapons development. Several months ago, when asked whether the U.S. or Israel would use preemption if diplomacy failed (the question on everybody's mind), British foreign secretary Jack Straw reacted as if the question had been about space aliens: The use of force was "inconceivable," he said. And nothing we have said publicly (except the increasingly useless "all options remain on the table") has contradicted that assertion.

So at the very least, the Security Council progression appears to erect a series of stable and predictable hurdles between us and the legitimate use of force. Therefore, Iran can predict that an attack will not be triggered by the next several steps it takes in developing the WMD. The effect is naturally to make a negotiated settlement in the near term highly unattractive from Iran's point of view. As Kissinger taught, people who think they have time on their hands don't negotiate. Iran's bargaining position can only become stronger the further it proceeds.

And the further it proceeds, the more assertive and aggressive it becomes. Iranian special-operations forces are increasingly active in fomenting sectarian violence and attacks on coalition forces in Iraq. And Hezbollah's attack on Israel was widely understood as a shot across the bow in Iran's nuclear standoff with the West.

At least instinctively, the administration recognizes the danger of dallying in the Security Council. It stayed on the sidelines until Iran was referred to the Council, but once the matter landed on U.N. ambassador John Bolton's desk, things in the Council have moved fast. At the end of July, the Council issued a draft resolution under Chapter VII demanding that Iran halt enrichment activities by the end of August, or face possible sanctions. The plan, then, is to impose sanctions in early September. But the sanctions will almost certainly be limited--and not aimed at oil. Their only lasting effect may be to push Iran out of the nonproliferation treaty altogether.

At that point, the U.S. will be able to claim that it gave diplomacy a chance. But absent an explicit threat to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, diplomacy never had a chance. At no point have we made Iran fear the consequences of proceeding. And we appear to have gotten this far in the Security Council only because of a tacit agreement that we would not resort to force without Council permission. The Chinese and Russians have made it clear that this is their understanding. Thus, once diplomacy fails, we are likely to have to invoke preemption in the teeth of even greater international opposition than if we had never gone to the Security Council in the first place.

This brings us to the most serious flaw in the current diplomatic strategy. Every time we take a major threat to the Security Council, we reinforce the perception that to use force preemptively, we need the Security Council's permission. But the Council cannot perform any such role, and it was never meant to. It was conceived only as the political committee of a standing military alliance, an alliance that did not survive the end of World War II long enough to sign the U.N. Charter as genuine allies. The reason the five permanent members of the Council are not allies is that their strategic interests are not in general alignment; it is therefore unrealistic to expect that they would reach agreement to authorize preemption against a threat to the peace.

In the current crisis, the Security Council has done nothing to prevent or remove the threat posed by Iran's nuclear program. Iran is now moving fast to produce as much lightly enriched uranium as it can. According to Valerie Lincy of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, once Iran has a large-enough batch, it will be a short step to convert it to weapons grade. If Iran then expels the IAEA inspectors, no one knows how long it would take for them to produce enough for a nuclear device. We will from that point forward be living with an intolerable uncertainty. Under these circumstances, the U.S. should make clear that it will consider any further Iranian violation of the nonproliferation treaty an act of armed aggression within Article 51 of the U.N. Charter.

If we really want to give diplomacy a chance in Iran, we must put preemption front and center. The Bush administration would do well to begin leaking feasibility plans for wide-ranging strikes against Iran's nuclear infrastructure. We should establish bright red lines, and stick to them.

The U.S. has no real problem with the prospect of a democratic, peaceful, and law-abiding Iran developing nuclear technology, because such an Iran would be able to give the West all the reassurance it needs. But this dictatorship does not represent the people of Iran and cannot be counted upon to act in their interest. Letting the mullahs have nukes will force the people of Iran, and the rest of the world, to live in a situation of terrifying uncertainty. It is reasonable to insist that if the Iranians want advanced nuclear technology, they need to get an advanced government first.

As things stand, we are in effect offering the mullahs in Tehran both nuclear weapons and regional hegemony. Before they cash in on the offer, we should take it off the table and offer them preemption instead. Let's see what flowers of peace Ahmadinejad can pluck from a nettle when he sets his mind to it.

Mr. Loyola is a former consultant for communications and policy planning at the Department of Defense.