Time for tougher sanctions

The stakes are all the higher because this issue is a severe test of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty NPT. That grand bargain enables countries to make electricity,but not weapons,with nuclear fission. It is up for review this year. If the months tick by with Iran demonstrating to all the world just how easy it is to break the treatys rules with impunity,the NPT will finally be done for. The time has therefore come for harsher measures. There are only two options for the six countries: tougher sanctions or military action.

No governmentnot even that in Israel,whose security is most directly threatened by Mr Ahmadinejadwants to use force see article. Military strikes could interrupt Irans nuclear effort,but the gains are as uncertain as the costs. They might take out officially declared sites,but intelligence agencies know that there are others too,like the weapons-sized uranium-enrichment plant being built secretly in a mountainside on a well-guarded compound near Qom whose existence was revealed only four months ago. And even if an attack succeeded in penetrating all of Irans underground sitesa big ifit could do no more than set back Irans ambitions temporarily. After Israel bombed Iraqs Osirak reactor in 1981,Saddam Hussein redoubled his efforts to get a bomb. Military strikes would also risk provoking a wider conflict in a region that is already worryingly unstable.

More painful sanctions,then,are the only sensible alternative to leaving Iran to enrich its way to the dangerous point where it can declare it has a bomb. But Russia and Chinaespecially China,which has piled money into Irans oil and gas industries as Western companies have withdrawnare reluctant to get tough.

Self-interest is not the only reason to oppose sanctions. Those who favour military strikes and those who would do nothing both complain that sanctions wont work. Others believe that they would work,but would do more harm than good by encouraging Iranians to rally around the government at a time when the protest movement looks as though it might just bring about change.

But Irans protest movement is too little understood to place much weight on such judgments. There is virtually no independent reporting of what is happening inside the country,the demonstrators have no obvious leader and the movements fate will greatly depend on splits inside a closed clerical elite. Nor,in places where the facts are clearer,have the consequences of sanctions been predictable. Against Saddams government in Iraq,they encouraged the regime to dig in. Against apartheid in South Africa and an embryonic nuclear programme in Libya,they seem to have encouraged change.

If sanctions were used only when their consequences were certain,then they would never be used at all; and uncertainty is no excuse for doing nothing,because that could be just as dangerous.

Damned if you do?

Damned if you dont

Hence the case for policies that punish the regime and spare the people. Existing sanctions have frustrated some illicit imports for its nuclear and missile programmes. Routine searches of Iranian ships and planes at foreign ports and airfields would catch moreand sting too. Banking restrictions have earned the president the ire of merchants and MPs. These can be tightened and extended. Americas Congress favours slapping a ban on gasoline imports which,given Irans shortage of refining capacity,could bring the economy to its knees. But that would allow Mr Ahmadinejad to blame outsiders just as he is about to incur the peoples wrath by cutting petrol subsidies. A bar on investment in the oil and gas industry and on weapons imports would be smarter.

Getting agreement for such sanctions will be hard,and not just because of China and Russia. Some officials in Mr Obamas team have hinted that further patience could yet be wise. Keeping the door open to talks,should Mr Ahmadinejad have a change of heart,is a good idea. But putting off harsher measures will only encourage him to press on. Despite the uncertainty of action,the price for inaction is higher.