As I have said here before in this column, the cleanest option for liberating Iran lies within Iran itself. The various other scenarios--the U.S. military option, the Israeli military option, international sanctions--have been exhaustively debated and found, if not impossible, imperfect owing to the collateral costs, and perhaps ineffectual. Sanctions, at least in the short term, will enrich and empower the ruling elite. Military action will spur Iranian authorities to retaliate in Iraq and Afghanistan, and possibly block oil transit in the straits of Hormuz and destabilize the world economy. But if Iran's nuclear plans can be delayed, time is against the regime because of building domestic pressure.
There's a terrific July 14 exegesis in the New Republic on one method of delay: Letting Iran acquire sabotaged nuke hardware. The West has, for some time, run a coordinated campaign against Tehran's program, sowing enough damage, doubt and confusion to slow things down. Here's one of several examples cited in the article:
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