The escalating crisis between Iran and the United States over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program exposes a flaw in the Bush administration’s understanding of why Tehran wants to be a nuclear power. The nuclear quest reflects not the nature of the clerical government but rather the national interest as perceived by whomever rules Iran.

It predates the 1979 revolution and is likely to continue beyond the Islamic Republic’s clerical rule.

Threatening Iran with military action will only increase the insecurity of the regime in Tehran. It provides the clerical regime with an excuse to exploit nationalistic sentiments, diverting attention with serious domestic problems facing the regime. If the United States does not want the Islamic Republic to develop nuclear weapons, why not negotiate with Iranians as we propose to do with the North Koreans? Why keep threatening Iran and intensifying Tehran’s perceived need to go nuclear?

Analysts have been unable to predict with certainty when Iran will achieve its goal of having nuclear capability. However, nobody can deny the Iranians live in a tough neighborhood, surrounded by nuclear powers – Pakistan and India to the east, not to mention China; Russia to the north; and Israel to the west.

Iran’s former archenemy, Iraq, was close to acquiring nuclear weapons capability in 1981, less than a year after declaring war against the Islamic Republic, until the Israeli air forces struck the Osiraq reactor. Iraq’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction ended due to U.S.-led international sanctions, not because the Baathist government lacked the desire. With the Baath’s ouster, Iraq has experienced occupation by the world’s largest nuclear power, the United States.

Significantly, Iran’s nuclearized neighbors have defied international pressure to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons are an open secret and the ultimate deterrent to Arab armies. Pakistan, now among Washington’s closest allies in the war against terror but once supporting the Taliban, not only refuses to sign the NPT but has also aided other proliferators. Abdol Qadeer Khan, the “father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb,” masterminded a clandestine and hugely profitable enterprise selling technology to so-called rogue states, including Iran and North Korea. Members of Pakistan’s intelligence and military establishment worked closely with Khan and are known Osama bin Laden sympathizers.

In this regional context, any Iranian government not exploring the nuclear option would be irrational. Nuclear capability is considered necessary to thwart military action, whether by a re-assertive Iraq or the world’s only superpower whose forces are stationed next door on Iran’s eastern and western borders.

The continued double standard is problematic in opposing Iran’s acquisition of nuclear technology. Neither Israel nor Pakistan faces pressure to abandon their weapons, and even North Korea, the world’s most isolated and insular dictatorship, is treated differently than the Islamic Republic. The Bush administration favors multilateral talks and is willing to offer Pyongyang incentives to give up its nuclear capability. But it is not willing to do the same with Iran.

The only way to deal with the Iranian regime is to confront them with a unified American-European position. The advantage of this position is that it would allow the responsibility for the likely failure of diplomacy to fall where it should, in Tehran. It will take away the clerics’ strategy of dividing the West, using Europeans against Americans. Moreover, a joint American-European multilateral approach would make it far more difficult for Iran to renege on any commitments made to Europeans. Besides, it would deprive the hard-line conservatives of the opportunity to exploit American and Israeli threats to repress pro-democracy forces. The Iran question is not just about the threat of nuclear weapons but it is also the challenge of how best to promote democracy.

The regime is under pressure domestically. Despite record prices for its enormous oil output – Iran is the world’s fourth-largest producer – the economy is in bad shape, and inflation and youth unemployment both top 15 percent.

A recent poll by Iran’s state-run National Youth Organization of 16,000 young people in all 30 provinces of Iran found that 44 percent would leave the country if they could. After more than two decades of rule by the clerics, a majority of Iranians have reached the conclusion that religion and politics should be separated. History is not on the side of the clerical regime in Tehran. President Bush’s best course would be simply to allow the internal dynamics of Iran to play themselves out.

Bahman Baktiari is the director of the International Affairs Program at the University of Maine.