Ashton Carter: Military action must be viewed as a component of a comprehensive Iran strategy

Ashton B. Carter, Co-Director of the Preventive Defense Project at Harvard and Stanford Universities, has a new paper in which he argues: "Military action must be viewed as a component of a comprehensive strategy rather than a stand-alone option for dealing with Iran's nuclear program. But it is an element of any true option. A true option is a complete strategy integrating political, economic, and military elements and seeing the matter through to a defined and achievable end. For any military element, the sequel to action must be part of the strategy because the military action by itself will not finish the problem of Iran's nuclear ambitions once and for all." The paper is part of a series published by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) on alternative strategies for dealing with Iran's nuclear program called "Iran: U.S. Strategic Options." Read the full paper here.