A secret memo from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to White House officials reveals that the Obama Administration lacks any effective long-term strategy to deal with Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. The New York Times reports:

Several officials said the highly classified analysis, written in January to President Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, came in the midst of an intensifying effort inside the Pentagon, the White House and the intelligence agencies to develop new options for Mr. Obama. They include a set of military alternatives, still under development, to be considered should diplomacy and sanctions fail to force Iran to change course.

It’s pretty clear diplomatic options have and will continue to fail. Does anyone really believe The One is about to carry out air strikes against Iran, much less send in ground forces? He can’t even commit to Afghanistan without immediately talking about withdrawing troops. He’s going to start another military conflict?

Officials familiar with the memo’s contents would describe only portions dealing with strategy and policy, and not sections that apparently dealt with secret operations against Iran, or how to deal with Persian Gulf allies.

That tells me the leakers aren’t reckless whistle blowers looking to brag to a NYT reporter that they know something secretive. This was done to bring the lack of effective policy to the attention of the public to force change.

One senior official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the memo, described the document as “a wake-up call.” But White House officials dispute that view, insisting that for 15 months they had been conducting detailed planning for many possible outcomes regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

In an interview on Friday, General Jones declined to speak about the memorandum. But he said: “On Iran, we are doing what we said we were going to do. The fact that we don’t announce publicly our entire strategy for the world to see doesn’t mean we don’t have a strategy that anticipates the full range of contingencies — we do.”

But…

But in his memo, Mr. Gates wrote of a variety of concerns, including the absence of an effective strategy should Iran choose the course that many government and outside analysts consider likely: Iran could assemble all the major parts it needs for a nuclear weapon — fuel, designs and detonators — but stop just short of assembling a fully operational weapon.

In that case, Iran could remain a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty while becoming what strategists call a “virtual” nuclear weapons state.

According to several officials, the memorandum also calls for new thinking about how the United States might contain Iran’s power if it decided to produce a weapon, and how to deal with the possibility that fuel or weapons could be obtained by one of the terrorist groups Iran has supported, which officials said they considered to be a less-likely possibility.

So let’s see. Do I believe the public statements of a political appointee trying to cover up a PR clusterfark? Or what the Secretary of Defense wrote in a classified memo to the White House? That’s a hard one.

Pressed on the administration’s ambiguous phrases until now about how close the United States was willing to allow Iran’s program to proceed, a senior administration official described last week in somewhat clearer terms that there was a line Iran would not be permitted to cross.

The official said that the United States would ensure that Iran would not “acquire a nuclear capability,” a step Tehran could get to well before it developed a sophisticated weapon. “That includes the ability to have a breakout,” he said, using the term nuclear specialists apply to a country that suddenly renounces the nonproliferation treaty and uses its technology to build a small arsenal

The New York Times says the memo makes clear that the Pentagon is extremely concerned that the Obama Administration isn’t prepared in case diplomatic options fail. Anyone who’s paid attention to Obama’s thinking could have seen that one coming from a mile away.

Obama doesn’t expect diplomacy to fail. He thinks countries haven’t been cooperative to this point because George Bush engaged in some unilateral, cowboy foreign policy. If only we sat down for tea with the Mullahs, kissed Russia and China’s ass, and spoke in more diplomatic terms, why Iran would be singing Kumbaya and spending its money on “I (Heart) America” shirts instead.

He lives in a world of classroom theories, as I’ve said countless times before. He thinks he can talk in conciliatory terms, send a peaceful message, and flash a smile, and our enemies will simply melt like the left-wing media does. Or, as Allahpundit puts it:

The core plank of “smart power,” such as it is, has always been the Obama charm offensive. Simply by being the anti-Bush and offering an open hand to Iran, he would convince Tehran to unclench its fist and open a dialogue. Bush was the problem (he always is!) and once the problem was removed, solutions would inevitably follow. So why bother developing a Plan B?

And so here we are. About seven years after Iran’s nuclear program goes public, military officials are resorting to leaking documents to the New York Times to force the Obama Administration to develop a military contingency plan.