Here’s a very good piece at Foreign Affairs by Graham Allison: How to Stop Nuclear Terror. (Hat tip: Motti.) Allison argues for a “zero tolerance for nuclear weapons” policy that would require very strict international controls on the means of production, and says that the United States is not doing what needs to be done to prevent an eventual nuclear terrorist attack.

A “no new nascent nukes” approach will require ensuring that all nuclear aspirants, especially Iran and North Korea, stop producing heu and plutonium. This effort should begin under the auspices of inspections mandated by the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), including the NPT’s Additional Protocol that allows more intrusive inspections of suspected nuclear sites. But two other elements must also be added to the current system: a prohibition on the production of fissile material, and actual enforcement mechanisms. Enforcement should begin with political and economic sanctions for recalcitrant states but should also include threats and the use of military force if necessary, whether covert or overt. Enhanced export controls and greatly strengthened intelligence capabilities (especially human agents) should focus on preventing the work of nuclear aspirants and stopping sales from potential suppliers. Ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (which the Bush administration has rejected, despite support from four former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including Secretary of State Colin Powell) and the negotiation of a cutoff in production of fissile material in current nuclear-weapon states would reinforce this principle.

Iran will be a decisive test of this strand of the new strategy. The administration has declared that the United States “will not tolerate the construction of a nuclear weapon” by Iran and has elicited similar threats from its allies. American assertiveness has galvanized the IAEA to demand that Iran prove a full account of past and present nuclear activity. Unless Iran complies, the IAEA will refer the case to the UN Security Council.

Note the differences between the administration’s current approach and the “no new nascent nukes” approach proposed. The administration has named Iran a member of the “axis of evil” and threatened it with regime change. It has tried to persuade Russia to halt construction of Iran’s Bushehr light-water nuclear power plant. And it has accepted verbal declarations of support from Iran’s trading partners in Europe. The proposed strategy, in contrast, would focus on one objective only: denying Iran material from which nuclear weapons can be made. This would mean preventing Iranian enrichment of uranium or reprocessing of spent fuel to produce plutonium. With Russian President Vladimir Putin as his partner, Bush would remind Iran that in signing the NPT, it forswore nuclear weapons, and he would demand that Iran verifiably dismantle any emerging capability for enrichment or reprocessing.