On Monday, the Obama administration revamped the policies governing the nation’s nuclear arsenal, narrowing the circumstances under which the United States would be willing to use nuclear weapons and committing to cease production of any new nuclear missiles.

In the Nuclear Posture Review, the official name of the policy document, the administration forswears the use of nuclear weapons – even to retaliate against another country for a biological or chemical weapons attack. It carves out exceptions for countries not following the demands of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a group that includes Iran and North Korea.

Thursday, the president will further advance his non-proliferation agenda when he signs an arms reduction agreement with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Prague.

All of these efforts are intended to drive the international community towards Obama’s vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, which he laid out in a speech in Prague last year.

It is utterly shameless, however, for the president to claim a nuclear-free world as his goal while doing nothing to confront the world’s principal nuclear threat: Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Preventing Iran from developing a nuclear bomb is by far the most important challenge facing the United States and its allies. Signing arms control treaties with Russia was important during the Cold War, when we were both adding weapons to our nuclear stockpiles and faced the possibility of a nuclear war. Now, the Cold War is over, the probability of a nuclear war with Russia is extremely remote, and the overwhelmingly large number of nuclear weapons still possessed by both countries makes all but the most drastic reductions in arms meaningless.

Meanwhile, a nuclear-armed Iran has the potential to unleash a new Cold War in the most instable region in the world. If Iran acquires a nuclear bomb, its neighbors in the Middle East will be under tremendous pressure to develop similarly dangerous weapons. Given Iran’s track record of supporting terrorism, there is also a real possibility nuclear materials may eventually fall into the hands of terrorists groups.

Furthermore, Iran has stated the destruction of Israel as its official goal. If it eventually comes to posses a nuclear bomb, there is no reason to believe it will restrain from using it against the Jewish state.

Despite these grave consequences, President Obama has been dangerously unserious about confronting the Iranian threat. He seems to be operating under the assumption that, by reducing our own nuclear stockpile, the U.S. can set a good example the rest of the world will follow.

This is a gross miscalculation. For a year, the White House has offered to begin negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, an offer Iran has steadfastly refused. This is because the Iranian nuclear program is offensive, not defensive, in nature. Thus, nothing we do or say will alter their ambitions.

The only way to prevent Iran from moving forward with its weapons program is to cut off its energy supply by blocking refined gasoline from going into the country, support Iranian dissidents trying to overthrow their government, or carry out a targeted military strike. So far, the administration has shown no interest in any of these steps.

Instead, it has called only for “sanctions that bite.” President Obama has expressed hope such sanctions could be imposed within weeks. However, his administration only just last week got China to announce it is ready to begin discussing what type of sanctions should be imposed. As China is one of five countries with veto power over U.N. Security Council resolutions, its support is critical.

Thus Iran is moving rapidly toward developing a bomb, possibly by next year, and the U.S. is bogged down in negotiations at the U.N. that could last weeks. Whatever we are eventually able to muster out of the Security Council will likely not be an effective deterrent. It surely will not include the blockade of refined gasoline. The U.N. has already enacted three different sanction regimes against Iran over the past four years, all to no avail.

It is difficult not to conclude, then, that the administration, despite its insistence to the contrary, is ready to accept an Iran with nuclear weapons. Perhaps the president feels like that the cost of containing Iran is less than the cost of taking decisive action against the regime.

The logical result is that U.S. inaction will spur the Israelis, in the interests of their survival, to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities on their own. The aftermath of such a strike would be brutal for Israel, which is already hated in the region. Yet, it is hard to see how the Israelis have any other choice. When the U.S. refuses to accept the responsibilities that come with its position of global leadership, someone has to step up.

Tray Smith is a freshman majoring in economics. This is the last column in his series.