Nonviolence doesn't always work

The problem with "other countries decrying the exported terrorism" is that the leadership of totalitarian countries just doesn't care. The criticism of other countries is just not on their radar screen. Think Mengitsu of Ethiopia, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot. Those kind of leaders (and the Revolutionary Guard of Iran falls into that category) are going to do what they're going to do. The great writer Saul Alinsky, in Rules for Radicals, points out that Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King were able to effectually use peaceful means of protest because the relatively free presses of the U.K. and the U.S., respectively, were covering the protests, and the citizens of a democracy were likely to be, and proved to b, sympathetic. Pictures of matriculating students in Mississippi being harassed by German Shepherds or being firehosed doesn't play well. The dictators are not sensitive to this kind of criticism, and eliminate the criticism with extreme prejudice.

As far as sanctions go those have their limits. An island nation such as Japan is much more susceptible to those than Iran. Even their, part of the decision-making process that led to the dropping of the A-bombs was that no one would have the stomach to starve out millions of people. If Iran were prevented from any imports of food, the poor would suffer disproportionately. Notice that NK's leader still banquets on his favorite shark meat while his people exist near starvation. One can bet in the case of Iran that pictures of children with distended bellies would pop up on the Internet. Now tell me, greywar, would you still favor the maintenance of "economic sanctions until it stops"? I sincerely doubt it.

Your advice might work well in some high school hallways. In the case of Iran, I like Listener2307's suggestion (below), but I would expand that from "Senior Nuclear Scientists" to the Revolutionary Guard.