Since he is not a commentor on this site I think I can safely say it: He's nuts.

He is advocating "swift, massive, devastating force that decapitates the regime—but no occupation." That is absolutely batshit crazy. He wants to plunge an already unstable country of 60 million people, that is a major supplier of the worlds oil, into total chaos. On either side of this country there are significant U.S. forces who would be targets for a bunch of people who would be really pissed off at the people who bombed them back to the stone age.

If Mark Steyn thinks this is such a wonderful idea, the first thing he needs to do is join the Army and volunteer to be on a front line unit guarding the Iraq-Iran border in the Shia area of Iraq and make damn sure he sitting on the border in his unarmored humvee with his M-16 before the bombing starts. And all you people who agree with him need to get down to your local recruiters today, because we are going to need lots of IED and RPG fodder to "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" if we do such a reckless, stupid and insane thing.

Oh yeah, and for those of you who think it is a good idea, but think my wife is doing just fine defending your sorry deluded asses, at least send me some money to pay for the $6 plus a gallon gas that would surely result.

Post an article from a credible journalist who actually has facts rather than inventing them, and it might be worth discussing. Every time the VC gives Steyn a plug, it is to its own discredit.

I am afraid that neither of these initial comments are responsive.

Just how, pray tell, am I supposed to respond to Steyn's analysis? His "solution" is no solution at all. He advocates an aggressive, illegal war that violates the Geneva Convention, international law, treaties that are binding on the U.S., and all western concepts of "Just war". Where do I begin a "serious political discussion" of such a proposal? By saying that if the Congress approved of or the President ordered such an attack they would be committing a war crime on par with those committed by Nazi Germany and Japan in World War II?

Don't throw it out there for discussion and not provide us a clue on what your view of it is. Are you defending his position? Under what legal theory, either under international law, or if you don't believe in that, U.S. law and the Constitution, would such an attack be justified?

If decapitation with no occupation is such a credible option, maybe we should have tried it in Iraq.

"It’s up to the Iranian people how nutty a government they want to live with, but extraterritorial nuttiness has to be shown not to pay."

Here's where the narrative goes wrong. Even *assuming* this was possible(which isn't), this type of invasion would do absolutley nothing to achieve it's stated goal. It would cause a huge spike in nationalistic fervor in Iran. Not only that, the lesson they would draw from it wouldn't be "Oh gee, we best not interfere in geopolitics lest the US slap us down." It would be "Shucks, now we *really* need nukes because this crap never happens to states with a nuclear deterrent."

I think the "bomb them to oblivian" stategy is actually a sound one for the defense of the US. Steyn is a common sense writer. The stategies he espouses make a lot of common sense. Either we nip this in the bud now, or wait until it is a far thornier issue for some future generation of Americans.

The US spent trillions between the 50's and the 80's to build a truly feasome offensive capability. We have managed to hamstring ourselves into being afraid to use it. If this Iranian nuke issue is not dealt with very soon, I am afraid the decision to use it will be thrust upon us. It will be either that, or surrender.

As for the resulting oil difficulties, that issue will also need to be addressed sooner rather than later. Again, we have managed to hamstring ourselves into not exploiting the still abundant natural resources we have here in the US and have painted ourselves into this corner.

I think we just go ahead and bomb the crap out of them. Let them pick up the peices and hopefully learn that they can have whatever government they want, but will pay the consequences again and again if they choose one which decides to be beligerent(sp?) to US interests in the future.

The problem with the 'chickenhawk' sneer (comment 2) is that it so obviously applies to the sneerer as well. Try this argument on for size:

<blockquote>If Freder Frederson thinks this is such a terrible idea, the first thing he needs to do is sign up as a 'human shield' and volunteer to be on a front line unit guarding an Iranian nuclear site and make damn sure he's sitting in front of the gates in his anti-Bush t-shirt with his protest sign before the bombing starts. And all you people who agree with him need to get down to your human shield recruiting stations today, because we are going to need lots of human shields to not fight them over there so we can one day fight them over here if we do such a reckless, stupid and insane thing.</blockquote>

I'm quite serious. If 10,000 or 20,000 Americans, some of them famous, were stationed in or near all the likely targets, Bush would not be able to attack Iran. So why haven't you signed up yet, Freder? Too gutless? Or just too hypocritical to notice that your argument against Steyn applies equally well to you?

Unnamed C-C, Luttwak's argument strikes as much more far-fetched than Steyn's. It took the US four years during WWII to create an atomic weapon, and the progression of technology and the easy access to information (of the AQ Khan variety) makes it seem very plausible that Iran would be able to produce a weapon in a similar amount of time.

The point about the refineries has more to do with cost than know-how -- Iran lost a lot of refineries during the Iran / Iraq war (thanks, in large part, to the US) and it's cheaper for them to export oil / import gasoline than to build new refineries themselves.

Wishful thinking aside, there's no hard evidence that suggests that either Iran can't develop a bomb or that the regime will somehow implode before they can finish one. Of course, when they do have a bomb, we'll have hard evidence in a large crater in the middle of Jerusalem. Considering the implications of being wrong about Iran's nuclear capabilities, forced disarmament of the type Steyn suggests is a more reasonable course of action than wait-and-see.

I don't understand how we ever ended up with a National Intelligence Estimate that says it will take 10 years for Iran to have the bomb when it's just common sense to everyone on the Internet that it can be done much faster. Did the CIA analysts not read enough blogs?

I can't figure out how to do the link here (feel free to discount my opinion accordingly), but Thomas Friedman has a pretty amazing op-ed in today's New York Times. Friedman, of course, was intially a big supporter of the Iraq war. His argument today is basically this: it's better to have a nuclear Iran than to try to let the Bush administration take military action against Iran, because the Iraq experience both limits our options (in terms of resources and alliances) and proves that the administration is fundamentally incompetent at this sort of thing.

Not casting blame for the situation is one thing, but does anyone realistically believe the Mullahs of Iran would be so overtly pursuing nuclear arms if they lived nextdoor to a sanction-free Iraq? I think this point is given scant weight by Steyn, and, though I'm a supporter of the Iraq war, I don't think the political opportunity it handed Iran in this situation can be overlooked (as I think it is by Steyn in this piece).

That said, I'm a student of East Asian history, not Middle Eastern, so from what I've studied this situation seems to have some parallels with the regional alliance balancing that went on during the Korean War. If you accept that a belligerent Iraq had been a fairly reliable restraint on Iranian meddling throughout the middle east, than it building a strong, pro-American Iraq seems doubly important. Prior to WWII, Russia's expansion into Asia had certainly been thwarted by the expansion of Japanese power following the Russo-Japanese war. It was an ugly balance, but after defeating Japan and removing their army from the balance, we quickly realized the importance of reprojecting their influence in an anti-communist way to counter Mao and Stalin.

Though I cringe at parallels to the occupation of Japan and that of Iraq, I think the broader need to turn both countries into powerful, independent allies against a larger threat applies. If you're looking for a long term solution to this problem I think you have to look at whether you can rehabilitate Iraq quick enough to make it a credible counter to Iranian power before Iran gets a bomb.

Perhaps other VCers who are more knowledgeable on the subject of middle eastern history can tell me whether I'm completely wrong or not.

Talking about nut-jobs, Tom Friedman thinks we are safer with nuclear Mullahs than we are with President Bush! Any one who would rely on the tender mercies of Ahmadinijad and Khameni are by defition nut-jobs.

The arguments for preemptive war always boil down to "we can't take the chance." Repeat it until you believe. "We can't take the chance. We can't take the chance. We must murder the leaders of this country because we can't take the chance."

If Hersh told me that it is day time, I would look out the window to check. His track record for accuracy is not very good, to put it mildly. As for India and Pakistan, the problem is not necessarily that a political entity located in Iran is acquiring nuclear weapons, the problem is the nature of the regime that is acquiring nuclear weapons. The current Iranian regime is an aggressive, theocratic regime that supports terrorism around the world, has perpetrated attacks upon the US and our allies and claims that it will be the leader of the Islamic world in a "clash of civilizations" with the West. None of those characteristics are present in India or Pakistan. Likewise, we are not concerned that Great Britain, France or Israel have nukes because the nature of the governments of those states indicated very strongly that the nukes will not be used except in self-defense and certainly not agains the US or our allies.

Randy,

I know you detest the Bush equals Ahmadinejad caricature, but please help me on the following:

Bush has said he would not rule out using nukes against Iran. Ahmadinejad says the same.

Bush has said he sees this war against Islam through religious lenses in various ways, though not directly so on most ocassions. In fact, Bush has said his invasion of Iraq was decided upon speaking with his "Father"--who he pointedly said was not GHW Bush. Ahmadinejad says this far more explicity, but he is in a far more obvious theocratic culture.

Bush has pushed the bounds of suppressing free speech at events he attends, has pushed the bounds of executive power over the 4th Amendment, and condones (by his actions) the use of torture. I'm sure if I googled a bit I could find how Ahamdainejad has done far worse in his shorter tenure, though I am well aware that Iran's government over the years have done worse before his time.

The point is that the Bush equals Ahmadinejad remains at worst an unhelpful caricature that I too reject. However, I remain concerned that Bush has shown himself to be both incompetent and foolish when he is not mendacious. This is not someone I want leading the brigade Mark Steyn is speaking of. Further, Steyn's thoughts sound somewhat like my initial, now discarded, thought of going into Iran, destroying the facilities producing nukes, and getting out. I did not call for decapitation of the Iranian government for concern that the chaos would be worse than the government. I have also come to the view that the Iranian government says these horrible things about Israel and the West because there is a significant number of people in Iran who are restless against the theocracy, something one did not, for example, see in Germany in say 1938 or 1939.

Final comment: Steyn can't past his own caricatures of the liberal-socialist crowd supposedly embracing the mullahs. If Steyn had any true knowledge of the 1979 period in which the mullahs took over Iran, he'd know most leftists were appalled at the Ayatollahs taking over and placed high hopes in Bani Sadr, the interim president--who was almost immediately run out of Iran within an inch of his life. Feminists were appalled at the Ayatollah as well. Steyn never quite mentions that the great enabler of Iranian mullahs was one particular US president named Ronald Wilson Reagan, who winked at Israeli arms sales to Iran within a week of taking over (which is a piece of evidence that suggested to some that Reagan made a pre-election deal with the Iranian government to have the hostages released on his Inauguration day)--and then of course directly provided arms to Iran through the Ollie North-John Poindexter-Michael Ledeen network. Just check the Schultz and Weinberger diaries to show the falseness of the belief that Reagan and Bush were out of the loop. And as for SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, check out Amnesty International's reports on SAVAK during the 1970s and how they went into foriegn nations, including the US, kidnapped exiles back to Iran, tortured and killed them. Just for starters.

The problem with the 'chickenhawk' sneer (comment 2) is that it so obviously applies to the sneerer as well. Try this argument on for size:

I have the right to make the chickenhawk sneer because I am making direct sacrifices for George and Don's excellent adventure. My wife is on her second tour in Kuwait. It pisses me off when people who have not sacrificed one iota for this war are so ready to put even more people in harm's way as long as they don't have to make any sacrifices.

Bombing and decapitating the government of Iran would inflame the entire Middle East and such an action is reckless in the extreme. Even if it was not immoral and illegal, it would still be a horrible idea.

Instead of engaging in reflexive knee jerk "oh steyn is one of them let's call him a nut," I share Prof. Barnett's hope that commenters actually address the FACTS and the ANALYSIS.

I didn't just call Steyn a nut. I clearly stated why I think Steyn's idea is insane (the clincal term I used was "batshit crazy"). Destroying the political infrastructure of a country, especially in such a volatile region of the world, and then just standing aside and hoping it works out for the best, is the definition of batshit crazy. And no matter what the people of Iran think of their government, they are going to be even the less enamoured of the people who are raining death and destruction down on them.

Iran does not feel bound by what you people consider "international law." Was it "illegal" and in violation of some Swiss treaty to take the US Embassy? To call for the murder of Salman Rushdie? To bomb innocent people in Buenos Aires?

Yeah, that's a real good eighth grade argument for justifying an illegal war--well they did bad things so we are justified in doing bad things too.

1) It's interesting that most of the folks above who attack Steyn offer no advice of any kind about what, if anything, the US should do about Iran's development of nuclear weapons. I am left to assume that they fall into the "What me worry" camp, or to put it more politely, that they believe "We can live with a nuclear Iran."

2) There are two reasons for asserting that "We can live with a nuclear Iran." The first is that the Iranians are not aggressive and don't threaten other states. I don't think I need to respond to this. I am not aware of any other nuclear power threatening to nuke its neighbors (as the President of Iran recently threatened Israel.) The second is that, as Rob B. puts it, we can "contain" Iran. This bears much closer inspection.

3) On the one hand, we have the statements of the President of Iran that he would be prepared to sacrifice tens of millions of Iranians in order to exterminate all the Israelis in a nuclear war. We have other statements from him and other Iranian leaders supporting martrydom and boasting about their willingness to die to serve Islam versus the decadant West's fear of death. On the other hand, we have lots of westerners saying we shouldn't take seriously what the Iranian leadership is saying because at heart they are just as rational as we are.

4) So we come to a very difficult cost/benefit question. Bombing the Iranian nuclear program into dust would have serious near terms costs. Iran and its allies surely have the ability to retaliate, from stirring up trouble in Iraq to suicide bombings throughout the West. Not bombing the Iranian nuclear program into dust would have potentially far more serious long term costs, ranging from nukes slipped into the hands of AQ or other jihadists, to a nuclear war between Israel and Iran. Will we look back 25 years from now, after DC or NYC has been turned into a radioactive parking lot, and say we could have done something about this but were afraid of the costs? Anderson and Frederson, can you promise us this will not happen?

5) I take the Iranians at their word and I take their threats very seriously. However, I think we can afford to wait another few months, to give the Chinese and Russians an opportunity to stop blocking action by the UN.

All evidence points to Ahmadinejad's insanity being mostly for domestic effect.

Observer, if al Qaeda wants nukes, it has plenty of places to get them besides Iran. Pakistan is to me a very likely source, given the deep ties between the Taliban and the Pakistani intel establishment. Or they could probably get a Russian one.

There is very little evidence that we can wipe out the Iranian nuke program. Set it back, sure. But that will teach them how to make an even better-defended system, and it will tend to fulfill your prophecies about Iranian antagonism to America. And if we use tactical nukes, we are *guaranteeing* the destruction of American cities with nuclear weapons.

Of course, given the proliferation tolerated by the Clinton and Bush administrations, we are going to lose a city or two anyway. Our border security is a joke. If we really feared a nuclear Iran, we'd be fixing that. So, evidently, we DON'T fear it. And the question then becomes, what's really going on here?

Wouldn't Israel just take out Iran's nuclear capability, as it did with Iraq's?

Also, Tom Friedman is a bit short-sighted b/c Bush and his boys will be out of power in under 3 years while a nuclear Iran will be around for awhile. The Bush foreign policy leaves much to be desired (as does Tom Friedman's flat-earth foreign policy).

These are the most explosive news of the weeek. It is being reported by Sergey Kurginyan, a very well known Russian political analyst with strong Kremlin ties that:

1. Iran has already gotten several nuclear bombs from Pakistan. It probably happened during last 6 months.

2. Any bombing raid against Iran will have great difficulties to elminate Iranian missles with Pakistani nuclear warheads. They are in hardend silos build with the help of Chinese &North Korean military. Bombing Iran "nuclear facilities" does not make sense because all nuclear boms will keep coming from Pakistan that Bush administration still considers to be an important ally of US.

3.Pakistan is very advanced in the process of manufactuing nuclear warheads for Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt. Bush and the CIA do not want even to hear about it. Their policy toward Pakistan was worse than stupid. They have spent bllions of our money on clever con man/general and now Bush, Rice, the State Department and the CIA do not want to admit that they were duped.

4. Bombing Iran is meaningless if Pakistan nuclear facilities will be left standing.

5. All Pakistani nuclear bomb designs are of Chinese &Soviet origin. Non-proliferation treaty is a joke for Musharaf, Ahmadinjad, Saudis and the rest of their crowd. Islamic H-bomb paid for by Saudis is becoming a reality.

6. Ahmadinejad and his cohorts in Pasdaran (Homeini Revolutionay Guards) have created a very extensive list of Iranians (greater than 5 million) who must be arrested with some of them executed immediately after arrest. That will be the greatest cleansing of Iran from internal dissidents.

7. Ahmadinejad needs only an excuse to start the purge of dissidents. This is why he constantly invites US and Israel to attack him and his regime.

The only way to solve Iranian nuclear bomb problem and to save ourselves once and forever from Moslem H-bomb is to strike decisively at the entire Iranian leadership, all power ministries, all military and security structures. Killing 10-20 thousands of those who are the backbone of the regime during the first hour or even the first day of hostilities is more important that anything else.

Every public meeting with participation of the top Iranian leaders is a useful opportunity to cut all heads of the monster at once.
Every religious celebration with Ahmadinejad and his cabinet is an opportunity.

It is utterly stupid not to use US small tonnage nuclear warheads on Iranian leaders since that could be a very hard to forget lesson for Saudis, Pakistanis and Egyptian leaders.
This must be combined with the coordinated US attack on Pakistani nuclear installations, research labs, nuclear plants and missile factories.

Pakistan should not be left as a viable country as a penalty paid for what it has done to the rest of the world.

Arab coastline of Iran along the Arab Gulf that contains 95% of Iranian oil is populated by Arab tribes that are severely discriminated against by Iranians. It should be declared independent from Iran and it should be used for 50 years by US as a compensation for Moslem aggression with 2% of profits going to locals. It should be under US control till 2060 or later.

It's tough separate the facts from the deductions Mr. Steyn's article. But in simple terms, the "war on terror" has created a chimera, the islamofascist terrorist, that inhabits various parts of various regimes scattered across the world. Victory will only be assured when that spirit is crushed and completely extinguished.

Now that is perhaps not an ignoble goal. However, because this enemy has been completely dehumaized and tranmogrified into a spirit and belief, the only available remedies seem to be the total annihilation of vast portions of the population of several different countries immediately: the rationalization goes something like this -- these fanatics (a) don't play by any rules, (b) have no tolerance for anything that is not theirs and (c) once they become nuclear (and is that ever defined, does that mean one nuke that can only be hand delivered, does it mean one nuke that is sent by airmail, does it mean hundreds of nukes) the first thing that they will do is explode the big one either in the U.S. or in Israel? I still haven't really seen any definition of a threshold that would mean they have arrived. So, in truth, actual nuclear capability is irrelevant to the discussion. Since "they" can be trusted in any way, even the peaceful use of nuclear energy is a threat in and of itself. (I would argue that just being is sufficient for the reciprocal fatwa that our country intends to issue against each of the countries

[Please I am not an America hater; I simply do not buy into this game theory view of geopolitics.]

And we're back to an argument that is the oldest in civilization (!?); I better get you before you get me, because this town aint big enough for the two of us.

The real questions about the "long" war is whether we as a people and nation are ready to send millions of "enemies" to their maker. Because the nature of the beast is such that if you leave even one relative of a relative of a relative the jihad will survive. This is the true "holy" war. We certainly cannot be restricted by the restraints of civilization, because our enemy is not. In order to save ourselves we must first determine who we can trust, and only those ready to kill all others without remorse, mercy or hesitancy shall pass that test.

Welcome to the future. And we call ourselves an advance culture that has embraced modernity and left the primitive ways of tribalism behind?

And let's at least be honest that this will be a precision weapon cakewalk and that the Iranian people are simply waiting for us to do this.

There's a new sheriff in town and he does't have to wait for you to draw your weapon or even determine if you have a weapon (since by that time it would be too late).

I guess this is what goes for enlightened discussion of "realpolitick" on a global level these days.

And what djins will float out of their bottles when the the US unleashes a tactical nuclear strike? Unless those tactics include total annihilation.

The same people who are arguing that we shouldn't strike Iran now will be making those same arguments after we lose a large chunk of New York or San Francisco to a nuclear blast. We can strike now with conventional weapons and kill thousands or strike later with nuclear weapons and kill millions. As Steyn says, we have no good choices here.

The same people who are arguing that we shouldn't strike Iran now will be making those same arguments after we lose a large chunk of New York or San Francisco to a nuclear blast.

I have actually wondered that--not "the same people" part, but whether we'd retaliate in kind. I assume that Houston Lawyer's hypo includes proof that Iran supplied or sent the bomb in question.

There is something a little barbaric about killing a million Iranian civilians because their government killed a million American civilians. What did the incinerated Iranian women and children do to deserve their deaths?

One could argue that the Iranian civilians' deaths are the fault of their own gov't, not of ours. I don't find that terribly convincing.

The bottom line remains that if we didn't retaliate in kind, we would invite future attacks on our civilians. At any rate, I have just thought about it more than Bush or Rumsfeld would. In fact, Rumsfeld's response to an Iranian attack might be to nuke Syria, because it's a better target. (Cf. his reaction to 9/11.)

Didn't we already play this game? It's like Groundhog day. Here we go again throw the army at the problem to protect us against paranoia.

Why focus on Iran, is Ahmadinejad a nutso? Maybe, but he seems a hell of alot saner than Kimmy in North Korea. Shouldn't we be invading countries in order of priority, North Korea has a way crazier leader and is alot further along in their bomb development.

Or if its Islam that scares you (and around here lately that seems to be running up and down the flagpole), Pakistan seems like a better place for military action and de-nukification. Hell, Pakistan is why Iran might be a problem, it was Khan who gave Iran AND OTHERS their nuclear bombmaking playset. They are much closer to Al-Qaeda, though not run by a madman, the people he appoints aren't secure.

Then the question of resources comes into play, not just our army who isn't treated like a collection of human beings these days, its a tool to throw at people we are scared of. So beyond the human lives at risk we should look at $$$. Flat out can we really afford another war? Our Iraq bill isn't even finished and estimates top out at $2 trillion and more responsibility $1 trillion and change. For that cost as the front page of Something Awful said "we could have flown everyone in Iraq to America and given them each $16,000 to start their new life". This is money we could really change America with and people want to toss it out at some potential threat, which isn't even the biggest threat out there.

Sorry it isn't worth it.

I have the right to make the chickenhawk sneer

Unless you believe in a military dictatorship, you don't have the right to make the sneer. We live in a constitutional democracy with civilian control of the military, and it's not the case that civilians who don't serve in the military don't get a voice.

You can argue that more civilians should serve in the military (though the military itself seems to disagree with that idea), but that's a different issue than whether a civilian gets to participate in the debate over foreign policy.

Steyn is right about bad choice verses worse. There are worse things in life than war...how about a total economic meltdown due to a nuke in one of our cities. The last thing on earth we will be worrying about when that happens is the Geneva Convention or what anyone else thinks.

You know you people talk a good game but you are unwilling to make the smallest sacrifice to make your neo-con and imperialist dreams come true. If you want eternal and everlasting war in the middle east then let's talk seriously about paying for it and building up the military to fight it.

We need a much bigger army. Bombing Iran and just leaving it to its own devices ain't gonna cut it. We are going to need lots of boots on the ground to at, the very least, secure the Persian Gulf and the oil fields so we can keep the oil flowing. That's going to mean an occupation force of at least a million or so, and every one of them is going to be American, the Brits will be out of there. That means Increasing the active duty military by at least a million and a half or so. There is only one way to do that, and that is a draft.

And now we need to talk about paying for all this. Putting all this on a credit card just can't continue. We will need immediate and severe tax increases to pay for this military buildup, along with enforced rationing of petroleum products to deal with the inevitable disruption and price increases.

Are you all willing to sign up for this? Or are you just blowing hot air and willing to fight this war as long as your contribution just consists of typing tough words on blogs?

Unless you believe in a military dictatorship, you don't have the right to make the sneer. We live in a constitutional democracy with civilian control of the military, and it's not the case that civilians who don't serve in the military don't get a voice.

What I am sneering at are those who are so willing to put the military in harms way and support aggressive and reckless military action yet would never consider joining the military themselves and are not even willing to pay for the costs of this war, believing that some magic Laffer fairy will, at some time in the future, make the deficit go away.

There is no doubt. Analytical spectrography is incredibly accurate.

Without actual samples of the suspect countries' weapons grade fissionable material, at best we could rule out where it didn't come from. So while we probably have samples of Russian, British and French (the latter two could probably safely be ruled out without testing anyway) weapons grade uranium, I doubt we have any Pakistani, Indian, Chinese or North Korean weapons grade uranium and probably couldn't get our hands on any Iranian either.

Unless you believe in a military dictatorship, you don't have the right to make the sneer. We live in a constitutional democracy with civilian control of the military, and it's not the case that civilians who don't serve in the military don't get a voice.

I'm beginning to think that maybe a military dictatorship is what we need. It beginning to seem like the uniformed military are the only rational people we have left in government.

We are all missing the point of Steyn's article. That being by talking openly about the unspeakable, that the unspeakable perhaps may not be necessary at all. Iran seems to have no qualms about making open threats, perhaps it is wise to show that two can play that game. Oh,you say we are too civilized to stoop to their level. Unfortuanately ruthlessness can only be addressed through ruthfullness. Non-violence is an effective weapon only against adversaries who share your conscience. For some reason, I don't get the warm fuzzies that President A. and his mullah minders share our conscience.

Perhaps a better tack would be to prepare for the inevitable oil crises and strangle Irans economy through a full naval blockade of their oil exports. Sink any ship leaving their port. This would not be too pleasant for the oil consuming countries, but perhaps better than nuclear or full military strikes. We should clearly say that Iran has in effect declared war on the U.S. (which it has) and list the long list of aggressions, and proceed to starve Iran to death until their is an uprising. Support disident groups through money and hope more is not needed. Ruthless people only understand ruthless responses. It is all a matter of degree.

Randy, in answer to your question, I don't think that Steyn's argument that Iran is not a nation because it lacks the capacity to enter into diplomatic relations with other nations is correct. However, otherwise his analysis seems mostly reasonable.

To my mind his most important point is that the Embassy Seige was a formative experience for Iran - it taught them that if they made the options unappetizing, America would simply take the easy and "peaceful" road. The failure of Jimmy Carter lies behind Iran's ultra-agressive stance.

And the Iranians know that going in guns blazing is an unappealing option. We'd face a standing army larger than our own. We'd be facing a populace that is almost entirely favorable to their own nation having the bomb, both out of national pride and pan-Islamic ideals (pro-Western individuals are still often pro-bomb also from national pride). We'd draw intense ire or worse from the Iraqi Shiites, who are a majority and thus far have more or less been friendly to the US in the past 2 years, quite possibly plunging Iraq back into chaos. There'd be ire throughout the arab world, feeling that an Islamic nation should have the bomb, possibly leading to a US-backed regime or two having serious troubles. All of this said, a nuclear weapon in the hands of Iran may well be something which is simply unacceptable. And as noted, it would be a bargaining chip we would have no counter to to slowly bend the world to their ways.

Inspector C: do you *really* need spelled out to you what's crazy about using massive military force to take out a regime, and then just going home, leaving destruction, chaos, and vengefulness in your wake?

Consider these assumptions:
1. This is the only way to go (I admit, it's arguable).
2. You're biggest concern is American lives and interests.

If you agree with the above two (I do), then your above comment is moot. In other words, yes, I do need you to explain it to me. Side bar - vengefulness is not the goal - destruction of a dangerous regime (making it non-dangerous) IS the goal. All other considerations are secondary.

TV (Harry)

Anon Lib,

You know, it's interesting that you complain about Steyn's article by pointing out that "Decapitation of the Iranian regime and destruction of its military would likely result, at least temporarily, in another failed state in the heart of the Middle East, one that would function as a safe-haven and launching pad for terrorists."

What makes this point interesting, is that this is entirely what Bush has been trying to avoid in Iraq for the last 3 years. Yet you and your ilk make the same complaint.

Go in and remove a regime and help it become free? No, can't do it. Go in and remove a regime and leave it alone? No, can't do it.

Tell me, please what CAN we do then?

TV (Harry)

And another thing. Anon Lib's post was a rehash of why an idea is not good. How about some ideas from Anon Lib (and other Libs) about what TO do?

TV (Harry)

This should lead us to some pretty serious skepticism about the reliability of our intelligence concerning Iran's nuclear weapons, both (a) the extent of their nuclear programs and (b) their location.

Would you rather we wait until we have proof, as in a smoking crater in Tel-Aviv? What then, when we could have avoided it?

TV (Harry)

When someone comes up behind you, and says, "I have a gun. Give me your money". Do you turn around and say, "I don't believe you"?

Are you willing to take whatever consequences this action imposes?

TV (Harry)

To the Left, the shah was a high-profile example of an unsavory U.S. client propped up on traditional he-may-be-a-sonofabitch-but-he’s-our-sonofabitch grounds: in those heady days SAVAK, his secret police, were a household name among Western progressives, ...

Glad to know that whatever the SAVAK was, it was not so bad.

To assume that Iran is going to take their devastated country and suddenly become a passive good egg is just a ridiculous and dangerous assumption. It's like playing Russian Roullette with only one empty chamber--the chance of a very bad outcome is much more likely than a good one.

This is a good response. Thanks.

I would only ask why you think this way. The way I see it, if you disarm a robber by shooting his arm off, he won't be shooting you (to use a poor analogy). If you devastate the enemy, they don't have the wherewithal to use against your interests. If this is done on a repeated basis, then there will be even less threatening governments to worry about.

I know it's simplistic, but sometimes simplicity needs a better look.

TV (Harry)

What makes this point interesting, is that this is entirely what Bush has been trying to avoid in Iraq for the last 3 years. Yet you and your ilk make the same complaint.

Insp. Callahan, what do you know about me or my "ilk"? I made the very same argument before the Iraq war. I thought invading Iraq was ill-advised and poorly thought out. The Bush administration did not seem to have any real idea what they were getting themselves into. They clearly had not given much thought to the aftermath of invading Iraq. Now, over three years later, we find ourselves in the untenable position of either: 1) staying in Iraq and expending additional blood and treasure in what may turn out to be a futile attempt to hold the country together or 2) leaving and allowing the country to degenerate into Bosnian-style civil war. That's a terrible position to be in. And it pales in comparison to what a ill-advised invasion of Iran might lead to.

I think this answers a lot of the objections that have been raised here:

To Bomb, or Not to Bomb
By Reuel Marc Gerecht
The Weekly Standard
24 April 2006

WHEN I WAS RECENTLY in Paris, a French diplomat explained to me why he--and many others in the French foreign ministry--thought the United States would, in the end, bomb Iran's nuclear-weapons facilities. Owing to Chinese and Russian obstreperousness, the United Nations would probably fail to agree on any sanctions, let alone a sanctions regime with sufficient bite to intimidate the mullahs. The Europeans--at least the French, Germans, and British if not the Italians--would do a bit better, primarily because the French, despite their laissez-passer cynicism and their Gaullist pride vis-à-vis the United States, have developed a strong distaste for the clerics. The mullahs did, after all, once bomb Paris and kill a slew of prominent Iranian expatriates on French soil; and the French don't particularly care for religious Third Worlders' joining the nuclear club.

France might even lead the sanctions charge against Tehran--an astonishing historical moment for the Fifth Republic, which has usually aligned itself with Muslim Middle Eastern regimes or cultivated a profitable neutrality, especially when the United States was involved on the opposite side.

But this nouvelle différence française, alas, would not in all probability dissuade the Islamic Republic's nuke-loving theocrats. The Iranians would proceed, my French friend thought, with little of the dialogue-of-civilizations finesse and moderation they exhibited during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami--probably the period when the clerical regime made its greatest advances in its nuclear-weapons program. Iran's most politically savvy cleric, Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, is trying hard to align most of the clerical establishment behind him, even the reformist and dissident mullahs who hate his guts, to ensure the fire-breathing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, doesn't scare foreigners too much with his Khomeinist language and thought. Rafsanjani, the true father of the Islamic Republic's nuclear "energy" program, loathes the diehard ex-Revolutionary Guard Ahmadinejad, who threatens to ruin, among other things, Rafsanjani's hitherto successful strategy of dividing the Europeans from the Americans.

But Rafsanjani probably won't be able to corral Ahmadinejad. (He who triumphs at home is likely to triumph abroad, and the new president has been remarkably successful in replacing provincial governors and appears to be commencing a fresh purge of the country's universities.) In any case, the Americans will grow more anxious. Tehran will likely become even more bellicose toward the United States and Israel. Adding fuel to the fire, the clerical regime will continue to test new and improved ballistic missiles, extending range and payload.

The Iranian-American enmity will, my French friend reasoned, kick into high gear. The White House will admit that it can no longer diplomatically maintain the international processes designed to thwart the mullahs' acquisition of nuclear weaponry. George W. Bush, who has described a bomb for the terrorism-fond clerics as "unacceptable," will decide that further delay in attacking the known crucial facilities will only allow the mullahs to disburse clandestinely sufficient enriched uranium to fabricate nukes. The administration may well get a strong indication, either through its own resources or those of a foreign-intelligence service, that Iran is very near the red line in the production of weapons-grade uranium, and all the geostrategic and terrorist possibilities of a clerical nuke that now seem frightening but abstract will seem imminent. Therefore, so they reason, the Americans will let loose the U.S. Air Force and Navy even though George W. Bush, the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon really would prefer to do anything else.

So: The black-white rigor of French logic aside, does bombing the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities make sense? What are the downsides of such action? Do the negatives outweigh the good that would come from the demolition of Iran's facilities? The repercussions from an American strike, inside Iran and out, would surely be massive. The French are certainly right: The diplomatic process, no matter how hard the Europeans and the Americans may try, is coming to a close. Unless the Iranians prove more helpful than they have been since the election of Ahmadinejad and, as important, since the highly intelligent and tough former Revolutionary Guard commander Ali Ardeshir Larijani assumed responsibility for the nuclear portfolio in August 2005, it will take a near miracle to keep the diplomatic dialogue going on this subject for more than another twelve months.

TO AVOID THINKING about preventive military strikes or a public avowal of failure against the clerics, the Bush administration may have one more "realist" moment, and attempt to bribe the clerical regime into giving up its uranium-enrichment capabilities. It does not appear that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, let alone the president, really believes that "carrots" could satisfy the mullahs' two-decade-old appetite for nukes. To believe in such "realism" when it comes to the clerical regime, you have to believe that economics trumps politics among the ruling elite. Yet modern Middle Eastern--and especially Iranian--history clearly shows that ideology has run roughshod over economic pragmatism.

Oil and natural gas aside--and in Iran, even counting oil and gas--the Muslim Middle East has been an economic basket case in great part because the region's political elites have been repeatedly enamored of toxic ideas: Marxism, socialism, communism, fascism, and now increasingly Islamism, but never Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, or even the illiberal state-driven capitalisms of East Asia. Economically oriented American and European "realists" usually cite Iran's chronic unemployment, especially among the young, as a driving catalyst for pragmatic change among the ruling elite. Yet it is distinctly odd, then, that Iran's last two presidents, Khatami and Ahmadinejad, have fairly ardently advocated socialist economics in their campaigns. The Islamic Republic's dirigiste, unproductive, and corrupt economy was in great part built by revolutionary mullahs, who are its largest political and economic beneficiaries. Freer and more open trade in Iran usually means someone I know--preferably someone I know in my family--gets rich. It does not mean political pragmatism, which is what Westerners, especially Americans, think it does.

As president in the 1990s, Rafsanjani was encouraging greater European investment in Iran and his version of a "dialogue of civilizations" at the same time he was authorizing hit squads to knife and gun-down feared or disliked Iranian expatriates in Europe. If the Europeans had responded with anger, sanctions, or paramilitary actions against the Iranians and their allies who were involved with these black operations, it's conceivable the clerics would have become more pragmatic. But Europeans who believed in "engagement"--the idea that negotiation and trade produce political moderation--always won the day, so no machtpolitik lesson was ever delivered to Tehran. European engagement with Iran during Khatami's presidency certainly didn't moderate Iran's internal politics; Khatami became weaker each day after his election, and those more hotly faithful to Khomeini's vision became stronger. One can argue there was a limited "Khatami effect" on Iran's foreign policy: The killing teams stopped sojourning in Europe. But the political killings continued inside Iran, gaining in frequency.

If Rafsanjani and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's successor, Ali Khamenei--the two great, purely political clerics of the Islamic revolution--had ever been really desirous of altering American attitudes and attracting significant U.S. investment to Iran, they would have used their subsidies to the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas--all three clients of Tehran--to restrain terrorism against the Jewish state. Longstanding Iranian support for terrorism against Israel and Jews worldwide has been one of the principal obstacles to détente between the United States and the Islamic Republic. If the Iranians had behaved somewhat better in this regard, it would have gone a long way--especially under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who both were hoping at various times to see moderation among the mullahs--toward thawing U.S. trade with the Islamic Republic.

Yet the Iranians have never wavered in their support of anti-Israeli terrorists. Ideology has easily trumped commercial good sense, even when clerical Iran was at its most "liberal," when Khatami, Rafsanjani, and Khamenei regularly opined about how critical economic progress was for the health of the Islamic Republic. Furthermore, any honest review of Rafsanjani's and Khamenei's speeches and writings since 1979 would quickly reveal that both gentlemen hate the United States more than they hate Israel. Jews dominate America, of course: Rafsanjani, Khamenei, the ex-"Anonymous" CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, and the American academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the authors of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," might find chatting together about "Jewish influence" pleasant and insightful. But in the mullahs' eyes, Israel's evil is subordinate to America's "world-devouring arrogance." We're not the "Great Satan" just because three million Jews live in America. And Rafsanjani's and Khamenei's views on this subject are the coin of the revolutionary clerical realm.

All that said, the gut-wrenching nature of contemplating a preventive military strike against the mullahs' nuclear facilities may still be enough to push the Bush administration to explore secretly the possibility of a "grand bargain" with Tehran. There are those in the administration who really do believe that the clerics want the nukes primarily because they're scared of their neighbors, some of whom (the Israelis and the Pakistanis) have atomic weapons. This line of argument has become a trope for the geostrategic and dovish crowds. They don't see the mullahs' pursuit of power as the manifestation of God's will via nuclear weaponry in the hands of Iran's clerics, Islam's truest vanguard. Such "realists" are always irretrievably secular. Yet, it's a good bet that Secretary Rice doesn't share this perspective: She seems to think that Iran's ruling clerics see themselves in a good-versus-evil struggle where there is no possibility of permanent compromise. And Secretary Rice would be right in that assessment.

Even if the secretary still has strong "realist" instincts--she is, after all, a disciple of Brent Scowcroft, Bush One's national security adviser, and she is surrounded in the State Department by foreign service officers who live to negotiate--it won't matter. The Iranians won't play ball. If the Bush administration tries a Libyan or North Korean approach, it will look nearly as foolish as President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright did when they tried in 2000 to apologize their way into getting President Khatami to engage Washington and to cooperate with the FBI in its search for the Iranian culprits behind the deadly Khobar bombings in Saudi Arabia in 1996.

The Clinton administration's handling of that affair remains the single dumbest American approach to the mullahs since 1979. The hapless, not-so-secret negotiating efforts of Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski with the provisional Iranian government in 1979--which was a major factor behind the U.S. embassy's seizure and the collapse of the moderate government of prime minister Mehdi Bazargan--and the not-so-secret trip in 1986 to Tehran of Reagan's national security adviser Robert McFarlane both made more sense than Clinton's attempt through apologia to break bread with and divide the Middle East's premier power politicians. Although the Bush administration mercifully doesn't have the same penchant for apology as its predecessor, one should have enormous sympathy for the current national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, if he gets tasked with the job of reaching out to the Iranians one last time. The American ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, has a less dangerous assignment.

ALTHOUGH THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION has no desire to have the Great Iran Debate--just mentioning a preventive military strike at the State Department or the Pentagon is not a socially acceptable, polite thing to do--the clerical regime will probably force the administration to have it soon. The recent reporting that suggests the Bush administration--or at least the dark side of it in the Pentagon and the vice president's office--is already gearing up for a possible military confrontation with the clerics is, to put it mildly, at odds with the diplomacy-centered, keep-the-handcuffs-on-hawkish-U.N.-ambassador-John-Bolton approach of the State Department, which dominates Iran policy. Although this may change, the Pentagon and the vice president's office seem to have little role in the administration's Iran discussions, and in neither place do you find bombing enthusiasts or strategists trying to game scenarios reminiscent of the run-up to the 2003 war against Saddam Hussein.

The Pentagon's Central Command, which handles the Middle East and is led by General John Abizaid, has no doubt begun to look at the theoretical question of what preventive military strikes might entail, as well as what might happen in the region if the Islamic Republic were to go nuclear. (For example, would the United States be obliged to change its deployments in the region to handle a more aggressive, nuclear-armed clerical regime?)

This is, of course, what prudent, farsighted generals do even if they know--as General Abizaid surely does--that his civilian bosses are as allergic to the use of preventive military strikes against the clerics as are probably most senior military officers in CENTCOM. It in fact would be negligent of Abizaid not to look down the road and realize that the sophisticated reflex to dismiss the possibility of preventive military strikes could change overnight if the United States were actually staring in the face a rabidly anti-American theocracy on the threshold of nuclear weaponry.

In any case, whether Abizaid thinks striking is a good or bad idea is irrelevant: Military men are obliged to think about the strategic ramifications of the Islamic Republic's going nuclear. It doesn't take great powers of prognostication to see that the Iran conversation will remain theoretical and easy until that point when the United States really believes that the mullahs are on the verge of obtaining the bomb. From that moment forward, the conversation in Washington, which really hasn't been that serious, will become deadly serious. (No one in the government or out ought to have much confidence in CIA estimates about when Iran will have weapons of mass destruction. The current five to ten-year estimate could die overnight.)

Critical point: The Iranians--not the Americans--control this discussion and are circumscribing the diplomatic avenues the Bush administration is still determined to pursue. Tehran's mullahs are unlikely to allow us any running room. Rafsanjani's and Ahmadinejad's recent statements about Iran succeeding in enriching uranium (level unspecified) and its readiness to begin industrial-scale production mean, among other things, that the clerical regime believes it now has the advantage (which it does).

The United Nations has again proven incapable of handling this challenge (the Russians and the Chinese will, so the Iranians believe, continue to block sanctions). And the Iranians have little reason so far to fear the Europeans. The Germans have repeatedly shown themselves uncomfortable with tough sanctions against Tehran, and the recent comments made by the German foreign minister recommending direct U.S.-Iranian talks signify, translated into Persian, that the Germans really don't like the sanctions approach, even when pushed by France. Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad are also saying that it's too late; you can't bomb us now since we've crossed the enrichment threshold. This certainly isn't true--the Iranians don't have enough centrifuges constructed and running--but it could become true, much faster than the Bush administration would like.

The clerical regime may well be calculating that they cannot adequately maintain the secrecy of their nuclear-weapons program. The opposition group the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq exposed their highly secretive efforts in 2003 (and earlier warned foreign-intelligence services about it) and quite likely will do so again when Iran is farther down the road to weaponization. So the regime might as well be as public as possible about basic enrichment--that is, get as many centrifuges constructed, running, and enriching to non-weapons grade under IAEA observation though not control, and thus allow a very rapid break-out to weapons-grade enrichment whenever the ruling clergy chooses. By doing it so publicly, in an in-your-Western-face manner, the mullahs hope to reinforce public approval and tap into Iranian nationalism to buttress the regime. The mullahs are under no delusion about their small base of support in the population; Ahmadinejad, on a recent Caspian Sea meet-the-people tour, was blasted with popular dissatisfaction. The new president's honeymoon appears to be already over.

The Iranians are making the astute call that if they can get the West to acquiesce now--if they can get the West to believe they really are on the verge of industrial-scale enrichment--then they're much safer than if they drag this out. America is, so CNN says (and the Iranian English-speaking elite faithfully watch CNN), tied down in Iraq. Politically, President Bush is obviously weak. Down the road, circumstances might not be so propitious. And the Iranian nuclear-weapons program is now technically probably ready to advance. Add it all up, and the current Iranian push, coming from both Rafsanjani, who the Europeans had surreally hoped would stop this program, and Ahmadinejad, is tactically brilliant. Unless Rafsanjani's and Ahmadinejad's rhetoric and actions now provoke more intense European resolve (and if this doesn't do it, nothing will), no sanctions strategy is likely to congeal effectively.

And the Bush administration hasn't been helping. It has been loath to ramp up the specter of military strikes to reinforce a sanctions-threat in European-Iranian nuclear negotiations. The president would actually be wiser to allow Seymour Hersh's "wild speculation" in the New Yorker to be seen as acceptable contemplation in his White House. This might cause British foreign minister Jack Straw to go apoplectic, but it would send the correct signal to Tehran, with its finer appreciation of power politics. So given the exhaustion of diplomacy, should we prepare to bomb? Or should we give it up, admit we can't stop the clerics from getting the nuke, and try to contain and undermine the Islamic Republic's atom-armed theocracy as best we can?

THE REASONS NOT TO BOMB are many, and some are pretty compelling. The thoughtful anti-bomb critics believe such an action is unfeasible (too many possible sites to attack and therefore no guarantee of success without a land invasion), too convulsive (the Iranian people will rise in nationalist indignation; the Europeans and the rest of the "international community" will go ballistic), too dangerous (Iran will unleash a small army of clandestine agents to smite us in Afghanistan and Iraq, ending America's Iraq project and costing numerous American lives in both countries; reborn Persian terrorist holy warriors might strike us everywhere else), and politically unwise (we will silence the Iranians who want change in their country since the nation will rally around the mullahs). Let us look first at the arguments that really shouldn't scare us.

* If we bomb, we will kill off the internal Iranian opposition. This is perhaps the weakest argument against a preventive strike. Although it would be nice to have Iranian society evolve quickly into something more democratic than theocracy, the odds of this happening before the regime gets a nuke aren't good. It could be decades before this happens; preventive military strikes would have the immediate benefit of delaying Iran's possession of nuclear arms for a few, perhaps several, years. In any case, it is highly unlikely that an American strike would arrest Iran's intellectual progress away from theocracy. This process has been going on since the 1980s--Iran's loss to Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war was an important catalyst to questioning and dissent.

It's much more reasonable to assume that the Islamic Republic's loss to America--and having your nuclear facilities destroyed would be hard to depict as a victory--would actually accelerate internal debate and soul-searching. It's unlikely that many Iranians would feel any affection for an American attack--we would certainly see rampant nationalist and Muslim indignation from many quarters--but the discussion would be much more complicated than just anti-Americanism. It would be, as it was during and after the Iran-Iraq war, double-edged, and probably painful for the ruling clergy, who have not been beloved for a very long time. And the reasons they are not liked are felt each day.

This would not change with an American attack against nuclear facilities. Iranians' growing criticisms of their own society, especially those criticisms advanced by folks who were, or still are, loyal to the revolution--most famously Grand Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, the "defrocked" onetime successor to Khomeini--simply cannot be blown away by foreigners' actions, any more than, in an American context, left-wing intellectuals' concern about social justice, or American blacks' revulsion at the indignities of state-sanctioned racism, could have been stopped by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It's likely that an American attack on the clerical regime's nuclear facilities would, within a short period of time, produce burning criticism of the ruling mullahs, as hot for them as it would be for us. This is not to say that American attacks would produce a counterrevolution. Not at all. It's just to say that such attacks would not make most Iranians love the mullahs more.

An attack would surely introduce uncertainties into Iranian politics, something the clerical dictatorship has tried to avoid. It's worthwhile to remember what happened after the USS Vincennes accidentally shot down a civilian Iranian airliner in 1988. Iranians appeared furious. Even among those who hated the clerical regime--even among Iranian expatriates who'd been driven from their homeland by Ayatollah Khomeini and loved the United States profoundly--vengeful wishes were common. (More than a few astute folks in America's counterterrorist community have long believed that Pan Am 103's destruction above Scotland in 1989 had its origins in a clerical decision to strike back for the Vincennes action. Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, who had his own desire for vengeance against the Americans, entered the picture later.)

Yet within a fairly short time, you could see that many Iranians had flipped: They were almost thankful. Most seemed to assume America had blown the airplane from the sky intentionally, yet they were now giving credit to America for helping to break Khomeini's will to continue the war against Saddam Hussein. America had chosen sides--in most Iranian eyes, atrociously in favor of the Butcher of Baghdad--but the war had been stopped. The detested war-loving mullahs had been broken.

Mutatis mutandis, the emotions surrounding an American strike against the regime's nuclear facilities would be complicated. With or without an American strike on the clerics' nuclear sites, the advance of democracy in Iran will likely have many anti-American overtones (less perhaps than elsewhere in the Muslim Middle East, since theocracy has improved America's image in Iran enormously as the mullahs have failed to fulfill the promises of the Islamic revolution). A surge in anti-Americanism, even if it lasted long, would not save the regime from the intellectual aftershocks of a U.S. attack on its nuclear-weapons facilities. Iran's political and democratic dissidents, especially among the clergy and the left-wing lay crowd, have often been very anti-American. They would no doubt remain so even as they found themselves questioning whether the regime had lost its mind getting into a war with the world's only superpower.

* If we bomb, the Iranians will rise in righteous indignation and a new generation of anti-American Shiite holy warriors will be produced (as if the Sunni terrorists weren't bad enough).

Iranians might rise in righteous indignation. Nations don't like to be bombed. But there is simply more to it than that. If we delayed Iran's acquisition of nuclear weaponry by even three years, that might turn out to be a great success--if in those three years something happened that would have been vastly worse if Tehran had had nuclear weapons. If Saddam Hussein had developed nuclear weapons by 1991, then he might still be in Kuwait, and we would have a rabid predator loose in the Middle East. This didn't happen, it strongly appears, because the Israeli attack on the Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 and/or the American attack on Saddam in 1990-91 and subsequent sanctions derailed his plans for weapons of mass destruction. Some similarly dangerous situation could arise now, causing us to thank God that the Islamic Republic didn't have a nuke. Under such circumstances, whether the Iranian people were angry at us, short-term or even long, would really be a secondary issue.

And as explained above, anger at the United States is likely to be double-edged, cutting toward the ruling clergy as well as us. We shouldn't become paralyzed from fear of Shiite death-wish believers coming at us again. It's possible. What makes a terrorist Muslim holy warrior is usually complex and personal, and an American airstrike on Iranian nuclear facilities might provide that special explosive ingredient to some.

However, it's not likely, and it's especially not likely that the clerical regime would be able to produce and export these holy warriors as an automotive company does cars. The Islamic Republic ceased to produce holy warriors by the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988. (The death of Khomeini in 1989 also stole a charismatic element from the brew that had produced an amazing number of young men who lived to die.) Even in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is just across the border from Israel, Shiite holy warriors have receded--at least those who want to immolate themselves and others for the cause. This disease is obviously alive among the Sunnis, but it seems extinguished among the Shiites.

Blame Khomeini, the Iran-Iraq war, and nationalism. The type of millenarian hope that many faithful Iranian men had at the beginning of the revolution died out in the war and in the unjust and increasingly corrupt society the mullahs built. Millenarian despair--the recognition that God's perfect society isn't accessible on earth but just might be accessible through a gloriously violent and fraternal death--also burned itself out in the unending, pointless slaughter of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war and the increasing pettiness and deceit of an aging Islamic Republic. There are certainly diehard true believers in Iran--Ahmadinejad appears to be one--but the internal chemistry of Iranian society doesn't produce many anymore among men under 25, the key age group for marrying a killer faith with testosterone. The potential for chiliastic rapture--the fraternity of death that young men can have most easily in brutal combat--has just dried up.

Something so secular and adventitious as an American airstrike on a nuclear facility is very unlikely to bring back that magic, that love of God and man, that can send young boys across minefields on motorcycles. The rise of a less religious nationalism in Iran is a sign of declining jihadism. Nationalism in the Sunni radical world has been in retreat (even if it still often defines the contours of "globalized" radical Islamic thought) as holy warriorism has been increasing. An offended God is a vastly more important element in jihadism than an offended nation-state. If Ahmadinejad declares that thousands of young men will sign up to become martyrs in terrorist attacks upon Americans if the United States bombs Iran, don't believe him. He's dreaming. He's having a flashback.

If opponents of preventive bombing conjure up illusions of Sunni militants--or just the "one billion plus Muslims worldwide"--outraged at American actions against the Islamic Republic, then one should remind them of the Arab and Muslim streets that were supposed to rise in jihad a half dozen times against Westerners since 1914 but didn't. Imagining Arab and non-Arab Sunnis, particularly the truly violent Wahhabi set, who hate Shiites almost as much as they hate Americans, going on the warpath on behalf of a nuclear-defanged Shiite Iran is numbingly hard, though obviously not impossible for those who believe the Islamic Republic is only a menace because America--especially President Bush--is determined to demonize it.

* If we bomb, the international community will go ballistic.

They probably would. And this is certainly a more serious limitation on American action. Americans really don't like acting alone, braving the censure of other, particularly Western, nations. Taken individually, most Americans probably don't care much what France or Germany or Spain or Italy thinks. Great Britain is the exception, especially in perilous times. Americans, particularly liberal Americans, do care, however, when "the West" isn't with us, and it probably wouldn't be with us in a bombing run on Iran's nuclear sites. As Robert Kagan tirelessly points out, the inability to project much military force inevitably starts to alter the ethics that sanction the use of force. Europe's relative military weakness now makes anti-Americanism the natural state. Would the anger be worse than what we went through with the Iraq war? Hard to tell.

America's contracting-out of its Iran policy to the British, French, and Germans--the so-called EU-3--since 2003 has made the foreign-policy elites in those countries somewhat more sensitive to American concerns and more alarmed by the clerical regime's nefarious behavior. It's hard to love the mullahs. Westerners try now and then, especially, if they can find a cleric like Khatami, who is personally appealing, at least more than Rafsanjani and Khamenei. The Islamic Republic long ago would have captured Europe's undying Third World love if it had not been for the regime's treatment of women. Although some Western female journalists have tried to depict Iranian women as liberated under their headscarves and veils, these sentiments have an uneasy time with other reporting that shows Iranian women, however strong-willed and independent, being severely abused by the regime's Islamic-law system. The phenomenal global success of Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran has also made it more difficult to view the Islamic Republic's internal ethics, particularly regarding women, benignly.

The clerical regime's behavior and rhetoric has been too dark for too long for it easily to gain sympathy in the West as an innocent Third World Muslim country being picked on by a warmongering George W. Bush. But anti-Americanism is deeply rooted in Western Europe, especially in Germany. Much of Europe came very close to sympathizing with Saddam Hussein. It's a decent bet that the longer European and American diplomacy continues on the Iranian nuclear question, the more condemnation the United States will encounter when it abandons this process, even if the process has been without content for months.

The real question remains, Is a nuclear weapon under the control of Ali Khamenei "unacceptable"? If it is, then enduring the heat of hostile European opinion ought to be sustainable. Living through the Iraq war has been an unhappy experience--for those who see the world first and foremost through a transatlantic lens, downright nerve-wracking. But the sky has not fallen. It would probably not fall--at least not in Europe--if we attacked the clerics' atomic-weapons programs.

* If we bomb, the mullahs will hit us in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Using its Revolutionary Guard and intelligence-ministry forces, the Islamic Republic could strike us in both countries. You don't need to imagine reborn Iranian Shiite holy warriors running amok to see cause for concern. If you had to pick one reason that the Bush administration would not strike the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities, this would probably be it.

It's impossible to overestimate the Iraq fatigue that now afflicts the administration. The American military is stressed out. Although it's difficult to say what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's view is--his entire civilian staff seems to have recused itself from giving a forceful opinion on the Iranian nuclear issue--the military brass will likely fight any preventive military strike against Iran for fear of the repercussions in Iraq. Their views may be unfounded, but it seems likely President Bush would hesitate to dismiss these concerns.

Ultimately, the clerical regime itself will determine whether the United States strikes its nuclear facilities. If it acts in a rash manner, deploying frightening language and new ballistic hardware, if it gets caught engaging in serious nastiness in Iraq or terrorism abroad before it has enough centrifuges up and running, then it's certainly possible to imagine the president, even the senior officers of the U.S. Army, deciding America has no choice. As we get closer to the "red line" for Iran's atomic-weapons programs, it's not at all unlikely we will concentrate on Iran's threat independent of Iraq.

Viewed calmly, Afghanistan and Iraq shouldn't make or break the decision on whether to strike Iran's facilities. In both countries, the Iranians are only as good as their proxies. It seems highly unlikely that the clerical regime would try to deploy large numbers of Revolutionary Guards and intelligence officers in open combat in either place. The Iranians would be operating without benefit of cover. (They stick out like sore thumbs in both countries.) They would be inviting U.S. attacks on Iran--and not on nuclear facilities, but on Revolutionary Guards Corps camps, military installations, and intelligence facilities. Such things are critical to the regime's survival. The regime certainly remembers that the U.S. Navy essentially annihilated the Iranian regular and Revolutionary Guard navy in one day at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. It's doubtful the clerical regime would like to repeat the experience. Indirect terrorism is the clerical way, and that's what one would expect in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

The mullahs could certainly find Iraqi and Afghan recruits to help, but whether these attacks could reach and maintain an amplitude sufficient to change the political or military fate of either country is open to question. Terrorism against Americans in either place is likely to kill the natives as well, perhaps lots of them. If the Iraqi Shia discovered that the Iranians were blowing up their women and children, there would be hell to pay for those Iranians so unfortunate as to be working in or visiting Iraq.

An Iranian offensive in Iraq would certainly stress the entire Shiite community. If the Americans were to alienate seriously the Shiites--something we have not yet done--then we could be in serious trouble. If the young radical Moktada al-Sadr were forced from the political process (there was a time for this, but that time is now past), we might see him take up arms for Iran. If he remains inside the political system, then it's unlikely he will destroy the system in which he's a player. There just isn't that level of affection, certainly not fealty, between him, his men, and the Iranians.

The same is true, probably more so, for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the dominant Shiite political party within the United Iraqi Alliance. Though formed under Iranian patronage, and no doubt still benefiting from Iranian largesse, SCIRI is an Iraqi Arab Shiite party with stronger ties now to the holy Iraqi city of Najaf than to Tehran.

The Iranian press sometimes carries stories about how the Iraqi Shia are no longer theirs. The former exiles, whom Iran once saved, are becoming adult ingrates. The Iranians are right. If in 12 to 24 months, the Iraqi political system isn't functioning and Shiite Iraqis are not committed to the system in place, then the Iranians really won't be able to hurt us in Iraq, since the country in all likelihood will have collapsed. If we bomb by then, it might be difficult to tell the difference between Iraqi-and Iranian-inspired mayhem. If the political system is working, then the Iranians will probably be, for most nasty purposes, operating alone. They will certainly be able to cause us pain, but they won't be able to bring down the Iraqi political system. And if they can't do that, then they can't really hurt us.

Which brings us to the last and most stultifying concern:

* If we bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, we cannot fully verify the damage we've done without a land invasion. And Iranian terrorist reprisals against our troops, if sustained and deadly, might force us to consider the unthinkable: a large-scale land invasion of the Islamic Republic.

The EU-3 negotiations and the IAEA inspections and deliberations have certainly made it easier to contemplate an aerial bombardment of Iran's nuclear facilities. By their actions and words, the Iranians have told us that there are certain sites that are critical to their program--especially the enrichment and conversion facilities at Natanz and Isfahan. If the Iranians had backup facilities, their dogged efforts to free these sites from IAEA control would make no sense whatsoever. We didn't know this 24 months ago, but we do now. Taking out a handful of sites such as these, even when underground, is feasible. We would have to be prepared to bomb these facilities more than once, but the United States certainly has the capacity to stop the Iranian government from continuing any substantial work on these premises. (Even if we couldn't completely collapse underground facilities using conventional bunker busters, we could certainly paralyze any above-ground efforts to repair them.)

It's also reasonable to assume that, given the enormous effort the clerical government has put into building up its program over the last 15 years (this is truly the clerical regime's Manhattan Project), if these sites were wiped out, they could not be replicated overnight. It would probably take a few years to rebuild them and their machinery. That delay might be critically important down the road, depending on events in Iran and elsewhere. It might not. The only thing for sure is that the United States would have to be prepared to bomb the clerical regime's facilities again, and the second time round, the regime would try much harder to hide these places, which would likely mean that it would take the Iranians several years to rebuild their nuclear program more securely. Overhead satellite cameras and Iranian opposition groups--especially the unpleasant but occasionally insightful Mujahedeen-e-Khalq organization, the group that publicly revealed the Natanz facility--would dog them. The CIA, too, might on occasion contribute something of value. Though this is certainly no guarantee of accurate, constant intelligence coverage, it's probably enough to make things difficult and time-consuming for the mullahs.

Bombing the nuclear facilities once would mean we were declaring war on the clerical regime. We shouldn't have any illusions about that. We could not stand idly by and watch the mullahs build other sites. If the ruling mullahs were to go forward with rebuilding what they'd lost--and it would be surprising to discover the clerical regime knuckling after an initial bombing run--we'd have to strike until they stopped. And if we had any doubt about where their new facilities were (and it's a good bet the clerical regime would try to bury new sites deep under heavily populated areas), and we were reasonably suspicious they were building again, we'd have to consider, at a minimum, using special-operations forces to penetrate suspected sites.

All of this would probably transpire over many years, perhaps a decade or more, and it certainly could go in a different direction. The regime could fall, or it could evolve in a healthy direction, from internal convulsions, but it would be unwise to allow a bloodied clerical regime to get a nuclear weapon. The United States obviously does not want to get in the same place that it was with Iraq in the 1990s, launching periodic air attacks but not knowing whether the mullahs' nuclear activities had escaped our detection. There is no way the Europeans would have the stomach for this--and probably few Americans would, either.

Terrorism is in the ruling clergy's DNA--which is one of the reasons we don't want them to get the nuke; it's even a bigger reason we don't want them to get a bomb after we've been pummeling them. And if the mullahs responded to a successful U.S. attack against their nuclear facilities with a lucky terrorist strike against a big American target overseas or on the mainland--again, it's unlikely the clergy would do this without pretty good camouflage through non-Iranian terrorist groups, and such large-scale terrorist operations are always very difficult to execute, especially with the United States and others surveilling the Iranians and their allies closely--the United States would have to respond massively against the Islamic Republic. A land invasion might not be necessary, but if the regime were to kill thousands of Americans it's hard not to envision a U.S. president asking Congress for a declaration of war and an all-out invasion of Persia.

ALL OF THIS IS FRIGHTENING. It reinforces the temptation to accept the status quo rather than going on the offensive. Inaction is the default position of "realists," which explains their staying power. However, one significant terrorist attack by an Islamic Republic protected by nuclear weapons, and many might view as necessary what had seemed reckless. If the Iranians even carried out a "minor" terrorist act--for example, blowing up a U.S. embassy and killing and maiming one hundred officials--the United States in a post-9/11 world would have to unleash hell against the clerical regime. To absorb such a hit without a massive reprisal would be to invite much worse nuclear-protected terrorism.

If the Revolutionary Guard Corps, which oversees the Islamic Republic's nuclear weapons program, were to give a wing of al Qaeda material for a dirty bomb, what would the United States do in response? The regime's past fondness for Ayman al-Zawahiri, the occasional movement of al Qaeda members through Iran both pre-and post-9/11, and the "arrest" and "detention" of some al Qaeda members in the Islamic Republic to this day are, to say the least, disconcerting. What would we do if we were pretty sure they'd ordered a terrorist attack--say, 80 percent sure--but we were 100percent sure they had nuclear-armed ICBMs?

If either Rafsanjani or Ahmadinejad were ever to follow through on their wild rhetoric against Israel with a nuclear strike--and this is certainly a possibility unprevented by either man's ethics--then the path now deemed reckless might seem, even to the dovish Europeans, in retrospect like a morally compelling course.

Deterrence theory may well work against the clerical regime, but it ought to be admitted that we have never before confronted a regime where anti-Americanism, violence, terrorism, and God's writ have been so intermarried. The Soviets in their hatreds were positively ecumenical. What we are dealing with in the Islamic Republic's ruling revolutionary elite is a politer, more refined, more cautious, vastly more mendacious version of bin Ladenism. It is best that such men not have nukes, and that we do everything in our power, including preventive military strikes, to stop this from happening.

The opponents of military strikes against the mullahs' weapons facilities say there are no guarantees that we can permanently destroy their weapons production. This is true. We can't guarantee the results. But what we can do is demonstrate, to the mullahs and to others elsewhere, that even with these uncertainties, in a post-9/11 world the United States has red lines that will compel it to act. And one nonnegotiable red line is that we will not sit idly and watch a virulently anti-American terrorist-supporting rogue state obtain nukes. We will not be intimidated by threats of terrorism, oil-price spikes, or hostile world opinion. If the ruling clerical elite wants a head-on collision with a determined superpower, then that's their choice.

No matter what happens, it is long overdue for the Bush administration to get serious about building clandestine mechanisms to support Iranians who want to change their regime. This will take time and be brutally difficult. And overt democracy support to Iranians--which is the Bush administration's current game plan--isn't likely to draw many recruits. Most Iranians probably know that this approach is a one-way invitation to Evin prison, which isn't the most effective place for expressing dissent. However we go about assisting the opposition, the prospects for removing the regime before it acquires nuclear weapons are slim.

So we will all have to wait for President Bush to decide whether nuclear weapons in the hands of Khamenei, Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad, and the Revolutionary Guards Corps are something we can live with. Given the Islamic Republic's dark history, the burden of proof ought to be on those who favor accommodating a nuclear Iran. Those who are unwilling to accommodate it, however, need to be honest and admit that diplomacy and sanctions and covert operations probably won't succeed, and that we may have to fight a war--perhaps sooner rather than later--to stop such evil men from obtaining the worst weapons we know.

Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.

Here are some quote's from Stein that are simply factually wrong:

The difference in Iran is simple: with the mullahs, there are no London escort agencies on retainer to supply blondes only. When they say “Islamic Republic,” they mean it.
- This was only true when Khomeni was in power, and even then the Iran-Iraq war caused him to abandon much of his islamic principles. Rafsanjani advocated economic modernization, and everyone one else were simply and utterly corrupt - in short "the blond whores were there as well"

At the point of expiry of the Soviet Union in 1991, the peoples of the central Asian republics were for the most part unaware that Iran had even had an “Islamic revolution”; 15 years on, following the proselytizing of thousands of mullahs dispatched to the region by a specially created Iranian government agency, the Stans’ traditionally moderate and in many cases alcoholically lubricated form of Islam is yielding in all but the most remote areas to a fiercer form imported from the south
-again this is for the most part wrong, the Central Asian and all Caucasian republics except Azerbaidzhan, are Sunni. Furthermore, they retain much of their tribal pre-islamic customs that have conveniently merged with Sufi order - a form of mysticism that is persecuted by the Shia's. In short , Iran is NOT the major religious influence in the region - Saudi Arabia and Turkey are.

As clashes of civilizations go, this one’s between two extremes: on the one hand, a world that has everything it needs to wage decisive war—wealth, armies, industry, technology; on the other, a world that has nothing but pure ideology and plenty of believers.
- As many actual statistical analysises showed -THERE IS NO CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS. It's just not there, in fact muslims are more likely to kill other muslims and animists than christians. For example in most civil wars, religion is not even correlated with the occurence of violence.

According to Gordon Prather the Iranians are not even in violation of the NPT.

I feel dirty and disgusting treating Steyn's proposal seriously. Like being a respectful dissenter to genocide or something.

You encapsulated the postings expressing the opinions about "Bombs Away" Steyn's piece.

Mr. Barnett,

I think one criticism to be found here:

"But if you divide it ideologically, the mullahs are ideally positioned at the center of the various provinces of Islam—the Arabs, the Turks, the Stans, and the south Asians. Who better to unite the Muslim world under one inspiring, courageous leadership? If there’s going to be an Islamic superpower, Tehran would seem to be the obvious candidate."

While I think cooperation between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims is possible, and they've certainly been able to coopeaate before, I believe Steyn overplays how long or how deep such a relationship could last.

There seems to be sufficient friction between traditional Sunni states like Saudi Arabia, and states like Iran that would tend to prevent to formation of a pan-Islamic state like the kind Hussein had in mind during the 80s and 90s. And, from what I gather, a number of Arabian states like UAE and Saudi Arabia are quite actively pushing for the United States to engage Iran in some way (militarily or politically) behind the scenes.

My guess is that the situation in Iran is more discrete and separate from the problems festering in Europe or Southeast Asia than Steyn suggests. For example, my suspicion is that the popularity in more the more ardent adherence to Islam in Europe is more a fad among youth disenchanted with economic prospects that any real solidarity with regimes their parents fled from.

I do think that Steyn is more or less right about how dangerous Iran is though, even if they aren't pulling the strings behind every confrontation between Islam and their neighbors.

Iran's actions and public statements place the idea that they are pursuing uranium enrichment solely for energy generation are well past the point of credulity.

I think the situation merits stronger action than is currently being taken, and I also don't think it precludes resorting to military means.

In war, NOTHING should be off the table. We very well could eventually get to the point where total annihilation may be the only option - maybe it won't.

Oh, so now you are saying genocide may be a reasonable and acceptable solution to the Iranian problem. And if we think genocide is acceptable, that makes us better than the Iranians exactly how? Isn't that exactly how the President of Iran plans to deal with the "problem" of Israel?

Rich, I'm not sure I follow your point regarding the refinery issue. Iran, which sits on top of the world's largest natural gas supply, is presumably able to use its energy wealth to pay for its nuclear program, including any illicit acquisitions of equipment or materials, but somehow, that wealth isn't sufficient to enable it to refine petroleum into gasoline?

You should read Luttwak's piece, rather than just relying on the info that I pulled out of it for my comment. His argument isn't that military force should be ruled out. He argues (more persuasively than is possible to do justice to in a blog comment of appropriate length) that we should treat assertions that Iran is capable of producing a weapon with some skepticism, and that skepticism should lead us to proceed cautiously. He acknowledges that a military option might be necessary, and also acknowledges that dictatorships, even those, such as Iran's which aren't really totalitarian, don't tend to collapse under their own weight without at least a little push. Nevertheless, it would seem wise to be mindful of the consequences that military action may have on Iran's eventual alignment (i.e., with the US or against it), once the mullahcracy does collapse.

Isn't it fairly obvious that the hardliners in Iran, including their puppet president, would benefit from and are trying to provoke an attack by the US or Israel? Such an attack, although it would almost certainly disrupt or destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program, would almost as surely give Iran's government an extended lease, whereas without an external attack, They'll have to live with being encircled by US forces (in Iraq and Afghanistan).

Israel or EU (each being within range of Iranian missiles) may have a compelling reason to attack sooner rather than later, but we have much to lose by such a course of action, so it makes sense to make sure we don't jump the gun.

Steyn via Forest Girl: imagine what they'd be like if a nuclear Tehran had demanded a formal apology, a suitable punishment for the newspaper, and blasphemy laws specifically outlawing representations of the Prophet.

It would be about like if North Korea demanded something equally silly. Be a bit more on the alert, otherwise ignore it, since it's most likely just bluster.

And in any case, they haven't even used what they've already got. Iran claims they could field 40,000 trained suicide bombers. At 2% success rate and 100 victims per success, you're already up to Nagasaki level. Somehow, when the UK failed to prosecute Rushdie, nothing like that happened.

Islamists are a grave threat to Western civilization and that Islamists with atomic bombs will be unstoppable.

Grave threat, maybe, in the sense that lives would be lost. Unstoppable - not even close. The combined military strength of all Islamic countries, plus a nuclear Iran, wouldn't be comparable to the ex-Soviet Union. And that's making the unlikely assumption that they would be united. Steyn's whole essay is filled with words like "unstoppable" that aren't plausible.

Anderson, this isn't really so hard to understand, is it? God forbid that it ever comes to such a thing, but the reason to kill two or ten million of theirs if one of their nukes kills a million of ours isn't revenge, it's deterrence, and deterrence of not only the target, but of anyone else who might be thinking about attacking us. Of course, having an idea of who the attacker was is important, but doing nothing in the wake of a nuclear attack on the US is a clear signal that the US may be attacked with impunity. A principled unwillingness to use nuclear weapons to protect the US should absolutely disqualify one from being president.

Anderson, this isn't really so hard to understand, is it? God forbid that it ever comes to such a thing, but the reason to kill two or ten million of theirs if one of their nukes kills a million of ours isn't revenge, it's deterrence, and deterrence of not only the target, but of anyone else who might be thinking about attacking us.

UCC, that is indeed the conclusion I came to; it's hardly a foolproof argument morally. How many women &children am I allowed to incinerate to make it less likely that my own civilians will be incinerated? But pragmatically, it's a lock.

Btw, kudos to Justin's rebuttal to Randy Barnett. And all you commenters who are "but what about *serious* rebuttals to Steyn?"--you haven't been reading the thread. There are plenty of smart, knowledgeable people commenting here. (I'm just not one of them.)

One more thing--all this "BUT WHERE'S *YOUR* SOLUTION, YOU HIPPIE PEACENIKS???" is silly. Steyn doesn't have any "solution" either. Unless you thought Ann Coulter's "invade their countries, kill their leaders, &convert the rest to Christianity" was a "solution."

Bush has placed us in a *terrible* position vis-a-vis Iran. It is not the fault of anyone else that we can't come up with a good solution. We can just suggest not making things any worse than they already are.

For example - assume that there will come a time that we KNOW Iran has nukes, they've fired them off at the top 10 U.S. cities, and our early warning system isn't working (say it's been infiltrated by terrorists). What do you do then?

Okay, it's nice to have paranoid fantasies about superduper terrorists wiping out our early warning systems and taking over Cheyenne Mountain (have you ever been there--it would be quite an infiltration), and then lobbing nukes over the ocean. But in that case a retalitory strike, although not genocide, would certainly be justified.

The way I read your post, you seemed to be indicating that some time in the future it may be necessary to commit genocide (not just a military strike to cripple their military capabilities but total destruction of the country and extermination of the country's population) to preemptively prevent Iran from using their nuclear weapons. There is no justification for this under any circumstances. Such an action is immoral.

How would ou even know that it was Iran that fired them? How would you even know that anything was fired?


Radar. And physics.

how about the US offering to withdraw its security guarantees to Israel, and to ensure that Israel does not have nuclear weapons itself, to encourage it to live with rather than against its neighbours, if Iran drops any attempt to achieve nuclear weapons?

TomCS, you had me nodding until the end. One, it is incredibly unlikely that the U.S. could withdraw those guarantees. Two, it is INCREDIBLY unlikely that Israel would give up its own nukes ... *especially* after losing the U.S. guarantee. Three, neither Israel nor Iran are anywhere near trusting each other enough to make this a possibility.

I would settle for the U.S. taking a more neutral approach to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, rather than rubber-stamping whatever the Israelis do. Even that might suffice to show enough good faith that we could negotiate something with Iran. They could be a really good ally in future if/when Saudi Arabia ceases to be Saudi.

I think the mullahs will back down if confronted by sanctions (including a blockade of oil shipments) and a united UN.

I thoroughly agree (see, I'm not in it for the genocide at all!!!). But is a united UN possible? That's another 100-comment post, I guess. Suffice to say that if a united UN is impossible, we would have to go it alone. Bringing us back to the current situation.

TV (Harry)

"IMHO, the notion that we are not engaged in a world wide struggle with political Islam is far removed from reality."

Why hello there paranoid style of politics.

How many in here, who advocate attacking Iran, WILL join the military if we indeed attack Iran?

eeyn24:

I would be perfectly happy to ignore such "bluster" but it seems that, among others, NYU, Comedy Central, and Borders bookstores aren't. I returned to the US last year after 2 1/2 years in Berlin, and the Europeans also aren't ignoring this bluster. The Germans are debating in Parliament whether their Turkish population (the number of Turks in Berlin is the second largest in any city in the world after Istanbul) should be allowed to force girls into arranged marriages. The Swedish, as Steyn points out, are closing down websites that show the cartoons. Theo Van Gogh was murdered a few years ago and a 15-page Islamist diatribe was pinned to his chest for a movie he made and the overwhelming response was: we shouldn't insult other people's religion. Meanwhile the Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who participated in the film, remains in hiding after numerous death threats--bluster that can't be ignored since her colleague is already dead. Of the cartoons, quoting from Prof. Volokh: "the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, has also recently publicly condemned a Danish newspaper for publishing the drawings. Arbour said that she "deplore[d] any statement or act showing a lack of respect towards other people's religion," and "appointed to UN experts in the areas of religious freedom and racism to investigate the matter."

My fears of a "grave threat" are that no lives will even have to be lost, but that we are already going down without a fight. Will the threat of nuclear weapons make us tougher? I doubt it.

Is really reining in the Zionists a fair trade for ensuring that the mullahs don't get a usable deterrent?

I think it's mainly a trust issue; the Israelis would think we were crazy if we demanded they de-nuke, and you have to admit, they have an argument.

(Given the jingoism around here, it's amazing that none of these people stop to think how their nationalism would play out if they were citizens of a 3d-world country (is there still a Third World?). They would *hate* the U.S., it seems pretty clear.)

A question to those in favor of pre-emptive, (hopefully) disarming strikes against Iran: Would you have supported such strikes against the USSR, PRC, North Korea, or Pakistan before they completed their nuclear projects?
Personally I consider at least two out of those five to have been significantly more dangerous to US security than Iran, yet in previous situations we have always stayed our hand. Even after time none of those have turned into even remotely happy situations, but so far none of them have yet used them. I understand that Iran is a hideous and dangerous nation, but I think the burden of proof, due to the obvious costs of any attack, would be on those who argue that they are MORE dangerous than the other nuclear nations. If your rejoinder involves religous fanaticism or insanity, remember that one of the other guys mentioned claims that his dad was god and that he hit a hole in one four consecutive times on his first golf outing.

How many in here, who advocate attacking Iran, WILL join the military if we indeed attack Iran?

I'm in the military, and I'm not looking forward to the prospect. I might be biased since I've been studying Iran professionally since 1994, but I feel pretty confident saying the material and physical bloodletting will be significant--in other words, Joe Public will need a damned good explanation.

I can't really comment on the politics of attacking, unfortuntely. My job is to merely carry out military policy if the President says, "go."

TheMadPigeon: My personal commitment to you is to make sure, to the best of my ability, that your time as a soldier is in pursue of you oath of duty and not for grandiose schemes in search of vainglories. I want for you and your comrades to truly be defenders of our rights and liberties, not to be used under guises, while at home we lose that which you seek to protect.

Two questions.

(1) Might I ask those not in favor of military action with regard to Iran what they would say (or do) if Iran's president had threatened the US with being "wiped off the map"?

(2) To those who believe the Iranian president's statement regarding his plan to destroy Israel is insufficient evidence supporting military action, what do you make of the following rhetoric?

"Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight."

This comment was made by then-Egyptian president Nasser before launching the 1967 war against Israel shortly thereafter.

Should one have not seriously credited President Nasser in 1967 as well? Or should we have instead negotiated with him? Or provided him with fuel?

Jam, what is your answer to the first question?

Second, your comment (which I assume, of course, was facetiously made) is off-base. I am not saying that any time any individual (regardless of rank or position) makes a hostile comment, then military action is warranted. I am sure many individuals, at many times, have said worrisome things.

What I am saying is that when middle eastern leaders of Islamic countries say identical things about destroying Israel, and one of them instigated military action against Israel thereafter in a manner
consistent with his statement, why should we ignore what the second middle eastern leader said?

Might I ask those not in favor of military action with regard to Iran what they would say (or do) if Iran's president had threatened the US with being "wiped off the map"?

Not a good comparison from your p.o.v., Davide. Iran CAN'T wipe the U.S. off the map, but in theory at least it could do this to Israel, which takes up much less map.

To answer your question, the correct response is "try it and your few survivors will glow in the dark for weeks afterwards."

Bear in mind, folks, that no one ruling Iran got there by being some starry-eyed idealist. The mullahs are not going to let any Supreme Leader tell the rest of them what to do, and they are not going to want to sacrifice themselves, their families, and their nation to score points in the Afterlife.

God doesn't fight on the side of the biggest battalions; he fights on the side of the best prepared quartermasters.

And if I may add, "amatuers study tactics; professionals study logistics."

As an aside, nothing like having work closed for the day thanks to a spring blizzard!

Anderson - Israel is about the size of New Jersey; it should be possible to dump fission nukes on Tel Aviv, Haifa, and several other locations without doing anything to Jerusalem, save perhaps for some wind-spread radioactive dust. That of course wouldn't destroy the Dome of the Rock, just render them a little hot for a while and the mullahs undoubtedly would view waiting for them to cool down to be a small price to pay for getting rid of all the troublesome Joooos.

Davide: My answer is to do and say nothing. A frown with a shake of the head is an understated way of saying "NUTS!"

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

Of course, when to use the big stick is the issue and when/how to answer "bluster."


The Mad Pigeon: Napoleon, even Germany in their eastern front, learned that one, the hard way. Or should I say, the soldiers did.

Five years ago, Hashemi Rafsanjani said that they could easily destroy Israel with nuclear weapons, because one bomb would destroy Israel, whereas the response would only harm a part of Islam.

They don't care as much about the Dome of the Rock as they do about eliminating the infidels from the Islamic Waqf. Read the Hamas charter.

As for killing palestinians while they're at it--well, the Islamic world has proven they care little for them. A quarter of a million thrown out of Kuwait after the Iraq war; thousands more hounded in Iraq now that their patron, Saddam Hussein, is gone; Jordan refuses to take the refugees from Iraq--no, the Muslim world won't care about that particular collateral damage.

It isn't a question for nuke experts. It's a question for experts on fanatical Islamists.

I am not an expert, but I do believe that the Iranians truly want to destroy Israel. They've been saying it for nearly thirty years, and I don't believe it's only rhetoric.

I am not an expert, but I do believe that the Iranians truly want to destroy Israel. They've been saying it for nearly thirty years, and I don't believe it's only rhetoric.

When you've been saying for *30 years* that you want to destroy something, clearly it's not your # 1 priority?

If Iran had wanted to buy a nuke (price no object) and blow up Israel, it could have done it long ago. It seems as if they have other priorities.

And thanks for the replies on the bomb-effects issue.

We've been kicking this around the comment section at WOC like crazy for a few weeks. These are the conlusion i've drawn:

-Invading Iran is at best a monumental project the American people arent remotely prepared to take on (in blood and treasure and patience). At worst it could be the kind of disaster that changes the balance of power in the world, ie. creates what we are seeking to thwart.

-On the other hand, history and what we know about Iran stronly suggests there is no amount of carrots more valuable to Iran than nuclear weapons. And any stick becomes obsolete after Iran goes nuclear. If Iran is to be stopped, we must stop them- almost certainly forcibly. Is it impossible to destroy Irans nuclear program through the air? Maybe, but it can most definately be damaged and set back. You dont need to smash every bit to grind the program to a halt. Just break the right bits.

-It may be possible to conventionally deter Iran (although this is by no means certain considering the fanatacal leadership). Even if we are willing to accept that, the true danger is what would happen to the weapons during any uproar in the regime. Be it collapse, coup, or (worst of all) democratic revolution, the threat of a man like Ahmadinejad with his back to the wall and his messianic martyrs in control of the nations nukes is intolerable in the extreme.

Imagine the scenario of the famous 'Youth of Iran' finally rising up to oust the regime, mullahs are being hung from lamposts, and Ahmadinejad is holed up in his last bunker with his nuclear toys. Who, exactly, do we retaliate against? The ugliest part of Nuclear Iran is that it must become our vital interest to support stability in Iran, no matter how they direct international terrorism. No matter how they stomp on the democratic reformers looking to the US for aid, we must turn our backs from them. It has been pure, unmitigated luck that no nuclear weapons (that we know of)have gone off the grid with the breakup of the Soviets and Pakistans various issues. Anybody wanna take that bet on Iran?

Ok, this is the excerpt of the speech from Rafsanji

US-British support for Israel

Because colonialism and imperialism will not easily leave the people of the world alone. Therefore, you can see that they have arranged it in a way that the balance of power favours Israel. Well, from a numerical point of view, it cannot have as many troops as Muslims and Arabs do. So they have improved the quality of what they have. Classical weaponry has its own limitations. They have limited use. They have a limited range as well. They have supplied vast quantities of weapons of mass destruction and unconventional weapons to Israel. They have permitted it to have them and they have shut their eyes to what is going on. They have nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and long-range missiles and suchlike.

If one day ... Of course, that is very important. If one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists' strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.

He is talking about acquiring Nukes, but the main objective is NOT to nuke Israel, but to restore balance of power in the region. I am sure that there are other places where he claims to wipe Israel off the map, BUT this is not one of them. Both the City Journal article and some of the commenters are misleadingly misquoting Rafsanjani at this particular instance.

Hope is not a policy. And I'm sure everyone on this thread who discounts the danger Iran poses will smugly remark at the nuking of an American city: "How were we supposed to know?"

Iran is practically shouting that it wants a war. The question is whether it will be on our terms, or theirs. That people are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a fundamentalist Islamic regime that has been the primary sponsor of international terrorism for over 25 years is beyond me. It is DELUSIONAL to place one's hope in such a regime, especially now that it's trying to acquire nuclear weapons.

Of course attacking Iran poses serious problems, and serious consequences. Whoever thought international nuclear brinksmanship was a walk in the park? And that's the issue: NUCLEAR brinksmanship. Were this some threat regarding conventional weapons, it'd be a different story entirely. But with nukes, why take the chance?

Everyone here who nit-picks a possible military solution to Iran is engaging in classic denial techniques: denial that Islamism is a problem, minimizing/discounting the threat of nuclear-armed Islamic fundamentalists, rationalizing that Iran has a "right" to nukes, ad hominin attacks on Steyn, projection/blaming of Israel or America for the situaition, shifting the argument to Iraq, appeals to ignorance over historical conflicts with Iran (today is the anniversary of Operation Praying Mantis), ignoring the question of how to deal with Iran by blaming Bush for everything. I'm still waiting for people to start engaging in language games, and the denial of objective reality (example: "it doesn't matter if Iran nukes America, because how can we REALLY know the truth of things?"), and then this thread will have degenerated into a farce.

But reality has a way of asserting itself. So yes, feel free to minimize the threat of Iran. In fact, I hope the minimizers are right and that Iran isn't a threat. And if you must live in a deluded world for your own psychological sanity, have fun. But if America or Israel is attacked, I'll bet that the short-term pleasure you got from denying this problem will pale in comparison to the horror you have when you realize that people answer "how were we supposed to know?" with: we told you, but you just didn't listen.

Anderson, please clarify. Are you suggesting that if, in fact, Iran nukes a city, that would not be an example of reality asserting itself in the face of your delusions?

Sydney, you have more free time than I, but let's see:

Iran is practically shouting that it wants a war. Says you. A more realistic interpretation is that Iran is very much afraid of a war. If Iran *wanted* a war, the Iraqi border is right there.

Everyone here who nit-picks a possible military solution to Iran is engaging in classic denial techniques ... Really? Leaving aside some of the straw men, what about "denial that a preemptive nuclear strike would make the U.S. a pariah and virtually guarantee the nuclear attacks on our soil that we are supposedly trying to avert"? How's that for denial?

In fact, I hope the minimizers are right and that Iran isn't a threat. And if you must live in a deluded world for your own psychological sanity, have fun. By your own standards, anyone who hopes that is delusional, so I think you've chosen your words poorly here.

But if America or Israel is attacked, I'll bet that the short-term pleasure you got from denying this problem will pale in comparison to the horror you have when you realize that people answer "how were we supposed to know?" with: we told you, but you just didn't listen.

There's no "how were we supposed to know" here. We lived with the threat of nuclear attack from Russia and China for 40-odd years. As noted upthread, the Communist ideology was thought to be every bit as dangerous as the "Islamist" ideology is said to be in your comment.

Frankly, I think a nuclear attack on the U.S. is inevitable. (See John McPhee, The Curve of Binding Energy, which eerily forecast an attack on the WTC.) There is too much stuff already out there and too many people who hate us.

Our best options are (1) border control, (2) trying not to gratuitously antagonize nation-states (so's to leave the al-Qaedas of the world as our only nuclear threats), and (3) refraining from the use of nukes except as retaliation for a nuclear attack, thus maintaining their "taboo" status as best we can. *Your* "reality" will get this country nuked a lot sooner than mine, I contend. Maybe I'm wrong. One of us certainly is.

Anderson,

Matt Yglesias doesn't correctly state the argument being put forth (i.e., he's beating a strawman). The argument here is to overthrow the Iranian regime and skip the occupation, and who cares about the aftermath. No one is proposing or even hoping that a stable, viable, democratic government would emerge from the rubble, overnight or anytime soon. The post-bellum situation would certainly be chaos and anarchy, but if it was chaos and anarchy without access to nuclear weapons, that would be acceptable.

It's not an inherently bad plan. We've gone back and forth on the drawbacks, but not the positives. Were Iran to be thrown into chaos, it would be a severe blow to Iraqi insurgency, remove Syria's mutual defense partner, defund Hamas, and cripple Hezbollah. Leaving it in chaos would also send the message to other potential adversaries that the Iraq experience hasn't spent the US's ability to project force, which would have a valuable deterrent factor.

A nuclear Iran, however, would be worse than a non-nuclear one. Enough worse, that it’s worth trying to see what kind of diplomatic concessions the Iranians might want in exchange for giving their program up.

Voluntary exchanges only work if each party values the object to be given up more than the object to be received. If the Iranians really do want nuclear weapons, then there's nothing they'll take in exchange.

Maybe if we stopped trying to impoverish their country and overthrow their government while threatening to bomb them, they’d agree to rigorous inspections.

Maybe if our government stopped threatening people with fines, incarercation, and physical violence for breaking the law, they'd agree not to break the law.

If so, we should take the deal. If not, then we’ll live with it.

If we can live with it anyway, why bother trying?

But under no circumstances should war be an option.

So if we say explicitly that we'll never use force, they'll be more likely to cooperate with us.

Starry-eyed liberal? No, but bleeding-idiot-philosophy-major liberal, yes. Yglesias should let grownups run interstate relations and stick to his Getting To Yes knitting circle.

If I were hearing the "batshit crazy" crowd say that it should be our explicit policy to respond with massive nuclear retaliation against the state most likely to have supplied a nuclear weapon used against us, I'd be a little less worried about "living with it." But I hear that crowd fussing about even retaliating in kind, so I worry.

SG:

No one is proposing or even hoping that a stable, viable, democratic government would emerge from the rubble, overnight or anytime soon. The post-bellum situation would certainly be chaos and anarchy, but if it was chaos and anarchy without access to nuclear weapons, that would be acceptable.

What about the people of Iran you cavalierly propose to condemn to anarchy, chaos, and all the evils that follow? Like mass starvation and civil war lasting indefinitely? Do Iran's innocents count for nothing in your calculus? Why not just nuke the country into oblivion? Unlike this proposal, that would at least shut down Iran's nuclear programs for good.

Thales, Hersh promised us that Bush was disgusted with Gen. Franks and was going to fire him.

So there's one example of the evidence you say no one ever brings forward.

Hersh just made that up. Pending a whole lot of independent evidence, I'll go forward on the working assumption that his New Yorker story about Iran was imaginary, too.

Abb3w Said:

The most immediate step the US should undertake would be a program to reduce US dependence on foreign oil; it will benefit the US regardless of whether there is a war or not, and if we can postpone the war it will furthermore leave us better prepared to handle it.

I'm not sure I agree that we should Iran back on the shelf while we go developing new alternative energy options, but I think the arguments for non-petroleum energy grow stronger every day. A realistic alternative source of energy (say, something equivalent to a barrel of oil for $50 a unit) would change the calculus(es) dramatically. Without the massive influx of cash from high oil prices, whould Iran even have the resources to build a nuclear arsenal? If petroleum became just one energy option among many available, would the mullahs be able to hold the world (and especially certain key countries) hostage over it?

I think the answer to the first question is debatable. I think the answer to the second is not.

Professor:

Here's where his logic fails: IRAQ

Harry Eager is right. The warfighting power available to the Germans in both world wars, the North Koreans in 1950, the Argentians in 1982, Saddaam in 1990, and others, was objectively inadequate to achieve the goal.
Yet they went ahead.
Why? They BELIEVED. The glasses had rose-colored lenses.
It is silly--ranging to suicidal--to depend for one's life on the rationality of anybody, much less an obvious bunch of nutcases.
There may be other reasons not to pre-emptively attack Iran, but the idea that we have nothing to worry about because of some logical process we presume the Mad Mullahs must follow is nuts.

The warfighting power available to the Germans in both world wars, the North Koreans in 1950, the Argentians in 1982, Saddaam in 1990, and others, was objectively inadequate to achieve the goal.
Yet they went ahead.

The same can be said about Mark Steyn and anyone who believes that we have the currently have the ability to deal with Iran militarily.

do see the point made that, if struck, we can strike back overwhelmingly. True. But I expect the left and the dems would object even to that.

yeah, there was sooo much resistance from the left and the dems to the invasion of Afghanistan.

Richard, i have a secret that i'm going to share with you: the "left and dems" are neither cowards nor america-haters. they are ordinary americans just like you.

Since Freder Frederson keeps repeating the 'chickenhawk' sneer and has been joined by Jam and abb3w, I suppose I must restate what I wrote in the 14th comment:

The 'chicken' argument applies even better* to the anti-Steyn camp. If you truly believe (a) that Bush is likely to invade Iran or make a preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear sites, and (b) that such an attack would likely lead to utter disaster and the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent people, why have you not gone to Iran as human shields? Don't you have a duty to risk your life to save your country from disaster and defeat? It would only take a few thousand American volunteers stationed around likely targets to prevent a Bush strike. So what are you waiting for? Are you all cowards? Or just the kind of hypocritical fools who have come up with a pseudo-intellectual argument to 'prove' that others are gutless bedwetters and you are not, oblivious to the fact that the same stupid argument applies to you?

*I say 'even better' because many of us who agree (in whole or in part) with Steyn are ineligible for military service (I'm 53) and even those who can join up would not necessarily see action if they did. It takes many months of training to get to combat, and the Pentagon sends soldiers where they are needed, not where they want to go. You can't just sign up to bomb Iran and then bomb Iran. A new recruit may just as easily end up peeling potatoes or filing papers in Germany or New Jersey or Korea, if that's where the Pentagon sends him. Of course, a human shield could leave tomorrow and be guarding an Iranian nuclear site the next day, if the Iranians find him suitably non-spylike.

Freder,

1) Taxes weren't cut during the war in Iraq, they went up. Marginal income tax rates were cut. I'm not saying that there was a cause/effect relationship, but when revenues go up, it's hard to accept the argument that taxes were "cut." Revenues are somewhat irrelevant anyway. Spending is the better measure. Even if the money was "borrowed," were still paying for it.

2) I'm always puzzled by people who demand a national sacrifice be made to win the war. Why don't we just argee to do what is necessary to win? If more needs to be done, let's do it. But why some people seem to be nostalgic for a return to saving bacon grease and going without new tires is beyond me. If you're intested self-flagilation, become a penitente.

3) As others have pointed out, advocacy of a position doesn't without active involvment doens't mean you're a hypocrite or a chicken-hawk. I think armed robbers should be pursued, but I'm not signing up for the police force. I think the highway near my house should be widened, but I'm not buying an earth mover.

Anderson:

Since Hitler was planning on invading Russia, it would follow that putting Russian combat power into the equation would be reasonable, ditto the Brits, since they, too, had guaranteed Poland's security.
In fact, the Germans had less combat power relative to their goals in 1939 than they did in 1914.

Keegan, in his history of WW I, has an interesting point.
Moltke, planning the attack, found he could--theoretically--get his armies to Paris. But he would need about a hundred thousand more guys to take the Paris fortresses and the city itself. But he couldn't do it. His logistics were maxed out. Every road, every railroad, every train, every loading facility, every road interesection, watering point, truck, wagon and horse, every single thing he could use to get those extra soldiers to Paris was already maxed out. Here was the boss of the Great General Staff, an outfit which had made a religion of making a science of the art of war, looking at the ironclad figures telling him he couldn't do it.
What did he do, seeing that the war was lost before it was started?
He penciled in the hundred thousand and went ahead.
From which we take a couple of lessons: One is that when somebody wants something badly enough, reality won't stop him. The other is that, given the first, it is silly to prepare based on our view of his reality. Somebody could get killed.

Francis. Ref left and dems being normal Americans.
Nope. Been around them for forty years. Nope.
The left preceded the USSR, allied with them while they existed, and survive. They are anti-west. Anti capitalism, anti-democracy, anti-freedom. Not like me. Dems would cheerfully engineer a losing war to make republicans look bad and not lose a minute's sleep. Been there, seen it.
Nope.
They may be "normal" in statistical terms, but that wasn't what you meant.

The warfighting power available to the Germans in both world wars, the North Koreans in 1950, the Argentians in 1982, Saddaam in 1990, and others, was objectively inadequate to achieve the goal. Yet they went ahead.

In all these cases, the war they got was not the war they wanted. It was not the goal of the North Koreans in 1950 to fight a UN force led by the Americans - it was their goal to defeat and occupy South Korea alone, for which their force was objetively adequate. It was not the goal of the Argentines in 1982 to fight the British - their goal was to occupy the Falklands (for which their force was adequate) and employ diplomacy to prevent a British counterattack. It was not Saddam's goal in 1990 to fight the US-led coalition - he wanted to occupy Kuwait (for which his force was adequate) and assumed the world would accept this fait accompli. As for the Germans, it was not their goal to fight the entire world simultaneously - they wanted to beat their enemies one at a time, and they thought (not without good reason) in 1914 and 1939 that their forces were adequate to do so.

So, they were not "insanely" thinking they could win the war they actually wound up fighting... they were "rationally" thinking they could win a much more limited conflict. However, once the iron dice were rolled, the consequences turned out to be unpredictable...

Enoch. Sort of my point. It was irrational verging on insane to think that the lineup of adversaries would be as required for victory.

This leads to an allied point: The impotence of the allied response to the Nazi occupation of the Rhineland, the occupation of Czechoslovakia, and the Oxford Union declaration of 1933 conspired to help Hitler think he could take his enemies in the order he desired.

It is said the the Norks felt they'd been snookered, as Dean Acheson had, earlier in 1950, commented that Korea was not in our sphere of interest. Thus, they'd only have to fight Seoul.

So there is some basis for being careful about one's statements. Might start a war or something.

The Argies: Well, with the macho bashing about in spit-shined stomping boots, and the fancy uniforms, and the mistresses, and the balls to shoot down rioting mobs, the generals looked at England, run by women--not major studs like them--and guessed wrong. Looks as if they slept through that block of instruction in cultural anthropology, no?

Harry,

You "cited" a report by Hersh by attributing a false prediction to him. I do not know a) If the book or article you mention exists or b)If in it he made such a prediction. For what it's worth, I attempted in a cursory way to find an article in which Hersh falsely predicted the firing of Tommy Franks, and all my Google search revealed was postings by you on other blogs making the same assertion. You may be right, but I'm asking for a citation to a source that I can verify. In any case, I am defending Hersh's record as a journalist as a whole, which is to my mind unimpeached by any credible source, and recommending the particular recent article because it is a serious piece on the subject of confronting Iran (more serious, dare I say, than the Steyn piece that began the discussion).

Thales. It was on NPR. I cannot pull it out of the ether for you. Hersh didn't just speculate or estimate that Bush was going to fire Franks. He said we could take it to the bank.

Obviously, he just made it up. Or, more likely, some spin doctor made it up for him and played him for a patsy.

As it happens, I am a newspaperman. I haven't seen anything serious, as we newspapermen judge such things, in The New Yorker about George Bush. Not that I make any effort to keep up with it these days, but a friend copied David Remnick's latest effort in Talk of the Town the other day. That was neither journalism nor serious commentary.

I find Steyn amusing, occasionally stimulating, but too inaccurate to be worth reading regularly. The New Yorker is no more accurate than Steyn and about as amusing as an AOL chat room.

Moltke, planning the attack, found he could--theoretically--get his armies to Paris. But he would need about a hundred thousand more guys to take the Paris fortresses and the city itself. But he couldn't do it.

He didn't *have* to do it. The Germans didn't take Paris in 1870, either, but they still won the war, by destroying the enemy armies &then besieging Paris, which IIRC fell in 1871. Besides which was Moltke's panicky decision to send ___ (2 corps? I forget exactly) to the Eastern Front, where they weren't even needed for the Germans to destroy the Russian 2d Army.

Anderson. Moltke thought he needed to take Paris to win, which means if he didn't think he could he thought he'd lose. What we/you/I think about it is meaningless. Which is sort of my point.
People do stuff which doesn't make sense. They even start wars they ought to know they'd lose. When they lose, we can point to their illogic, over the graves of millions or thousands.

It is silly to take our logic and think others will follow it. To get back to the mad mullahs. To prepare as if they'll do what we think they should do is nuts.

Implicit in my thinking here is that overpreparation might make a difference in a marginal case. If the Oxford Union had said they'd not only support, they'd fight in any effort to utterly destroy any nation in Europe which attacked its neighbors, Hitler might have had a harder time recruiting his buddies and the Wehrmacht generals--veterans of an earlier loss--to his idea that they'd win this time.
What harm would it have done?
Other kinds of preparation...the same.

One other comment: I'm not a military expert but a few things seem to be clear. Iran is a third rate military power at best. It couldn't defeat Iraq in 8 years. While it has an intact military it is also a green one, with its only real combat experience dating from the 80's or in any internal security (repression?) operations they have been doing. No doubt invading them would be bloody but I'm far from convinced that is infeasibility militarily.

And if the professionals do in fact consider conventional operations impossible in Iran than why the hell is that the case? The US government’s primary job is the defense of its citizens. If the strategic assessment is that we are beholden to a non-nuclear Iran then serious re-thinking of national defense needs to happen.

Oh, and for you Yglesias-bashers, see this from Matt:

Sending a giant conscript army to occupy Iran is a terrible idea. If you think our current troops lack the appropriate training for the occupation of Iraq, just wait until I'm the one doing it. Think about it.

Irrefutable!

Luttwak makes the elementary mistake (also made by Bush, Rumsfeld and many, many others) of crafting strategy based on what he believes an enemy will do or wants to do.

Professionals at war (and at politics, for that matter) always consider what the enemy is capable of doing and prepare for that.

When you've staked your nation on an outcome, almost all surprises turn out to be unpleasant.

not only would a "tactical nuclear strike" on iran be dumb, it would also be hilariously ironic. although the purported goal would be to prevent iran from breaching the non-proliferation treaty, the means [using nuclear weapons against a state which does not also possess nuclear weapons] would actually breach the NPT.

so, apparently, we must break the NPT in order to save it.

You mean they would hate us more? They've been gathering by the tens of thousands every Friday for more than 25 years to shout 'death to the Great Satan' (that would be me -- and you).

I'll take, as a working assumption, that if they could have done anything to harm me, they would have. If they have a nuclear bomb, then they can.

In spades for Israelis.

On what grounds are we supposed to ignore their policy statements? That they have not invaded Israel despite saying it should be wiped off the map? Oh, yeah, except for sponsoring Hezbollah etc.

The assumption that we would have to include a ground invasion as part of a military response is the kind of thinking that got Bush into trouble in Iraq, since it is based on an assumption that destabilizing western Asia, or any part of it, is a BAD THING.

If we believe in the national principle (I do), then western Asia needs badly to be not merely destabilized by remade. There are 10 states now; there should be at least 19. Start with a Great Kurdistan. Why are we so tender about the national (or Shia) feelng of the Persians and don't give a hoot about the national feelings of the Kurds?

A hammer isn't our only tool. There is, for example, democracy, secularism and popular government, all of which we demonstate to the rest of the world, free for nothing, but in Muslim countries that has had no appeal.

Another Bush mistake. He thought it would.

I don't think we can tell from out here how well-motivated Iranians are. They may be religious fanatics, thirsting for martyrdom, or they may be rather more provident people who remember (or if they are too young to remember, to have heard about) what it was like to fight for the Revolution 1980-88.

I certainly don't discount the fanaticism of fighters for Islam. Suicide bombers have either been non-existent or a wasting asset in every infidel society. Even the Japanese kamikazes were mostly draftees near the end. The supply of suicide bombers from Islam, however, seems to be steady and bottomless.

I do not, however, draw from that the conclusion that we must put up with whatever they want to demand. There are other conceivable responses.

<blockquote>
<i>Soft pink bodies, no matter how well motivated, lose out to overwhelming firepower. The Iranians found this out in their war with Iraq.</i>
</blockquote>

Indeed, the Iranians died by the millions--but they kept fighting, regardless. Overwhelming firepower can destroy a military's personnel and materiel, but if it doesn't destroy their will to fight than the side with the biggest guns can end up staying longer than expected. I can't quite recall where exactly that's happening right now...

<blockquote>
<i>I do not, however, draw from that the conclusion that we must put up with whatever they want to demand. There are other conceivable responses.</i>
</blockquote>

Nor do I mean that we <i>should</i> put up with whatever they demand. But we need to wargame the potential consequences of our responses, and I'd rather plan the worst and go in ready to deal with contingencies. I'd say <i>hope for the best</i> to finish the cliche, but hope has no place in geopolitical analysis.

I would suggest that the motivation may be different in the regular army and the fanatic irregulars. If the former decline to be fanatical--and that possibility is why tyrants have separate, fanatical organizations--see the Wehrmacht vs. the SS--and the latter want to die, I expect the former will mostly live and the latter mostly die and the result will be pretty much zilch except for the dead guys' parents and the political system.