Bomb their programs back ten years without changing the regime and in ten years the regime will still be there and will have nukes.
But change the regime to a decent democracy and in ten years we won't worry about Iran with nukes any more than we worry about India or France having them. It's all about the regime, really.
This piece is a useful reminder of this basic truth:
The threat isn’t from the warhead, but from the individual who controls it. For example, right now several countries whose governments aren’t always friendly to the US – China, Russia, France – each have enough nuclear warheads, and the means to deliver them, to obliterate our country. But we don’t lose one minute’s sleep over this prospect because, although the leaders of these countries are surly, petulant, sometimes vicious and often anti-American – they are also sane. There isn’t the slightest chance that any of these leaders actually will press the nuclear button and launch Armageddon.
The president of Iran, on the other hand, is nuts. (The tip-off came a while back when, as mayor of Teheran, Ahmadi-Neshad Amadinejad ordered separate elevators for men and women. His insanity became more obvious – and more serious - when he demanded last month that Israel be “wiped off the map,” and then “clarified” this call to genocide by insisting that the Holocaust never happened, and adding that he had only meant to suggest that Israel be re-located somewhere in Western Europe.) Moreover, it’s clear that at least several of the mullahs who rigged the election that brought Amadinejad to power earlier this year are also dangerous fanatics. Allowing Amadinejad and these mullahs to get their hands on nuclear weapons is a risk the civilized world simply cannot take. It would be like allowing a bunch of escaped lunatics to roam the halls of your childrens’ school, armed with rifles, in hopes that maybe they really aren’t as crazy as they seem to be and won’t, after all, start firing into the cafeteria.
We can't deal with these people and we certainly can't live with them. If our CIA hasn't been able to build contacts in Iran to start a coup or revolution in the more than three years since 9-11, I don't know why we shouldn't just break the agency into its component parts, sell them for scrap, and start over.
It's the regime, stupid. Change it.
UPDATE: Krauthammer explains the fantasy world the Iranian rulers are living in and is not optimistic about anybody doing something to stop the supreme nutjob that runs Tehran and his minions who nod in agreement at his plans for nuclear-tinged prophecies:
Negotiations to deny this certifiable lunatic genocidal weapons have been going nowhere. Everyone knows they will go nowhere. And no one will do anything about it.
I continue to hold out hope that our government's silence is not for lack of preparing to overthrow the mullah regime as much as it is a determination to avoid telegraphing our punch as we did with Saddam.
We cannot live with the mullah regime in Iran if they get nuclear weapons.
