I wrote this on May 14, 2003 (Scroll down. You'll have to work for it if you want to check the original for accuracy. This is pseudo-blog days before I even started kinda-hyperlinks to individual posts):
The issue of who is "next" misses a strong point that they are interrelated. North Korea would sell nukes to Iran. Iran would buy them. Iran would destabilize Iraq and Afghanistan. Stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan undermines Iran's mullahs (and others).
I'm not sure whether success in Iraq will be more important to undermining Iran's mullahs than undermining Iran's mullahs will be to being successful in Iraq.
Either way, the Iranian mullahs must go.
I knew that Iran was a threat to our success in Iraq even in the heady days of conventional victory. What I never imagined in May 2003 was that we'd let Iran (and Syria for that matter) get away with murder by supporting terrorists inside Iraq. Nor would I have thought that in 2007 we'd still be wondering what to do about Iran. And the threat may be worse than we imagined four years ago.
One way or another, the mullah regime in Iran has to go. And if President Bush and Prime Minister Blair don't take the mullahs down, I don't know who we expect will do so in 2009 (or even the end of this year in the case of Blair, who will step down).
Once more into the breach?
(Note: My comment regarding the victory in Iraq that was obvious to me in May 2006 was before I fully absorbed the new phase of the war that began after the Samarra bombing in February 2006. It is still obvious to me that the Sunnis (whether Baathist, jihadi, or nationalists) cannot win. What threatens us now is Iran's sponsorship of the Sadr goons and related thugs. The Sunnis just add to the carnage without being able to win themselves.)
