Iran in our future.(nuclear aspects)

NEW YORK, APRIL 7

HALF the concerned world is wondering what to do about Iran. The other half will benefit from it all, or go down in the big sinking ship.

A highly readable symposium on the subject has just been published by the Claremont Review of Books in its current (Spring) issue. A quick historical rundown reminds us that in October 2003 Iran confessed to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it had been doing clandestine nuclear experiments, which it promised to suspend. Eight months later Tehran was once again detected in violation. Another three months later, it was again detected delinquent on its promises, and there was dithering for another six months, bringing on, in June 2005, the presidency of the awful Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (think Anodyne Jack), the mullocratic chiliast who looks forward cheerfully to the end of the world of the infidels. Four months after his election, he said that "Israel must be wiped off the map," a slogan that has been seen adorning missiles imported from Russia, which has also been the source of Iran's uranium. Four months later (February 2006), the IAEA turned the whole matter over to the U.N., and Vice President Cheney gave a speech in which he said, "We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."

The Claremont essayists appear to agree that nuclear preemption should be "strictly a last resort." In a successful effort to avoid the vulnerability of Saddam Hussein in 1981, Iran began dispersing its nuclear tadpoles, which reside now in as many as 24 sites and are correspondingly difficult to locate and destroy.

Mark Helprin contemplates a road ahead:" ... with an intermediate range strategic nuclear capacity [Iran] could deter American intervention, reign over the Gulf, further separate Europe from American Middle East policy, correct a nuclear imbalance with Pakistan, lead and perhaps unify the Islamic world, and thus create the chance to end Western dominance of the Middle East, and, with a single shot, destroy Israel."

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