Is Iran Next?

Powerline has some interesting commentary about the new issue of the Weekly Standard that is focused on Iran's nuclear program and it's most recent belligerent statements toward the U.S. The commentary focuses on a long article by Reuel Marc Gerecht's entitled: "To bomb, or not to bomb." Here' Gerecht:

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.

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.

John Hinderaker comments: Maybe I'm completely wrong about this, but it strikes me as almost inconceivable that we could take any military action against Iran. The left's attack on the Iraq war has been intended, in part, to destroy the Bush administration. But there is a second, equally important objective: by portraying the Iraq war as a disaster and turning American public opinion against it, the left hopes to reprise its Vietnam success by making it impossible, for a generation, for the U.S. to fight a meaningful war. Hasn't that project been successful? I think it has, although whether its impact will last for a generation remains to be seen.