No Runny Eggs

Jib posts his bleak feelings on the near future with regard to Iran, and points us to a piece by Niall Ferguson in The Sunday Telegraph on how “The Great War of 2007” could get started by a nuclear Iran. There are basically 4 ways this can go, with 3 of them resulting in a nuclear-armed Iran attacking both Israel and the US (remember, Iran doesn’t call Israel or Jews “The Great Satan”, it calls the US that) with its nuclear weapons, and the 4th resulting in a massive guerilla/terrorist war:

1. Everybody can stick their heads in the sand and hope that MAD works as well as it did against the Soviets and the ChiComs. The Islamist mindset of a complete lack of regard for life if it means either a worldwide Islamic caliphate or the end of the world ensures that the words behind the acronym will happen no later than the moment that the Iranians decide they have enough nuclear weapons to make their half of MAD a reality (and probably far sooner than them getting a couple thousand warheads).
2. We can stick with diplomacy. Not only can’t the mullahs that run Iran be reasoned with because they feel that it’s their destiny to turn the entire planet into an Islamic caliphate, and not only are certain countries like Russia and Red China actively helping Iran with their intermediate goals of wiping Israel off the face of the Earth and neutering the US (under the enemy-of-my-enemy principal), but two of the 3 EU countries we’re partnering with (France and Germany) don’t seem to really mind a nuclear-armed Iran as long as its target list continues to not include Paris and Berlin. This will have the same result as option #1.
3. We can let the Israelis try to replicate their Orsik success. They just don’t have the assets to pull it off, and there’s a degree of probability that the Iranian response vis-a-vis Israel, namely the destruction of Israel as a non-Islamist state, will have UN-backing (sans the US). Further, because the Iranians and other Islamists will (correctly) assume that Israel couldn’t try this without US aquiescence, they’ll step up their terror war against us, almost certainly with whatever nuclear armament they do have.
4. The US can (essentially unilaterally) take out the weapons program and remove the mullahs as a consequence (something the Israelis are singularily unable to do). Unlike the Israelis, we do have the assets to make this a probability, but we’d run the same risks of escalating the Islamist terror war against us (whether it’s strictly al-Qaeda and Iranian-backed groups or the larger Islamist world) and inviting Russia/Red China (the only entities that could extend a conventional war much beyond a couple months) in on the Iranians’ side.

That having been said, we can’t wait for the Iranians to gather nukes. The mullahs don’t care whether it’s George Bush, John Kerry, John McCain or Russ Feingold in the Oval Office; they want us dead. Al-Qaeda showed them it’s possible, and they’re working feverishly on the means to make 9/11 look like your typical murder. If you’re looking for the UN to save us, you’ve got another thing coming. Two of the permanent members of the UN Security Council are actively backing Iran’s plans, a third (and its partner in the EU) are quietly cheering on the Iranians from the sidelines, and the majority of the UN couldn’t care as long as their delegations got enough warning to evacuate New York City.