According to the Bandar Beacon, the admin is contemplating a strike against Iran.

If the Bush Administration allows itself to peter out without having dealt with Iran -- which always was, and remains, the chief military threat to Infidels among Muslim states --- the fiasco of its diversion into the tarbaby of Iraq will be complete. At this point, it has no other task except to damage, as best it can, in as many ways as it can, that nuclear project. It need not be deterred by the various idiotic arguments presented by the usual defenders of Iran, the stout-hearted people who did nothing to prevent, and much to promote, the coming to power of Khomeini and the consolidation of that power without a suitable Western response, such people as the worst president in the history of America, the holier-than-thou Jimmy Carter, and the sinister Gary Sick and let's not forget Shireen Hunter, Director of somethingorother strategic at the international somethingorother center for somethingorother in Washington, and the real Lady Macbeth to her nondescript husband's rise to be that appetizing thing, Ambassador to NATO (how, given his undistinguished background, she and he managed that is one more Washington mystery).

The arguments go something like this:

1) "We can't possibly destroy the Iranian project because it is too widely dispersed."

Answer: One does not have to "destroy" something to set it back for a decade. One can damage a good deal, and then work to so undermine the regime, or even the country of Iran if necessary, that the project can never be put back. Furthermore, one attack does not mean that others cannot follow, as further information is developed, or observed by spy satellites, as to places that escaped initial damage.

2) "Such an attack would destroy the chances for the reformers to come to power. It makes more sense just to work for a new regime in Iran."

This suggests that a successful attack on Iran's nuclear project would lead to increased support for the regime of the Islamic Republic. Would it? Would it not, rather, lead to short-term rallying around, and then after a few months, when the extent of the setback became clear, and the humiliation of the regime obvious, to a loss of face so great that within Iran, the regime itself would lose the ability to overawe or cow its opponents, those who dislike it for its corruption and those who are fed up with a Muslim theocracy, and those -- Azeris in the north, Kurds in the northwest, Baluchis in the southeast, Arabs in the southwest -- who are most disturbed about their treatment as ethnic minorities, once left largely alone, but now, through advances in technology, pushed around more vigorously by their Persian masters.

And suppose the chance were taken. Suppose nothing were to be done about Iran, in the hope that the regime could fall at any minute. This story, which is bruited about by the Iranian equivalent of Chalabi and other smilers who assured the Americans, who assured Bernard Lewis, that the "liberation of Baghdad" would make the "liberation of Kabul" seem "like a funeral procession" (as Lewis put it in 2002). It isn't true, but the collateral damage of an attack on nuclear facilities will be that to the prestige of the regime and its perceived power. But won't those Iranian agents strike us all over the world in retaliation? Not if they realize, not if they have been informed, that this is it, and any tiny retaliation will be replied to with the dismemberment, through support of ethnic minorities, of the state of Iran -- a permanent and total dismemberment. Would the government in Iran take such warnings seriously? Would those who rule it exhibit the standard behavior of Muslims in the Middle East that the British observed long ago -- "At your feet, or at your throat"? They would; they would change their ways -- but only after being given a sample of the kind of damage that we inflicted on Berlin and Tokyo during World War II. Not the least of the problems associated with our holding back of Israel during every war, or the Israelis holding themselves back, is that the Muslims of the Middle East have never experienced, and do not understand, what they could be dealt. All those towers in Dubai and the rest of the Gulf, all those cloud-capp'ed towers in Saudi Arabia, could be gone -- never to be replaced because we are able to seize the oilfields whenever we wish -- these are now hostages to fortune. And they must be persuaded of that. So far they have seen nothing but the very mild behavior of the Israelis (prevented even from destroying Egypt's Third Army by Kissinger and Nixon holding Sharon back) and the do-good projects of the Americans in Iraq.

This faith in "regime change" in Iran misses the point. The Shah of Iran was our friend, our ally, our "pillar of stability." (Carter's words). He was followed by Khomeini and by a regime that embodied the worldview of Khomeini. Suppose that tomorrow the Shah's son could come back. Is it not clear that as long as Islam controls the minds of tens of millions of Iranians, just as Khomeini could replace the Shah, and the son of the Shah replace Ahmadinejad, so might, in five or ten or twenty years, a new Khomeini replace the new Shah. Turkey's policies today, under Erdogan, loyal follower of Erbakan, are not to be trusted, are not those that the Americans thought, in 1950 or 1960 or 1970, would be the Kemalist policies of ever-increasing secularism, but something quite different. Neither Turkey under its current regime, or any regime, nor Iran, under any regime that might come into being after the current one, can be permitted to acquire major weaponry. Assorted shahs and ataturks may be supported, their attempts to limit or constrain Islam, with varying degrees of success, welcomed -- but that should not translate into a policy that trusts their countries with weaponry that threatens Infidels.

Get out of Iraq the better to deal with Iran. The French phrase "reculer pour mieux sauter" -- draw back in order to take a better leap --seldom has been more apt.