The blogger that all community organizers warn you about, Liquidator65, is back with more commentary on the real world from his own loveable, war mongering, neo-con perspective. Okay, it's long past time for facing some some very unpleasant choices about Iran. We have putting off those choices for the last decade and the reason for this is that is our national plate has been full enough even without the 800-pound gorilla that is looming out of the lunatic asylum that has engulfed the Persian state since 1979...... Thank you very much, Jimmy Carter.

Truth be told, we have been in a low-level state of war with Iran since November 1979. When a nation overruns your sovereign territory or encourages a mob of fanatics to do so, and an U.S. embassy is as much a part of your country as North Dakota, and takes your diplomats captive, they are declaring a state of war by any traditional definition. The regime of Ayatollahs has embraced that state of war and waged it without apology through their terrorist surrogates in Lebanon and Iraq and around the world for almost 30 years. That state of war extends to the state of Israel, which Iran's rulers see as virtually indistinguishable from the United States. Both enemy target states, the Great Satan and the Zionist Little Satan, are at the top of their rather extensive list of things that need to have their existence terminated. In a very short time, probably sooner than expected, Iran will possess the capability to realize its genocidal ambitions, certainly as regard to Israel and, in time, with regard to the United States. A nuclear-armed Iran quite frankly alters the balance of power in the region and at once brings the world closer to nuclear war than it has been since late October 1962.

The administration and our major allies are promising tougher new sanctions and even the Russians and Chinese have hinted they will accept tighter sanctions against the Iranians. This is pointless and will have zero effect on the Iranians and their relentless drive to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Two reasons for this: the first is that the Russian Federation and China will do nothing of a serious nature to damage their lucrative and advantageous relations with the Iranian mullahs and the second is that sanctions don't work period as a means of changing the behavior of a significant nation. It has never happened in the 74 years that sanctions have been used to punish lawless states. The concept of international sanctions was created by the League of Nations in 1935 to punish Mussolini's Italy for its invasion of Ethiopia. Mussolini was hardly even inconvenienced by them and Haile Selaisse was driven into exile within six months, leaving Ethiopia as an Italian colony. It was a British Army in 1941, not the tepid sanctions, that restored Haile Selaisse to his throne for another 35 years. Since 1935, sanctions have been used on numerous occasions as a painless policy to compel states engaged in external aggression, support for terrorism or internal repression to reverse course on such activities. Japan, China, the Soviet Union, Cuba, Turkey, North Korea, the Sudan, Iraq and South Africa have all at one time or another been the target of international sanctions and only in the case of South Africa can they be pointed to as having any effect on policy and that has been exaggerated.

The toughest sanctions in the world will not stop the Iranians from achieving a nuclear capability, and like all such UN sanctions, they will not stop Russians from selling them advanced air defense systems and submarines and China from developing their petroleum resources. What they will do is buy more time for Iran, for each day that passes without military action by the West or Israel brings them one day closer to the day when such an action becomes impossible without inviting a nuclear response. The Iranians love to negotiate; indeed they have been negotiating with our European allies for years and they don't even mind the occasional inspections by the IAEA. They are masters of the art of buying time and going through the motions of serious negotiation, for in reality they have nothing they wish to negotiate. President Ahmadinejad has made it clear that Iran's uranium enrichment is none of the rest of the world's business and that any interference is an act of war. Actually, he is quite right on this. Any effective action to delay or interfere with another country's internal activities is by its nature an act of war against said country. My view is that since war already exists on many levels, that such interference is a legal and justifiable action..... well with the Augustine definition of a just war.

Iran has made no secret of what kind of future world it would like to bring about. In that world, Israel will be a nuclear wasteland, cleansed of Zionism and most, if not all Jews, and Iran, though damaged by Israel's Samson option, will emerge as the leader of the Islamic world from Indonesia to West Africa. At worst, they will lose Teheran to an Israeli warhead, but that is where the center of the opposition to their regime is located and by far the most Westernized part of the Islamic Republic. Ahmadinejad will not mourn its loss too deeply. In that world, the Americans will be removed from the Middle East and Central Asia and will no longer be a global superpower. In that world, Iran will control or dominate half, perhaps two-thirds of the worlds petroleum reserves, and not just in the Middle East as evidenced by the budding and sinister relationship with Hugo Chavez. In that world, the Gulf emirates, Shiite Iraq, Hezbollah Lebanon, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and remnants of the Palestinians not dead of radiation sickness will be Iranian vassals. In that world, the NATO allies of Europe will live under the Iranian nuclear threat and will likely accomodate themselves to the new reality of power until their own Muslim minorities are a majority sometime within the next 50 years. This is an existential threat not just to Israel, but to the West and the survival of its culture and civilization.

Israel is something like the canary in the coal mine for the Western world. If the canary ever dies, we can expect to stop breathing shortly after, and when the canary is threatened, it becomes imperitive to take action as President Nixon did during Israel's existential crisis during the October 1973 war. President Obama can not be expected to act for reasons that are both ideological and political. His world view seems to be that all disputes can be settled through the negotiations of reasonable men and it is not within his realm of consciousness that there are unreasonable men with an irreconcilable world vision to his own, or I hope it is irreconcilable to his own. It is a Carteresque vision of the world that will likely cost him a second term as it did for Jimmy Carter. Therefore, it is left to Israel to do what is necessary to save the world from the abyss as they did so effectively in 1981 at Osirak in Iraq and in Syria last year, and I believe that they are very close to taking that kind of action again.

Can the Israelis do it again on their own? The answer is simply that they have no choice but to try. It will not be an easy undertaking. Iran is a long flight from Israeli air bases and requires securing at least the passive overflight permission of other countries in the region. Israel will also need bunker-busting bombs, which the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations have refused to sell to Israel. It would not surprise me to learn that Israel has developed their own version of a bunker-buster, just as they have developed their own tank, fighter combat aircraft and nuclear deterrent. The recently revealed uranium-enrichment plant has been cut into the side of a mountain and is defended by the latest Russian surface-to-air missile defense system manned by the Revolutionary Guards, Iran's version of an SS elite guard. Only numerous bunker-busting blockbusters dropped with precision accuracy will do the job and bury the cyclotrons and the technicians that work there in a tomb of rock and earth.

The other problem is to get overflight permission and this too is possible, even without using Iraqi airspace. Israel is not alone in regarding a nuclear Iran as an unacceptable state of affairs. The Saudis, Egyptians and the Gulf emirates are as fearful of the Iranian mushroom cloud as is Israel. They understand what this will mean in terms of their own autonomy and influence in the region. The Egyptians have quietly granted permission for an Israeli Dolphin class submarine, armed with torpedoes and cruise missiles, to pass through the Suez Canal on the way to the Indian Ocean. Rumors persist that the Saudis have held secret meetings with high-ranking Israeli officials, including former prime minister Ehud Olmert, and that this was the topic of discussion. They will likely turn a blind eye to the Israeli air strike passing overhead as will Qatar and Bahrain, which a muscle-flexing Iran has already claimed as a lost province. Sure, they will all join in the condemnation of Israel in the Temple of Hypocracy at the UN after the attack, but that will be for public consumption. In their own private councils, they will breath a sigh of relief. Combine the bunker busters and the cruise missiles with overflight permission and the raid is still a huge risk with guaranteed losses, but it can work. Israel's air power capability is formidable and world class; the Iranians will be hurt. Their program will be set back, but it is problematical for how long..... a year, two years, perhaps even five years if all the stars are aligned.

Some, including my colleague Wirtes, will say that setting back the Iranians by one, two or even five years will only delay what is inevitable and that is a nuclear Iran, and they will be correct. However, there are all sorts of possibilities that emerge when you buy that kind of time. It gives our side breathing room and the chance to improve missile defense technology and deployment. It also opens the possibilty of regime change in Iran, where a young, educated class in the capital has grown weary and frustrated by the tyranny of Revolutionary Guards and the hated Basij militia. At the very least, an Isreali air and cruise missile strike will damage the prestige and authority of Adolf, I mean Ahmed, Ahmadinejad, who has already suffered a loss of legitimacy from the recent elections fraud. It will mean that the 12th Imam won't be coming to dinner this year and probably not the next and that is good news for everybody.