I question your questioning of Iran having the capacity to make a bomb.

I see that as inevitable in a year or two at most. Otherwise I tend to agree with you.

Anyhow, why do you describe the Airforce as "eager" to engage itself. I've long heard that the Airforce of the major services are riddled with Messianic Christianists who see the end times coming.

I agree with Steve, and would only add that the chairman of the joint chiefs is currently an admiral who is undoubtedly aware that Iran has the capability to sink US naval ships if it were attacked.

This would be in addition to the other actions it might take: blocking the Hormuz Strait, stepping up attacks on US troops in Iraq, missiles from Iran and Lebanon into Israel, jacking up the price of oil, possibly involving China and Russia, etc.

The principal problem the US has with Iran, of course, other than the incessant Israeli whining, is not with any nuclear worries but that thanks to misguided US policies Iran has not only become a regional hegemon, Iran has also moved more into an orbit with Russia and China, two not-so-favorite US rivals.

Of course the best strategy for the US would be to adopt Iran as a partner in the area which would help so much in Afghanistan and Iraq particularly, and Lebanon, but Israel's belligerency comes first and they wouldn't accept it.

So while there's so much money in militarization and war, like with Israel now offering to buy some new Joint Strike Fighters from the US (with US taxpayer money), there has to be some restraint when taking on a real power like Iran as opposed to the patsies that the US normally attacks.

My take on Obama and relations with Israel, or any other major issue for that matter, not as formatting and following a policy, but rather a weather vane. If those who must be obeyed want a particular outcome RahmObama will accommodate, otherwise they waffle and obfuscate waiting for others to act.

Nice article, but it doesn't address the real danger which is that the Israelis go ahead and bomb Iran, expecting the U.S. to fall in behind them and back them up (which we would do, unfortunately, due to the domestic political pressure that would be applied to the Obama Administration). How do we constrain the Israelis anymore than we are already doing with the additional sanctions and pressures we are putting on the Iranian regime? I do not put it past Netanyahu to push things to a head because he knows Obama cannot and will not repudiate his government.

A few weeks ago there were reports in Haretz (sp?) of US warships passing through the Suez and how that might be in preparation of an Israeli attack on Iran.

This mornings NYTs reported on North Korean threats over US-South Korean naval exercises. In light of this info the Suez sightings were most likely US ships headed to these exercises, or over-the-horizon back up in case NK did something really stupid.

Clemons' is right, bombing Iran is the worst of a lot of bad options.

RIGHT ON, Steve Clemons.

Watch now as the usual half-witted, self-mislabelled "progressive" cut-and-pasters here proceed to hurl prefabricated insults at the little boy for daring to point out that the emperor is naked.

Can I guarantee Obama will not bomb Iran? No. But I think the chances are greatly reduced under his administration than ANY unnamed republican. Yet another thing to consider when deciding to vote for a repub or any third party...

Mr. Clemons, with all due respect, I haven’t seen anyone hyperventilating over this besides the usual neocon crowd, and even they are drowned out by the Tea Party faction. Still, it's not hard to see why many would be wary of our intentions there. We've labelled Iran a terrorist state and continuously reinforce that label, even after they helped us against Al Qaeda. We have, in the past, manipulated intelligence against Iran just as we did with Iraq. We always present Ahmadinejad as a lunatic, regardless of what he is saying. And let's not forget, Iran is the last triumvirate in the fiendish "axis of evil" (I can't recall, who coined that term?).

I’m glad you realized in ’07 what many had concluded: that we were too stretched out to start another war. I thought the same, but I could never discount the ‘crazy factor’ with Bush and company. The new administration hasn’t followed through on much real diplomacy as intimated (nice speech in Cairo), but they have been bellowing about Iran’s presupposed nuclear weapons program and the Iranian people’s desperate pleas for democracy (I wonder, would they greet us with flowers if we imposed this Western democracy?). All that said, while Obama has continued and expanded the security state, there is no will in the country for another front.

There are, undoubtedly, many Iranians who want democratic change, and I’m not belittling that at all, but what were the election protests really about? Who was the "green path" candidate that was allegedly cheated out of the Presidency? Would that be the same Iranian leader who created Hezbollah and planned the attack that killed almost 250 American servicemen? And do you really think that Britain or the US had no part at all in instigating those protests?

I really have to wonder what terrorism is when a group like a nationalist Hezbollah can suicide bomb our military under Reagan and our reaction is to pack up and pull out of Lebanon, or they can take hostages and we trade weapons for them, compared to no evident threat existing against us today when we brand them as global, excuse me, transnational terrorists, impose sanctions that hurt the Iranian people, and at least keep the threat of attack in our back pocket.

An attack against Iran would probably blow this control valve off -- resulting in a terrorist superhighway running from Iran through Iraq into Jordan and Syria right toward Israel.

In fact, I think the country is so “terrorism fatigued” that most people just shut out foreign security issues (redefined as homeland security issues now), and this administration, like the last, is taking advantage of that apathy to further loot civil liberties in the name of the GWOT. Note how, just this week, Obama slapped down Pelosi for daring to ask for more congressional oversight in the Intelligence Authorization Bill. Of course, he was egged on by the likes of your new BFF, David Frum.

From Candidate Obama in 2008:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,417563,00.html

OBAMA: Here's where you and I agree. It is unacceptable for Iran to possess a nuclear weapon. It would be a game changer, and I've said that repeatedly. I've also said I would never take a military option off the table.
==============

Candidate Obama was crystal clear. Emphatically stated, absolutely no toleration under any circumstances would Iran possess a Nuke AND he went so far as to delineate specifically the means by which he was willing to deny Iran that capability...the "military option". I heard it, you heard it. He told the American people this.

Has this changed, Mr. Clemons?

Which one of those two points is no longer valid? Is it now "relucantly" acceptable for Iran to possess a nuke? ...or is there some reason why the military option never was an option, or is there some magic solution short of military option that will work...or will we just wake up one day, see that they have the bomb and throw our hands up and say "well, we tried ALMOST everything". What has changed?

I read your piece carefully and I hear a number of nightmare scenarios why we should not cross that bridge, but I'm troubled by your vague references to what we actually do that we haven't done.

You said, "I think that there are many things that can yet be done to change the incentive structure of the Iranian political leadership and either seduce or cajole its leaders into a more internationally acceptable course -- and all of these should be tried and put on the table before the potentially cataclysmic course of adopting the Iran War option."

That is pretty light on specifics for such a lengthy article. It implies that you have a long list of solutions that you are not sharing with us, and by using the word "before" implies that this supposedly finite list of solutions and the clearly obvious finite amount of time we are working with might at some point be exhausted,...and that at that point your plans to solve the problem will lead to your also "adopting the Iran War option" as you put it.

Please share with us just some of these "many things" you mentioned and describe how they differ from the clearly failed efforts to date, and also will your solutions be capable of being implemented and tested for success in a time sensitive manner, so that at some point we will know if candidate Obama really meant what he said.

If someone says we will try that other solution, but first our solutions will take 5 years to test, but it only takes one year for Iran to make a bomb, then it is the equivalent of saying the military option is really not on the table.

There was a time when timetables and exit strategies were front and center when it came to foreign policy. I think the non-military options require timetables as well, or the term unacceptable is meaningless.

I have to admit, your hope that Iran might behave with Nuclear technology the way Japan has, is as scary as comparing Charlie Manson to the Dalai Lama. Japan is our closest ally in Asia and has shown an obsessive distaste for growing its military structure. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been killing Americans for 30 years and even killed Americans just this week. No nation on earth has been so vocal about its desire to commit genocide and attack America in the last 65 years as Iran. Comparing the two is difficult to comprehend. This notion makes me wonder if you are of the "Reluctantly" acceptable crowd. If so, then say so. But Obama was clear once on the matter. Did you agree with him then, or do you have solutions that can succeed in time to make the term "unacceptable" actually mean something?