Tamburlaine The Great

I've been meaning to point this out for days. Check out Andrew Sullivan's interpretation of a WaPo article on the theocrats' control of Iran.

Sullivan writes:

Anyone who thinks the Tehran regime can be appeased or reformed by external or internal pressure should read this helpful reality check in the Washington Post today. I cannot see how Iran will be prevented from becoming a nuclear power short of military action.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it sounds like he's advocating an invasion of Iran. Prior to the Iraq war, that would have been a terrible idea. Now it's just fanciful.

Moreover, it's virtually impossible for us to make a credible threat of force because any such threat would be either incredible or suicidally dumb. There aren't enough troops to keep Iraq secure, and somehow we are going to seize control of and occupy a significantly larger country? One would have thought the lessons of expecting flowers and candy would have been learned by now.

To be fair to Sullivan, determining exactly the right policy vis-a-vis Iran is nigh on impossible. If there's anyway to support the reformist movement without getting American fingerprints all over it, then by all means, we must do so. If the Israelis decide, as they did in the case of Osirak, to destroy parts of the Iranian nuclear program, then they will need and deserve our support. Not, by the way, that the threat of nuclear annihilation will be enough to dissuade the usual suspects from making the usual litany of charges against Israel in such a case.

Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that Tehrani mullahs, vile though they are, have essentially secured deterrent power. To craft a policy on the assumption that they haven't would be impeachable.