Iranian Nuclear Weapons
Iran is really not as big a problem as Al Qaeda, at least as far as knowing the right policy. The situation is that they are developing nuclear weapons, with the desire to use them against Israel, and, probably, the United States. Also, I would think, extreme-Sunni oil-competitor Saud Arabia. Both Israel and the U.S. (though not Saudi Arabia) have the Bomb and could retaliate, though, so it’s not clear how that would work out. What Iran could do is to give a few bombs to terrorist groups and let them do the dirty work, muddying up responsibility enough that Israel and the U.S. wouldn’t nuke Iran in return. (If Al Qaeda nuked New York with an Iranian bomb that the Iranians denied giving them, would we nuke Tehran in return? No.)
So what can we do? It’s quite simple: we bomb Iran now, just as Israel bombed Iraq some 20 years ago. Like Israel, we would be universally condemned at the time, but we would save hundreds of thousands of lives later.
Would Iran retaliate in some way for our bombing them? Yes, if they thought we wouldn’t retaliate for the retaliation. But we could, and probably would. The Iranian government, unlike a terrorist group, has land to protect. We can easily inflict far more damage on them than they can inflict on us. And after our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, our threat would be credible.
Why, then, is Iran persisting? First, because so far there has been absolutely no cost to them, politically. The U.S. and others criticize Iran, but we have been saying mean things about Iran for years and years, so their feelings don’t get hurt. Second, they can always pull back if it looks like the U.S. is getting serious, and if we don’t, they get the benefits of having the Bomb. Third, the Iranian government might benefit by getting the nuclear sites bombed by America, if America did restrict itself to nuclear sites and didn’t take advantage of the occasion to eliminate the Iranian air force and such things. Very little damage would occur except to the sites themselves, and the government leaders would be heroes for standing up to America. It would be quite hard for any opposition leaders to take power “during a time of war”. Thus, I expect Iran to keep working on the Bomb, though I make no prediction on the U.S. response.