A very good piece by Jack Birnbaum at Tech Central Station, on the mad mullahs of Iran and their transparent scheme to placate, bribe, and threaten the world community long enough to attain the ultimate weapon: The Next Threat.

I won’t bore you with more details of the straight-faced lies of the mullahcracy and the semi-credulous pronouncements of the international monitoring agencies, and of whether inspectors are being allowed in today, because it will change by tomorrow. If at this point you don’t believe that Iran is on its way to a nuclear capability, you can stop reading and go check out today’s comics page. For the rest of you, the question now becomes: What strategic problems does this bring, and what to do about it?

First, a nuclear Iran becomes a bigger player in local politics. It may make it harder for the U.S. to continue increasing its influence among the new states of Central Asia, and may, if and when alliances and times of conflict line up right, complicate things in the Indian-Pakistani conflict. But these are the least of our worries.

Perhaps less likely, but more importantly if it does eventuate, would be increased influence in Europe. The Shahab-4 missile, developed with the kind assistance of North Korea, could carry a plutonium-core nuclear bomb from Iran to Central Europe. Even the mullahs aren’t crazy enough to do that, but just the existence of that capability may well affect European decision makers when they next discuss immigration, or headscarves, or the middle east conflict, or cooperation with the United States.

But the critical issues are not those. They are: the survival of Israel, and the threat of an untraceable nuclear attack on America.