re: #299 drcordell

Wishful thinking will not eliminate the Iranian threat. Your crystal ball has one fatal flaw, it assumes that the Iranian Mullah regime are reasonable people, in the way that the US and Soviet leaders have proven to be. Sadly, there is a great deal of evidence to the contrary, the Mullah regime makes no secret of its belief in the messianic cult of the 12th Imam, apocalypse appears to be their goal, not regime security. Preservation of the regime is a means to the end, not an end in itself.

Regardless, even if it were true that the Iranians had no intention at first use, their mere possession of a nuclear weapon is unacceptable and destabilizing in the face of their threats, and act of war by proxies against Israel, Iraq, Lebanon and the US.

You worry that “sabre rattling at Iran is two-fold. First and foremost, it seems to me that threatening military action / regime change is only going to serve as a further catalyst for Iranian bomb development.” There is great evidence that the Iranians need no additional motivation to develop nuclear weapons, it is quite clearly their obsession independent of outside influences. Backing down will do nothing to deter them and confronting them will do nothing to encourage them.

Finally you say “Overthrowing the current regime certainly doesn’t guarantee an outcome that is more favorable than the current situation.” No, there are no guarantees, however if we look at historical precedent, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was most clearly effective in thwarting his agenda.

There is every reason to expect that military action by the competent US military would be very successful in eliminating this threat. The Iranians field a second rate military, they would be essentially blind and incapable of resisting the US military.

At the present, the only prudent end game is to use the military option to interrupt Iran’s march towards nuclear Armageddon. With or without an invasion, it would be quite easy to reduce their nuclear and missile programs to rubble, if not eliminating the threat, then at least setting it back for decades.