THE U.S. PEOPLE GET IT: STRIKE IRAN

57% Americans support military action in Iran (Financial Times)
WASHINGTON — Despite persistent disillusionment with the war in Iraq, a majority of Americans supports taking military action against Iran if that country continues to produce material that can be used to develop nuclear weapons, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found. The poll, conducted Sunday through Wednesday, found that 57% of Americans favor military intervention if Iran’s Islamic government pursues a program that could enable it to build nuclear arms. Support for military action against Tehran has increased over the last year, the poll found, even though public sentiment is running against the war in neighboring Iraq: 53% said they believe the situation there was not worth going to war.

War Against Iran May Be a Necessity - Gerard Baker
Those who say war with Iran is unthinkable are right. Military strikes, even limited, targeted, and accurate ones, will have devastating consequences for the region and for the world. There are many fearfully powerful arguments against the use of the military option. But multiplied together, squared, and then cubed, the weight of these arguments does not come close to matching the case for us to stop, by whatever means may be necessary, Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

If Iran gets safely and unmolested to nuclear status, it will be a threshold moment in history, up there with the Bolshevik Revolution and the coming of Hitler. We can reasonably assume that the refusal of the current Iranian leadership to accept the Holocaust as historical fact is simply a recognition of their own plans to redefine the notion as soon as they get a chance ("Now this is what we call a holocaust"). But this threat is only, incredibly, a relatively small part of the problem.

No country in the region will be confident that the U.S. will be able or willing to protect them from a nuclear strike by Iran. Nor will any regional power fear that the U.S. will act to prevent them from emulating Iran. Say hello to a nuclear Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia. Iran, secure behind its nuclear wall, will surely step up its campaign of terror around the world. Protected by a nuclear-missile-owning state, Iranian terror training camps will become impregnable. (Times-UK)

Why Fear Iranian Nukes? - Tony Blankley
A nuclear Iran, either out of calculation that it could win a nuclear exchange with Israel, or out of a fanatical derangement, clearly poses an existential threat to Israel. No Israeli leader could risk exposing his country to such a threat, if he could avoid it. While the U.S. shares the Israeli concern, beyond that, the United States as the dominant world power would have primary responsibility for managing a more aggressive, harder to deter Iran that might feel safer in using terrorism to strike the West, armed with a nuclear deterrent.

French President Jacques Chirac last week added a fascinating and unexpected element by his threat that France might use its nuclear weapons against a country that either launched a terrorist attack against France or cut off its "strategic supplies" (i.e., oil). The French press, from left to right, immediately stated that Chirac's target was Iran. Some observers judge (I believe quite plausibly) that Chirac is now alive to the threat of radical Islam in France, and he is prepared to threaten to go nuclear to try to stop its encouragement from outside. (Washington Times)