National Security

Confounding the dangerous defeatism of the Administration's critics, the success of the surge in Iraq continues to vindicate the wisdom and foresight of President Bush's grand strategy, known as the Bush Doctrine. There is indeed no substitute for victory in what Norman Podhoretz rightly calls World War IV: the war against radical rogue regimes and terrorists who seek to destroy us not for what we have done, but who we are. The spread of freedom is the only reliable remedy to address the root cause of this conflict, which Osama Bin Laden and his minions thrust upon us on September 11, 2001.

What happens with Iran likewise will have a pivotal effect on the costs and risks of this war that we cannot afford to lose. In January 2002, President Bush rightly included Iran in the Axis of Evil whose rogue regime pose a grave threat to the United States because of the dangerous intersection of malevolent radicalism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately, the American intelligence bureaucracy has compounded the danger we face: It has recently issued a misleading and fundamentally flawed National Security Estimate (NIE), concluding that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. This NIE is the equivalent of Prozac, exponentially raising the already formidable barriers for taking or threatening strong diplomatic and military action against the gathering danger of Iran.

Contrary to the claims of the NIE, is impossible to verify reliably that Iran is not working to weaponize its nuclear program. This regimes deserves no benefit of the doubt. As Charles Krauthammer reliably observes, too, Iran has 3000 centrifuges at work, enriching uranium in defiance of multiple UN resolutions. Once Iran produces sufficient nuclear fuel, it can build and deploy a nuclear weapon in months rather than years.

Iran's provocative behavior directed at the US Naval vessels in the Straits of Hormuz just weeks ago underscores the gravity and imminence of the Iranian threat. The militant mullahs of Tehran are bent on developing a nuclear and ballistic missile capability, supporting terrorism, and fueling insurgency, with the ultimate goal of destroying American civilization. The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has waged direct and indirect war against the United States and its allies throughout the Middle East: aiding and abetting Hamas on the West Bank and Hezbollah in its illegitimate war against Israel ; using Syrian proxies to destabilize Lebanon; arming and inciting Shiite radicals in Iraq. Amadinejad's pledge to see Israel wiped off the map reveals in bold relief the politics of hate and confrontation that animate this Iranian regime. Nor should we delude ourselves that abandoning a decent and democratic Israel (which I would never advocate for interlocking moral and strategic reasons) would placate this unappeasable Iranian regime. Judge the Iranian President by his words and actions. He identifies Anglo-American civilization as the font of evil in the world, which his strategy strives ultimately to eradicate.

Until recently, I considered the Iranian mullahs more deterrable and less prone to taking precipitous risks than Saddam Hussein. Unlike Iraq, it seem plausible that the United States could achieve timely regime change in Iran without using force: by a combination of containment and the demonstration effect American success in Iraq, which would embolden the large pro-American Iranian opposition to the militant mullahs. Moreover, the cost of direct military action looms large. Iran is twice the size of Iraq, its geography more forbidding, and its nuclear capabilities more difficult to preempt. An attack on Iran would impose enormous economic hardship: Among other things, oil prices would skyrocket. Iranians also have a long history of ferocious opposition to foreign intervention, particularly American intervention.

Nevertheless, the case for military preemption against this Iranian regime has become more compelling as the Iranian nuclear program has become riper, the Iranian leadership more reckless, and the United Nations Security Council more hapless. Prudence dictates that the United States must continue to pursue regime change in Iran---- by vigilant containment if possible, but by force if containment fails. Just as the Soviet Union remained an enemy of the fee world right up until the end, Amir Taheri explains, "so the Islamic Republic will remain an enemy until it becomes a nation state" Conversely, the current Iranian rulers will become even more belligerent if they acquire nuclear weapons. Neither deterrence or containment will suffice against a regime fixed on returning the world to the 9th century and annihilating Israel and Anglo-American civilization along with it.

The United States will likely reach a reckoning with this Iranian regime during the next Administration. Voters ought to ponder this long and hard as they choose their next commander and chief. For our security may heavily depend on it.

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