"The End of the Digital Age & The Start of the Dark Age"

The blogospheric chatter on Iran and its looming nuclear weapons capability is rising to a high-rolling boil of late.

NRO:

President Bush has said repeatedly that the United States will accept no such thing. We take him at his word. For Iran — the world’s most incorrigible state sponsor of Islamic terrorism — to acquire nuclear weapons not only would increase the mullah’s nefarious sway in the region, but would also expose America and her allies to a potentially mortal danger. Iran quite simply must be stopped. That Europe appears to have moved toward this conclusion is cause for limited optimism. But it should in no way attenuate the sense of urgency we feel — or our will to act.

Anne Bayefsky reports that far from helping to retard the mullahgarchy's drive for nukes, "top U.N. officials responsible for nuclear nonproliferation are in the business of facilitating Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons." This should settle any question of referring Tehran to the UN Security Council for sanctions that will never happen and would only harm the Iranian people if they did. Heck, our twelve-year experience with Saddam Hussein next door should have settled that a long time ago.

While Charles Krauthammer eviscerates the EUnuchs for their fantasist unwillingness to take steps against Iran that could actually slow down their nuclear development precisely because of their utter risk aversity, a left-wing pointy-head actually said this:

But at a minimum the West is counting on a political and diplomatic embarrassment for Tehran, which this month removed U.N. inspection seals on uranium enrichment equipment, deepening suspicions it is seeking nuclear arms.

Otherwise Tehran would not be fighting a referral, diplomats and other experts say.

"Iranians are very proud and don't want to become a pariah state like North Korea," said Edward Luck, a Columbia University professor specializing in U.N. affairs. "I think they would find it very unattractive."

Shame as a WMD. Peer pressure to bring to heel a regime that has no peers this side of Nazi Germany, that insists the Holocaust never happened yet wants to pick it up where Hitler left off, and believes that the Shia Muslim messiah will come if an apocalypse is unleashed. Yeah, let's try that. It's bound to work.

Where such idiocy leaves us is the contemplation of two scenarios: what must happen, and what will happen.

TKS' Jim Geraghty summed it up well:

So, what’s the best-case scenario – that Iranians who don’t buy into Ahmadinejad’s Mahdi prophecies (in other words, those with a survival instinct) remove him from power? For that to happen, they would have to see the pain of internal strife associated with a coup to be less than the pain of going along with Ahmadinejad and hoping for the best. We’re not there yet....

If we stand at an intractable point, that the Iranians will not be deterred from obtaining nuclear weapons, that they have every intention of using them on Israel, and a terrible war is inevitable… is it in our best interest to start that terrible war on our terms?

It’s tough to even write those words.

But we may be looking at the nightmare scenario – Ahmadinejad may not merely be saber-rattling. He has given every indication that he wants not merely to possess a nuclear weapon, but to use it on Israel - and who’s to say he would stop after fulfilling his dream of wiping the Jewish state off the map?

So what’s worse – a messy war, with inevitable bloodshed and likely terrorist responses by Iranian agents, or a nuclear blast over Tel Aviv or Haifa?

Or an EMP attack on our own homeland?

It's a bad choice versus a worse choice - the choice that "diplomacy" always leaves us. Which means there is no choice.

Will George Bush make it or duck it? The answer will determine whether or not the bumpy ride that's coming will be our last.

UPDATE 1/20: The "what must happen vs. what will happen" meme continues today at Winds of Change. Both are must-reads. Don't miss them.