Israel and Iran

Steyn nails it and it ain't good. My guess about Sharon's recent moves is that he judged that as head of the Likud Party he could never get the support he wants to deal with Iran militarily. The new alignment and election may give him a broader base, not that any such consideration would stop him in the end. If Iran proceeds, and the Euros and the UN certainly are no serious impediment, I don't think there is any doubt that Israel will knock out those reactors. They really have no choice about that, and Russia selling missiles to Iran only makes it worse. The question, given that Iranian anti-aircraft defenses are now conceded to be extremely good, is if it can be done with conventional bombing runs vs. something that arrives from much higher altitude.

Does anyone believe that our large military presence on two sides of Iran is a coincidence? I wonder what our carrier presence looks like in the Indian Ocean about now. Some critics of the war in Iraq have complained that Iran is the acknowledged headquarters of international terrorism and should have been our target all along. Maybe it was. Or maybe it was, but depending on the success of the domestic Iranian reform movement. In any case, that movement has failed, so here we are.

The Iranian regime is no doubt much emboldened by media/Democrat portrayals of our failure and exhaustion in Iraq, our "broken" army, etc. If they have been beguiled by that nonsense, they may be on the verge of a major mistake.

Byron