Charles Krauthammer is a policy wonk first and a Foxified partisan second. In this column, he keeps Obama-bashing to a minimum while painstakingly analyzing Anthony Cordesman's three-step plan for deterring Iran's weapons program, if any, without war: Making clear the U.S. will attack if necessary, showing Iran that it can't win by going nuclear, and offering the mullahs incentives for abandoning nuclear weapons that sound a lot like Nixonian detente.Wrapping up, Krauthammer sounds worried that war is looming -- and if he's worried, so am I:
If we simply continue to drift through kabuki negotiations...one thing is certain: Either America, Europe, the Gulf Arabs and the Israelis will forever be condemned to live under the threat of nuclear blackmail (even nuclear war) from a regime the State Department identifies as the world's greatest exporter of terror. Or an imperiled Israel, with its more limited capabilities, will strike Iran – with correspondingly greater probability of failure and of triggering a regional war.
All options are bad. Doing nothing is worse. "The status quo may not prevent some form of war," concludes Cordesman, "and may even be making it more likely."
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