They’re spinning this as an “in the off chance sanctions don’t work…” contingency plan, but it sounds like an administration succumbing to its own impotence:
Iran will probably have the bomb before our 2012 election, which means Israel is on its own. What’s concerning here is that the administration clearly doesn’t understand the deeper strategic implications of Iran owning a nuke and having that launch-on-warning missile technology enjoyed by the US and Russia for decades. Deterrence isn’t the point here. We deterred the Soviets from attacking us with nuclear weapons, but that didn’t stop them from exporting communism by means of violent proxy wars (which we were often sucked into, costing us billions of dollars and thousands of American lives). Imagine what happens to the balance of power in the Middle East if Iran, like Russia, could safely shield its terrorist proxies under the protective cover of nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting our regional bases, Israel, Europe, and ultimately the continental United States. Allowing Iran access to nuclear weapons is a guaranteed formula for widespread Mid-East strife and a potential nuclear exchange between Iran and Israel. The Obama administration seems to be resigning itself to that avoidable fate.
