The nukes aren't the issue with Iran and North Korea, the leadership is
Tuesday, March 1, 2005 at 5:10PM ■"Nonproliferation Enforcement Dilemma: U.S. Have Few Good Military Choices for Getting Iran, North Korea to Curb Nuclear Efforts," by Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, 28 February 2005, p. A4.
The only place with no movement in the Middle East? That's Iran, where high oil prices make the mullahs feel safer and the destruction of their sworn enemies left and right make them feel both surrounded by the U.S. military and emboldened to reach for the bomb. There some see the next invasion, but I see an authoritarian regime worth killing with connectivity, the same way we brought the bankrupt Soviets to their knees with dÈtente. And no, it wonít take 16 years with this crowd.
We kill the mullahocracy with connectivity because isolation won't work any better than it does with Cuba and because there is no military solution to this problem, which isn't Iran getting the bomb, but the mullahs being in control of politics there.
There is no conventional military solution on North Korea either, but there we don't need an invasion to topple the regime, we just need Kim gone. Doesn't matter how it happens, just so that it happens, and China is the key. But what are we offering Beijing on this? Opposition to their purchases of arms from the EU? Japan joining in our defense guarantee for Taiwan? If Kim is such a serious enemy, then why aren't we dealing?
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