FEAR NOT THESE DANGERS I PREDICT AND CREATE. I was impressed, reading the latest Charles Krauthammer column, to see that he'd included a relatively accurate assessment of what an attack on Iran would cause: Namely, a death spiral for America's economy, worldwide instability, a vast and rapid increase in retaliatory terrorism, and lots of killing. I was less impressed, and depressingly unsurprised, to watch Krauthammer pull off the predictable pivot to supporting war. His argument appears to be that a nuclear Iran will exercise total hegemony over the Middle East. "Today," writes Krauthammer, "[Iran] is deterred from overt aggression against its neighbors by the threat of conventional retaliation. Against a nuclear Iran, such deterrence becomes far less credible. As its weak, nonnuclear Persian Gulf neighbors accommodate to it, jihadist Iran will gain control of the most strategic region on the globe." It's unclear why the other nuclear powers in Iran's neck o' the woods -- Israel, Pakistan, and Russia -- will cede the all energy supplies and regional autonomy to old Iran. Nor is it clear why, if Iran currently fears conventional retaliation, they wouldn't buckle under the threat of total, American-led, annihilation if they sought expansion. Indeed, all that's really clear is that Krauthammer wants to go on record saying war will be really, really, really bad before he agitates us into one. That way, he's both prescient and tough. And when you've got those two under your belt, "strategically sound" isn't really an urgent acquisition.
--Ezra Klein
