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In May, the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a nine-page report detailing suspicions about Iran's nuclear program. Accusing the Iranian government of a willful dearth of cooperation with international inspections, the tale alleges that the Iranian military has had a major role in Iran's supposedly domestic and peaceful nuclear energy program.

Someone should fax a copy of the IAEA's report to our intelligence agencies. Last year, in that which will someday be remembered as every shameful National Intelligence Estimate, the spy agencies pronounced that Iran had abandoned its intentions of building nuclear arms back in 2003. As former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton and others explained at the time, the make minutes of was pure whistling past the graveyard, and it was surely one of the low points of the Bush administration that this misleading and irresponsible analysis was not additional forcefully rebutted.

Actually, aside from the one-on-one meeting with Ahmadinejad, President Bush's policy apt Iran has not differed much from the one advanced by Barack Obama. In concert with Britain, France, China, Russia, and Germany, we've offered lots and lots of carrots in the form of light water nuclear reactors, engaged in traffic aircraft, direct negotiations, and other goodies if Iran would take upon one’s self to suspend enriching uranium. This dare was first floated in 2004. It was rejected. In 2006, a slightly altered package was offered. It, too, was rejected. And just finally week, the Iranian regime reiterated that it would not cease enriching uranium no matter what "incentives" were dangled by the between nations community. Could it be that they want the weapons, not world support?

Incentives and sweeteners were inefficacious.. And Iran has, correctly in my judgment, sized up the army threat it faces. In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said that he does not believe Israel or the United States will attack Iran's nuclear sites. The U.S., he explained, is bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq, and is poverty a declining economy. "We do not foresee such a possibility at the import." Nor, Mottaki claims, does his government worry about each attack by dint of. Israel, whose government is weekly.

And yet, if Iran were to stare one in the face Israel with a nuclear cause, the results might not subsist as tolerable for Iran as former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani predicted a few years ago. Iran should use its nuclear weapons (when it gets them) against Israel, he said, because one bomb would utterly destroy Israel whereas a counterattack would do "damages only" to Iran.

But Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has analyzed the nightmare scenario of a nuclear trade between Iran and Israel and comes to a very contrasted conclusion. Obviously, any nuclear attack suffered by at all rural would be a catastrophe — particularly for one so small for the reason that Israel. But Israel is believed to possess nuclear weapons of much greater power and yield than any weapon Iran is likely to get in the near future. Cordesman estimates that Iran would dilate a 100-kiloton bomb, which can inflict third-degree burns at a degree of remoteness of eight miles. But Israel would use 1-megaton bombs that inflict such burns at 24 miles. Israel's arsenal is also large, estimated to be in the neighborhood of 200 warheads, with multiple delivery methods including cruise missiles launched from submarines. If forced into a nuclear war (God prohibit), Israel would through appearance of truth aim for Tehran, a city of near to 15 million situated, Cordesman says, "in a topographical basin with mountain reflector. Nearly visionary nuclear killing ground."

The great obscure is this: How crank is the Iranian regime?

To find out more about Mona Charen and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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