The Iranian Nuclear Threat

A week ago, in the Friday edition of the Wall Street Journal, Arthur Herman wrote a very descriptive review of Michael Ledeen's book, "The Iranian Time Bomb."

What we learn from this article is that Mr. Ledeen's book provides us with evidence of the shocking decline of Iran's economy. And that the country's nuclear weapons program is no longer a comforting decade, or even five years from fruition, but, rather, possibly as close as two years to producing a working device.

From the evidence, Iran is to be taken seriously as both a regional and, consequently, due to the region affected, global threat.

Ledeen personally prefers diplomacy and funding of those who would overthrow Iran's government, to military action by the US and its Western allies. While that's not a moot point, for me, the more interesting information in the article reviewing the book is how tenuous Iran's own supply of gasoline is. They have virtually zero refining capacity, so any confrontation in which they attempted to shut down the Straits of Hormuz and their own oil shipments, would rapidly drain their own gasoline supplies faster than the world would be affected by a shortage of crude oil.

The nuclear weapons threat, of course, makes the potential to force such a standoff earlier, rather than later, all the more pressing.

Mr. Herman, the reviewer, notes Ledeen's own flip-flop on the diplomacy vs. aggression question. Too, he notes that few revolutions have occurred without a foreign military presence causing the fall of the unpopular, current regime.

I found the review to be very eye-opening, particularly as the US, thanks to our fortuitous presence in Iraq, has troops, aircraft, naval and logistical assets at hand in the region, should armed intervention in Iran be appropriate within the next year or so.