Iranian Nuke Watch

The Wall Street Journal denounces the Bush Administration's apparent inclination to go along with the European all-carrot, no-stick approach to "preventing" Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The notion that Iran can be "trusted" not to go nuclear if given the chance is ludicrous. Iran has boldly announced its intentions numerous times in the past and its intention to use those nuclear weapons on Israel. Iran is a theocratic Islamist state that subscribes to the policy that deals with infidels are made to be broken. And Iran has no qualms about sticking it to the Great Satan.

Here's the rub:

The Europeans are being disingenuous again. Sure, they "oppose" Iran's nuclear ambitions. But they have also made the calculation that they can live with a nuclear Iran just as they currently live with a nuclear North Korea. That's why British Foreign Minister Jack Straw says he cannot see "any circumstances in which military action would be justified against Iran." That's also why German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer recently toasted Iranian-German relations at the opening of Tehran's new embassy in Berlin, treating the nuclear question as a mere hiccup on the road to closer partnership.

Simply said, the Europeans are only playing games in some preposterous effort to delay what they feel is inevitable. In doing so, they are undermining the US's interest in actually and actively preventing Iran from going nuclear and are laying the groundwork for the international community to voice full-throated disdain for Israel if that nation does unto Iran what it did to the Osirak nuclear plant in Iraq 25 years ago.