Should We Pressure Iran?

Now that the war against Iraq is winding down, many people are starting to look around the Middle East for the next target. Syria has been a popular choice as of late, with North Korea being the "outside" shot. But the undercurrent has always been for taking on Iran next.

There is some pretty good rationale for going to Tehran next. They like supporting groups that aren't exactly the Boy Scouts. They like weapons that kill as many people as possible. They are attempting to build long-range weapons that will allow them to directly export death, mayhem, and destruction without having to use those notoriously unstable terrorists. Plus, it would tick off the French!

Add to all that the Iranian government's professed dislike for us, the Great Satan, and the picture is getting pretty grim. Throw in the numbers 52 and 444 and the name "Jimmy Carter" and you've got a recipe sure to inflame the passions of the American people.

They're five years from the Bomb. They've hijacked American airplanes. They've murdered American citizens.

They've openly violated treaties, conventions, and agreements.

There is strong case for going after the head nutcases in Tehran. They are not nice folks. They mean to do us massive harm and would do so if the opportunity so much as presented itself.

And yet we allow them to persist. Despite the links to Bin Laden and Al-Qaida; despite the weapons of mass destruction; despite the history of the Islamic Republic and its daily exhortations to destroy the Great Satan.

The only way that Tehran would make their desires any more known would be to commit a massive terrorist attack against US interests.

Do we want to wait for that to happen? Or, knowing that it eventually will happen if the mullahs of Tehran persist in spreading their hatred and contempt, do we take to the inevitable battle on our terms instead of theirs?

The experts claim that Tehran is five years from having the Bomb? What if they're wrong? I would hate to wake up one day to see one of our cities going up in a radioactive mushroom.

We need to start ratcheting up the pressure. The Iranian mullahocracy has got to go the way of the Saddamocracy.

UPDATE: Blogmonger puts it a bit better than I did. We are at war with with an ideology, and that ideology has put down its deepest roots in Tehran. The only way to get rid of a weed is to kill it at the root. We can violently remove it with the military or we can let the people of Iran poison the root of tyranny with freedom. Just as long as the weed dies.................