What to do about Iran

Item in today's NY Times:

Five former members of president Obama’s inner circle of Iran advisers have written an open letter expressing concern that a pending accord to stem Iran’s nuclear program may fall short of meeting the administration’s own standard of a ‘good’ agreement” and laying out a series of minimum requirements that Iran must agree to in coming days for them to support a final deal.

Story. Letter.

Gee, no kidding. Iran wants to build a nuclear bomb, and will build a nuclear bomb, no matter what. Any other conclusion is naive and ridiculous.

At this point, the best bad solution is to a) continue sanctions and b) destroy Iran's capability to deliver the weapons - in other words, destroy their missile projects, which is much easier than hitting the nuclear facilities, and their air force (ditto).

Make no mistake, the likely outcome of that is an accelerated program to develop the bomb. But that's going to happen anyway. And a ferocious enough attack might - emphasis on might - make Iran more willing to be serious in future negotiations.

Though I wouldn't bet on that.

An agreement that truly freezes the program would be better - you need time not so much for a regime change, but for improvements in anti-missile defenses - but that is not happening. And has never really been happening.

The next question will be what to do about Saudi Arabia's bomb, an even more difficult problem to address.