Read your subect article as a link from bloggerheads TV, with dismay. A good deal of it sounds like you are describing our present administration (vs Iran).

First of all, the 1933 Montevideo Convention was put together by inter-american states: other parts of the world(including the middle-east) were neither invited or signators of this convention...that's a bad metaphor.

Dust-off the NPT and see what you get:Iran vs the USA. Our lack of evenhandedness is pure arrogance. We need to live by the rules as well as others.

If you think Iran will/can become a nuclear loose-cannon, we already have one in Pakistan, a country with a much greater potential for the kind of instability you attribute to Iran.
An EU official suggested sometime ago that if you want protection against the US, develop an atomic bomb. Perhaps Iran is looking at our megabases(permanent)in Iraq and getting his point.

Make love not war: If the US put its arm on Iran's shoulder and askes them to help us with Iraq in exchange for some friendly"gratuities", we could correct some of our clash-of-civilizational problems. At this point, we have more to fear from our messianic, empire seeking president and his cohort, than we have from Iran; and, one does not have to look further than Iraq and Afganistan. Now he wants to add another polemic on top of two unfinished (and probably unsolvable) involvements, with even worse consequences.

Mark Steyn's thesis is that the West's struggle against radical Islam has assumed the place in geopolitics of the Cold War. His analogy makes no mention at all of the internal contradictions within Iran. In this respect, Steyn's argument replicates the remarkable failure of Western intelligence analysts to foresee the signs of impending collapse of Communism in the 1980's. The data simply does not fit the template of global struggle.

Iran has a kind of democracy. Certainly no one would mistake it for Western democracy, but it has an elected political leadership, not a dictatorship, and a noisy, if filtered, political discourse. Ahmadinejad was elected in a close election. Many people opposed him, and most of those people are not being thrown in jail. If he doesn't deliver the goods on his promises for material progress, he may be thrown aside fairly quickly.

The radical mullahs have an ideological commitment, and political advantage, in making their constituents feel threatened by the great Satan. A military strike will simply strengthen their hand. If, instead, the United States responds with firm but patient resolve, and multilateral pressure, the moderates may yet prevail. The demographics are in their favor.

A good article but before deciding what credibility to apply to the exaggerations in it I would like to know if the author is Jewish; because it sounds like pro Israeli propaganda.

if in 1941 we had 2 a-bombs & japan announced that if we did not turn over the phillipines, guam, etc they were bombing pearl in a week..& we nuked 'em they and they surrendered no guadalcanal, iwo, etc..millions saved ours and theirs

Perhaps when Westerners often wonder "Why do they hate us" (where "they" equals Arabs, Iranians, or Muslims that constitute the "other side" of the "Clash of Civilizations") they should just sit back and read Mark Steyn's article. The sheer arrogance, not to mention the incredible bias, both of which are exhibited throughout this article are the best indicator of why the Muslim world is is up in arms.

Instead of engaging in a potentially useful discourse of the effect of Muslim immigrant populations on their host country (which could have been fruitfully compared to the effect of immigrant Jews) Mr. Steyn instead decides to engage in an infantile "good guys vs. bad guys" game, and has the audacity to declare important ideas such as the Palestinian right of return a "weapon of convenience" (a right that Israel has granted to Jews with a tenuous relationship to the land).

Furthermore, his list of "five things" that are characteristic of Iranian foreign policy could just as easily be used for Israel, with the replacement of certain key words. Instead of facing down Iran, perhaps we should try to focus on facing down such rabid war-mongers like Mr. Steyn.

I enjoyed your article and am in broad agreement with it.

One point in the entire Iran and nukes debate that seems missing to me is that Israel already has them. Iran knows Israel has them. Surely Israel must keep at least one nuclear warhead targetted on Mecca and one on Medina, and must have let this be known? I mean, wouldn't you gently hint at that fact if you were in Israel's position? And with the chance of destroying the geographical heart of Islam if Israel ever wanted to, I think Iran and other Middle eastern powers will feel free to rant and rave as much as they like, but will they ever risk the chance of pushing Israel to that extreme? I doubt it. Of course, I am assuming Israel would only do that if they seriously thought Israel was on the brink of annihilation - they are rational and good international citizens in a way that Iran is not and would not do it just because they can.

And of course, given the deeply entrenched corruption of so many Middle Eastern regimes, it suits them to have Israel as a bogey-man they can use to blame for all their ills.Without Israel there to blame, they would have very little to cover up their own incompetence and greed.

Your article "Facing Down Iran" eloquently articulates what I have long felt about the Iranian regime and our own country's weak responses. I also appreciate that you seem to acknowledge that our failures have been bi-partisan. I only depart from you when you seem to credit Iran for creating Islamic imperialism. Islam has always been imperialistic. It also has always been contemptuous of rights of non-Islamic nations. Thomas Jefferson was frankly told by an ambassador of the Barbary States that the seizure of U.S. shipping was commanded by the Prophet. That same arrogance and sense of entitlement is alive and well across the Islamic world today. It is not unique to, nor was it invented by, Iran.