What Might Iran Do?

Clifford May at National Review picks up on a topic I raised yesterday about the nature of the Iranian threat to the U.S. He writes that "the conventional wisdom holds that while Iran may represent an existential threat to Israel, America is not in imminent peril."

Seems about right to me. But May goes onto argue that Iran may launch an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) weapon against the U.S. as a prelude to smuggling a nuclear weapon into a U.S. port and blowing it (and us) up.

Well... sure. They might do that. Just as a corrupt Russian military establishment might hand over some functional nuclear weapons to al Qaeda. Just as a belligerent North Korean leadership might start a war with South Korea. Just as a rogue intelligence officer in any nation that has WMD might abscond with some Anthrax and start mailing letters.

Welcome to life. Bad things might happen.

The mere existence of uncertainty doesn't tell us anything at all. The question, of course, is how to navigate a country through uncertainty.

On this most crucial point, May says nothing. Well, not nothing. He does remind us (as he does with metronomic regularity) that in the 1930s, the British appeased Hitler, and look what happened.

The obvious implication of the Munich talk is that only a war against Iran would suffice to eliminate the threat of what might happen if Iran goes nuclear.

What's interesting to me is that while May devotes his considerable imagination to what might happen if Iran goes nuclear, he doesn't wield his creativity to offer us a taste of what might happen if we start another war in the Middle East.

For instance, might the Iranians retaliate by bombing American civilian targets, airlines, buildings, etc? Might Iran destabilize the Iraqi government and intensify efforts to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan? Might a military strike provoke an Iraqi Shia uprising in support of their Iranian coreligionists? Might Iran lob a few of its Shahabs at the Saudi oil fields? Might the resulting bloodshed in Iran lead its Western-leaning youth to despise America?

Might a posture that insists that America start wars on the basis of what might happen be, in the long run, more harmful than one that doesn't?

Clifford May might want to address that in his next column.