"The High Price of Deterring Iran"

Not that the WSJ ever fails to incite for an assault on Iran, but this 'opinion' is not in a leaugue by itself...  in the WSJ, here

".....Iran's threats to wipe Israel off the map are not serious. Iran is supposedly not so irrational that it would launch a first nuclear strike against the Jewish state. Surely, the mullahs know what would happen next -- Israel would annihilate Iran. In other words, a nuclear Iran can be contained. "Deterrence will work with Iran," as General John Abizaid, former Centcom commander and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in 2008. "Despite what their crazy president says, I doubt seriously whether the Iranians are interested in starting a nuclear war."

This may turn out to be a dangerous miscalculation. There is a murderous streak in Iran's public discourse that calls for Israel's destruction and "Death to America." This is also a regime that without hesitation sacrificed thousands of its youth to clear minefields in the war against Iraq during the 1980s. It would be reckless for Jerusalem and Washington to dismiss the rants against the "Great Satan" and "Little Satan" as mere rhetoric. They are the rallying cries of a regime whose raison d'être is to roll back America's influence in the Middle East and usher in Israel's demise. (Now, can it sound any flimsier?)

........Even a rationally acting nuclear Iran may cause unacceptable harm to Western interests.

The atom bomb would enable Tehran to spread the Islamic Revolution without pushing the button. A nuclear weapon is an incredible force multiplier and -- as U.S. President Barack Obama aptly said -- constitutes a game changer. The uneasy peace that a nuclear equilibrium may guarantee tells us next to nothing about the conventional proxy wars nuclear powers tend to fight against one another.

During the Cold War, the price of the balance of terror was the recognition of spheres of influence. If Iran goes nuclear, the Western world will have to negotiate a Middle Eastern Yalta with Tehran -- one that may entail a retreat of U.S. forces from the region and an unpleasant bargain for the Gulf states and Israel. And given the geographic extent of Iran's ambitions, lines will be harder to draw than at Yalta.

Who would stop a nuclear Iran from swallowing its energy-rich neighbors (huh?)or from fomenting Shia unrest in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere across the region?........While Iran may refrain from striking Israel directly, its proxies -- Hamas and Hezbollah -- will redouble their attacks and make peace between Israelis and Palestinians impossible. And a Hezbollah backed by a nuclear Iran would be able to cement its dominance in Lebanese politics, much to the detriment of the country's shrinking Christian population......"