It's a mad, mad, mad world

The Ayatollah Khamenei accuses the West of wanting to obstruct scientific progress in the Islamic world. Such heights of absurdity give me vertigo. Iran is not researching biology or physics or astronomy or paleontology or medicine; it’s researching the enrichment of Uranium. There’s little that’s unique or unknown about the process that needs original research and whether or not there is a real movement to delve into the mysteries of the Universe in Iran or Lebanon or Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria, such things are unlikely to get past the Ayatollahs and mullahs anyway. As with fundamentalists everywhere, looking outside the accepted books isn’t accepted.

Khamenei’s claim of victimhood was of course in reference to international concerns regarding its nuclear program which to an outside observer seems to have little to do with the desire to expand mankind’s knowledge and less to do with the amusing Idea that Iran has an energy shortage that only Nukes can solve. Coupled with it’s support of forcing the infidel out of what he calls the “Islamic World” and its stated hatred of Israel, it’s not a stretch to think that Iran has the same ambitions Saddam’s Iraq had when it built the Tammuz nuclear reactor in the 1980’s; the annihilation of Israel and the domination of most of the territory between North Africa and Indonesia.

Our options of course are limited. Iran’s nuclear facilities are hardened, we don’t have the military capacity to invade, and an embargo seems unlikely to happen or to be effective. What do we do when the Ayatollah has the bomb? Can we depend on the Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD strategy of the cold war to keep Iran from simply turning Israel and its 7 million people into ashes? Will Israel be provoked into a preemptive strike? Does MAD work with madmen who welcome death in the cause?

Just what creek are we up anyway and did anyone see the paddle?