Most likely Ahmadinejad arose because after acquiring nuclear weapons, the aggressive military party in the regime thought that they could drop the charade and exploit their newly-obtained power.

It may also have been that Iraq persuaded the regime they needed to push back against the democracy movement by developing an equally effective Islamofascist movement. The fall of al Qaeda gave a vacuum in the leadership of the popular Islamofascism, and they may have wanted to fill that vacuum.

So, opportunity, motive, and feasibility. The question is how we respond.

Would he not be tempted to wait-out President George W. Bush in the hope that his successor would offer what Albright, Brzezinski and Lugar are advocating?

Hey, it worked for Arafat!

The whole world is waiting out Bush hoping for any combination of liberal leadership to resume its rightful place at the helm, but realistically the diplomat understands that Iran will dismantle its nuclear weapons program or it will be dismantled for them. It's unlikely Bush will leave that chore undone before he leaves office.

I think the madman ruling Iran at the moment knows the folly of dealing with the Europeans who are in no position to grant favors or make treaties. They've shot themselves in the head and now are in the process of dying a slow and painful death. The only question remaining is who or what will emerge from the carcass and will they take the U.N. with them.

Risen? He can get some attention by rattling nukes he doesn't have and threatening Jews. Meanwhile the economy is crumbling. He's a cipher.

I'm willing to consider the possibility that he is the unintended consequence of Khameini trying to fix the election and the liberal youth sitting out the election, helped along by some creative vote counting by his friends in the Revolutionary Guard, but talk about missing the point of the post.

Whoever he is and why ever he's there, take out the nukes. (My preferred method, though admittedly a chicken-hawk fantasy, is to send special forces in by land and kidnap his nuke scientists.)

What would Mohammad (post-Medina) do?

David - They don't need nuclear scientists. They have plans from Pakistan and North Korea (ultimately, from China). They just need to manufacture according to spec. The only people they need with technical expertise are the safety engineers, and even those they don't need if they don't mind losing a few workers to radiation poisoning and cancer.

Bush faces a menu of unattractive choices. Lacking useful intelligence, he doesn't know how to take out the nukes except by full-scale war to create a physical presence throughout the country; he doesn't have the domestic support, the casus belli, or the intelligence case to win authorization for war; and very likely any military action against Iran would be followed by nuclear retaliation and blame on him and his party for a catastrophe. The "safe" alternative in the short term is to push democratization; Iran will not initiate aggression until it has a much larger arsenal than it does now; and so the problem will be left for the future. This is a strategy of hope, that the regime will surrender to the people of Iran before it undertakes agression. But it allows the regime to build a large arsenal of nuclear weapons. If that's the course, God help us.

PJ: Another problem is that it seems the average Iranian, even if he hates the mullahs, still seems to think they should have nukes. So even an internally-created regime change is no guarantee they'll end the program.

There are only two things I'll bet on regarding Iran and nukes: 1) it'll end semi-badly, at best, and 2) Bush will be blamed.

Pap, it'll be brilliantly executed and Bush will be "blamed."

Erp, brilliant execution is no guarantee, unfortunately. Iran learned the lesson of Osirak, and no doubt their nuke sites are scattered all over the place, probably built under orphanages and hospitals and old-age homes. Revolutionary Guards probably have existing orders to slaughter some dissidents and scatter radioactive debris with the bodies and blame the US. If you think leftists went nuts over Iraq, just wait until some radioactivity gets out "because of the US." Regardless of OJ's sunny optimism about Shi'ites and democracy, the country is currently controlled by wackos of the will-stop-at-nothing variety. I just don't see how this can end neatly.

"I just don't see how this can end neatly." Neither do I, but I do trust that Bush does know. He has good people around him not only in Washington, but Blair and now Harper and the Aussies and India are with us, Poland, other former Warsaw pact states and of course Israel. I trust the president implicitly and believe he's on the job due to divine intervention and I think Mr. Cohen will get what he hopes for, an inside job on the ground assisted by a coordinated surgical missile attack.

We've said it here before, anything is possible if one doesn't care who gets the credit or the blame. Let the Iranian lunatics dot the landscape with radioactive body parts or whatever other disgusting thing they can think of. Once it's over, it won't matter.

The media? Come on. Let them jump up and down all they like. We can't worry about them. The left will go even more nuts. How will we be able to tell? They're already dangerously unbalanced. Before Bush hands the reins to his successor, most of them will be confined to quarters under heavy sedation anyway.

Look how Bush orchestrated the great amnesty debate. They're all bumping into each other in the dark like a game of blind man's bluff. By next weekend the media will have something new they're sure will be the end of Bush.

Look at it this way, Bush is a Texas ranger and they aren't.