Welcome to the Nuclear Club, Iran, You Widdle Fuzzballs You

Yer soooo cute! We'd like to invite you into our clubhouse, but don't give out the secret password. Or the handshake either. And, don't blow up the clubhouse, even though that's what you've said you want to do. We don't really believe you, 'cuz you have, like, the totally hottest hair!!!!! Plus, you totally hate Satan, Bushchimpy, as much as we do, which makes you like super-double-special cool!! We lurve you!

**************************

Robert Baer writing an Op-Ed for the New York Daily News writes:

This leads to an unavoidable conclusion: if Iran stalls instead of dealing - and all indications are that this is exactly what they are going to do - the world is wasting time with anything short of a military strike aimed at Iran's growing nuclear infrastructure.

Otherwise, we will be complicit in welcoming Ahmadinejad's regime into the nuclear club. Exactly how soon that will happen, no one knows - but no one who cares about the region's security should be content to wait and find out.

Why? Because a nuclear Iran would pose a genuinely apocalyptic hazard to the world. In Washington today, it is fashionable to pay this notion lip service - but few people seem to genuinely believe it.

Deterrence worked during the Cold War because both the United States and the Soviet Union were governed by common assumptions of rationality. Iran, to the contrary, flatly calls for "wiping Israel off the map" - a call that itself is a violation of the Genocide Convention of 1948. Given Iran's recent actions - arming Hezbollah and fomenting sectarian murder in Iraq - we can only imagine how they would throw their weight around the region with a nuclear weapon in their arsenal.

Let's stop kidding ourselves. Iran must be stopped immediately from acquiring atomic arms, and this can only be accomplished through what international law calls "anticipatory self-defense."