No Iran Attack? Don't Be So Sure…

Never underestimate the neocons

The release of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program has everyone breathing a sigh of relief. According to our best intelligence, the Iranians stopped their weapons program in 2003. The liberal pundits and the more reasonable Sullivanesque conservatives are shouting "Hallelujah!" War has been averted! My response: not so fast.

Before we segue into all the reasons why we shouldn't be letting our guard down, however, let's take a moment or three to savor the War Party's distress. This morning's edition of National Review Online is a veritable cornucopia of spittle-on-the-screen invective. There's a whole section devoted to debunking the debunkers, and each and every article is a study in sophistry elevated almost to an art form.

Michael Ledeen avers that since "you can't prove a negative," the NIE is wrong. Thus, there is no need for any empirical evidence, since, after all, you can't be 100 percent certain, so Iran is guilty as a given. And weren't these the same guys who thought Iraq had WMD? What Ledeen fails to mention is that he and his gang agreed with that assessment, but in the solipsistic universe of the neocons, a different set of rules applies.

Victor Davis Hanson is uncharacteristically laconic. Instead of the usual 1,200 words detailing why the failure to strike Iran yesterday will lead to the Decline of the West and the Victory of Islamofascism, we get little more than 200 words of self-contradicting evasions: the NIE report, taken at face value, proves the Iraq war was a success – after all, it succeeded in deterring the Iranians, who would have gone nuclear had they not witnessed the wrath of the Americans up close. He then turns around, however, and refutes himself by smugly asking us to "expect a variety of rebuttals to this assurance that for 4 years the Iranians haven't gotten much closer to producing weapons grade materials." So, then, the Iraq war did not sufficiently impress the Iranians to divert them from going down the nuclear road? Which is it?