As Iran marches dutifully along in its presumed pursuit of a nuclear bomb, we’ll take a moment to analyze the current situation.

We’ll begin with a few “safe” observations, which I believe we can logically take as fact:

1. Iran is an avowed enemy of the United States and Israel.

2. Iran seeks a nuclear weapon both as a deterrent against U.S. military action and as a projection of power and status in the region.

3. A U.S. military strike against Iran will wreak havoc on our other diplomatic and military missions in the Middle East.

In a sense, I can’t help but have some grudging admiration for the way Iran’s government has gone about their business in this matter. The governments of Western Europe, as Ahmadinejad knows, lack the collective willpower to stop this process, and America’s forces are strung out trying to maintain order in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Iran, from a defensive perspective, is in the interesting position of being virtually encircled by a hostile military ground-based power that is pinned down and nearly incapable of moving in force. It is a force governed by a power which spent, and overspent, all of its political capital on… overthrowing the political and military nemesis next door.

Oh, and by doing so, we’ve empowered a Shiite majority in Iraq that will likely be very cozy with it’s Iranian counterpart when all is said and done.

If Iran planned for things to fall out this way, could they have maneuvered any better? I don’t think so.

Iran, of course, claims its nuclear initiative is for purely peaceful purposes. You’d have to be Russian to swallow that line, I suppose. Those of us who haven’t had our minds retarded by centuries of ruthless totalitarianism understand that you don’t hide a nuclear program from the world for 15 years or more if your goal is to power up the soccer stadium for less cash. Iran wants a big bomb. Can we stop it from getting one?

Doubtful. There seems to be four options on the table:

1. Impose crippling sanctions. This can only be done with the approval of the UN Security Council’s five permanent members - of which Russia and China comprise two seats. Even were sanctions imposed (and you can be assured that they will not be), experts agree that it would do little to nothing to deter or delay Iran in the pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Iran’s people would bear the brunt of the suffering, but no sensible person can picture the Mullah’s really giving a shit about that. Right?

2. Dangle fat incentives for the Iranian regime to cease and desist: Otherwise known as “appeasement”, a strategy that has failed the world time and time again. Somehow Europe, and, to a lesser extent, America, seem to be under the impression that doing the same thing over and over will eventually yield a new, different result. This is sometimes been known as “the definition of insanity”. Someone’s not reading their history. Christ, you don’t even have to look 250 years back to realize appeasement is a load of weaksauce political bullshit.

3. Let the Israelis handle it. There are a few problems on this front, of course:

Anything Israel does unilaterally will be seen as being “allowed” by their U.S. “handlers”.

Israel will have to violate what amounts to “enemy air space” to launch strikes on suspect Iranian facilities.

Israel’s lack of large aircraft carriers make the mission much more logistically difficult for them than their U.S. counterparts.

Israeli military strikes inside Iranian borders are the only alternative that would be a larger diplomatic disaster than U.S. strikes of the same nature.

4. Strike all of Iran’s critical / suspect sites ourselves. We probably posses the one military on the planet which at this moment is capable of making this sort of air assault a tactical and logistical success. As mentioned before, of course, much of this airpower is already in place and encircling Iran, meaning the assault could approach from multiple trajectories simultaneously, increasing the chances of success. However, the diplomatic fallout from a world grown tired of American projection of force will be, well… dramatic.

If all of these prospects for dealing with the Cuban… excuse me, Iranian nuclear crisis seem bleak, the one alternative which is infinitely worse is seeing Iran, the largest state sponsor of terrorism on the planet, rear its head one day as a nuclear power. With missiles already capable of delivering nuclear payloads to Western Europe (and their range ever-improving), a terrorist Iranian state is a disaster waiting to play out on a global scale, with consequences too tragic to be imaginable.

It isn’t too much of a stretch to say that the fate of Israel may lay in the hands of China and Russia - hands greasy-slick with Iranian crude. That’s a pretty shitty place to be.