comment by Jerry Gordon

IBD Editorial, April 30, 2008

Mideast: As Iran’s role in Iraq becomes clearer, the Pentagon studies attack options. Meantime, the CIA reveals Syria was close to nuclear weapons capability last year. Is the next stage of the global war on terror imminent?

The angry ’60s protest song “Eve of Destruction” spoke of “the eastern world, it is exploding — violence flaring, bullets loading.” Then, in the chorus, came a complaint: “But you tell me over and over and over again, my friend, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.”

With violence flaring and bombers committing atrocities in the Middle East today, it might be time to dust off this old hippie anthem.

Terror sponsor states seem hell-bent on taking the world to an age of nuclear terrorism, but too many in positions of authority both here and abroad refuse to believe the danger it poses if we sit by and allow such regimes to go nuclear — they “don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.”

When the song was released in the mid-’60s it came off as pretentious and overblown, since the power of nuclear annihilation was limited to the two superpowers and a handful of other governments.

Today there’s a real danger of that capability soon falling into the hands of terrorist groups via the Islamofascist regimes that serve as their enablers — in other words, people willing to blow up a city even if it means their own destruction, and even if it means a nuclear counterattack.

Nuclear deterrence worked during the Cold War, but when it comes to fanatics it’s hard to see how deterrence would be possible.

Tehran reportedly is installing 6,000 centrifuges at its enrichment facility in Natanz. They may be advanced IR-3 centrifuges with the ability to enrich uranium two or three times as fast as the machinery Iran has used so far. It takes 3,000 ordinary centrifuges one year to produce the material needed for an atomic bomb, so the clock is ticking down.

With increasing evidence of Iran’s role in smuggling weapons into Iraq used in attacks on U.S. troops, a second aircraft carrier was sent to the Persian Gulf on Tuesday and the Pentagon ordered commanders to draft options for a U.S. attack on Iran.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen warned Iran that “it would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability.” This week, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is expected to confront Tehran with evidence of Iranian activities.

With Iran’s nuclear facilities spread around the country, with some underground and protected by reinforced concrete, a U.S. attack would be no simple matter. Iran’s Quds Force headquarters, where operations in Iraq are directed, would also likely be targeted.

And as Dan Rabkin, Toronto-based national security analyst, recently pointed out: “The associated consequences would be very severe.”

They could include the targeting of 350,000 U.S. and foreign troops, contractors and mercenaries near Iran’s borders in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with possible retaliation against the Strait of Hormuz through which much of the world’s oil passes.

But when compared with allowing terrorists to have nukes the choice becomes clear.

As the seriousness of the Iranian threat sinks in, there’s more evidence of Syria’s nuclear ambitions.

Last year, Syria apparently was weeks away from operating a North Korean-built plutonium production plant near the Turkish border that could have produced up to two bombs in the first year of operation.

Israel attacked the facility last September. CIA director Michael Hayden told reporters this week that “in the course of a year after they got full up they would have produced enough plutonium for one or two weapons.”

The risks of pre-emptive attack may be daunting.

But President Bush can’t kick this can down the road to his successor, especially if that successor is one of the two Democratic candidates resolved to surrender in the Middle East.

The free world cannot be daunted in preventing the clear and present danger of nuclear terrorism. That means acting, and soon.