I invested about 2 hours in an unpublished predictions piece. I started it on December 26 while I was sick as a monkey. I’ve gone back to it several times, adding bits about entertainment, soliloquies about sports, anecdotes about economics.

Unfortunately–very unfortunately–there is only one prediction worth printing, and Michelle Malkin’s ominous headline gives me the courage to write:

The West will go nuclear with Iran before 2006 is out.

As I see it, we will have little choice.

North Korea is watching. How we treat Iran will serve as their license or limit. An air strike on Iran’s nuke plants will tell Pyong Yang that we will react with similar reservation to their nuclear sabre-rattling. N. Korea’s plants are buried, and an air strike won’t take out their weapons.

An invasion of Iran would be almost impossible. As with every other war after WWI, the US would have to go it more or less alone. Our commitments in Iraq prevent that option.

Iran will give us a choice: withdraw from the region, including Israel, or watch Israel burn. Tactical nukes–nuclear tipped Cruise missiles and the like–will be our only option. We’ll pretend to negotiate while we prepare the attack, but the diplomacy will be mere cover for time. 68 nuclear warheads will turn that once grand Persian Empire into a nuclear nightmare.

The rest of the story: The UN, France, China, Russia, and the rest of the uncivilized world will lodge no protest for three reasons. First, Iran is dangerous enough to require such severe treatment. Second, North Korea will capitulate as a result. Third, and most importantly, those “allies” who have opposed every American policy since Vietnam will realize that we are serious. France, in particular, will understand that the survival of Western Civilization is not a political science class project, but the future’s historical judgment. Even the frogs will get the importance of that.

Victor David Hanson sees a different, non-nuclear, scenario:

The fourth scenario is as increasingly dreaded as it is apparently inevitable — a U.S. air strike. Most hope that it can be delayed, since its one virtue — the elimination of the Iranian nuclear threat — must ipso facto outweigh the multifaceted disadvantages.

To paraphrase Patton, compared this, all other human predictions pale into puny insignificance.?

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