Referencing Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran, Hezbollah has boasted enlisting 2,000 to commit terror in “every corner of the world to jeopardize Israel and America’s interests. We are only waiting for the supreme leader’s green light to take action. If America wants to ignite World War III, we welcome it.”

Against this Arab/Islamist monolithism, how should America proceed?

(a) Resist joining the jackal pack demanding Israel’s hide. Israel has no choice — never has had any other choice — but to retaliate 100-fold against invasion or heinous provocation. It is dealing with Hamas in Gaza; it needs time to deal with Hezbollah in Lebanon — to destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure, bases and missile caches. Israel cannot afford to remain long in Lebanon. But it should remain certainly long enough to cripple Hezbollah and to establish a larger security area in southern Lebanon to protect northern Israel from further Lebanese-based missile attack. And

(b) Go to the nexus of the terror web — the mother lode — and demolish Iran’s advancing nuclear capability. Now. Luminaries and deep-thinkers are calling for a ceasefire (notably on the part of Israel). But, asks U.N. Ambassador John Bolton: “How do you get a ceasefire with a terrorist organization?” Good question. You get it by going to its sources — of money, training and malignant thinking. If Iran is the principal source, the principal culprit, then Iran ought to be our principal target.

If this is intended as the beginning of Armageddon, then how better to end it before it fully develops than to crush Iran’s inchoate nuclear capability?

O. Henry said famously, “It is a rat trap, and you — madam and sir and all of us — are in it.” If this is war and we are in it, then our clear preference should be to fight it against such proxies as Hamas, al-Qaida, or Hezbollah not sustained by an Iran sitting on a pile of nuclear arms.