Further, Iran praises Hamas and bankrolls not only Hezbollah but other terror groups. Its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier, has called for rubbing out Israel. Though he insists Iran wants no nuclear weapons - saying "religious law" prohibits their possession - he no longer allows weapons inspectors in the country.
On March 30, the U.N. Security Council responded with a nonbinding statement calling upon Iran to abandon uranium enrichment within 30 days. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the statement "sends an unmistakable message to Iran that its efforts to conceal its nuclear program and evade its international obligations are unacceptable."
Old Europe, famous for appeasement, backed the resolution early. But the resolution reeks of conciliation and weakness - and deters Iran not at all. Nobel Peace-prizer Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has said that if the Iranians "have the nuclear material and they have a parallel weaponization program along the way, they are really not very far - a few months - from a weapon."
So, yes - there's a huge problem with Iran. And Heaven help us if it ever acquires nukes. President Bush terms a nuclear-armed Iran "a grave threat to the security of the world." The U.S. has a 700-ton bomb designed to destroy nuclear or bio/chemical weapons in deep bunkers - and maybe Iran will require that we use it pre-emptively. Or perhaps Israel, as it did in 1981 with a strike destroying Saddam's Osirak nuclear plant, won't wait for Uncle Sam.
How profound is the threat a nuclear Iran poses? For the seminal statement on that one, consider Charles Krauthammer - in a Time column:
"Iran is just the first. With infinitely accelerated exchanges of information helping develop whole new generations of scientists, extremist countries led by similarly extreme men (such as Ahmadinejad) will be in a position to acquire nuclear weaponry. If nothing is done, we face not proliferation but hyper-proliferation. Not just one but many radical states will get weapons of mass extinction, and then so will the fanatical and suicidal terrorists who are their brothers and clients. . . .
"Iran is the test case. It is the most dangerous political entity on the planet, and yet the world response has been catastrophically slow and reluctant. Years of knowingly useless negotiations, followed by hesitant international resolutions, have brought us to only the most tentative of steps - referral to a Security Council that lacks unity and resolve. Iran knows this and therefore defiantly and openly resumes its headlong march to nuclear status.
"If we fail to prevent an Iranian regime run by apocalyptic fanatics from going nuclear, we will have reached a point of no return. It is not just that Iran might be the source of a great conflagration but that we will have demonstrated to the world that for those similarly inclined there is no serious impediment."