[Vicomte13]

You are right about how to deal with the Iranian nukes.

The problem is with the pretext to do it.
The UN will not approve it.
Indeed, the more time that the Administration spends in front of the UN in another forlorn (and idiotic) effort to get what will NEVER, EVER BE GIVEN (and what anybody with an ounce of sense ought to KNOW will never be given), the more time the First World will line up against the US action. The French will veto it. The Chinese and Russians will veto it. The British will not support it. The more we TALK about it, the more we will allow the ENTIRE diplomatic community to organize into a massive anti-US alliance. If we do it anyway, after that, then WE will find ourselves facing realignments of alliances.
If we play the same diplomatic idiots game we played with the WMD, our destruction of the Iranian facilities will provoke such a torrent of condemnation that you'll see the Russians shipping new reactors in a fortnight.

So, what do we do?
Well, starting to hit across the Iraqi border at Iranian resupply would be a really good idea. That MIGHT flush out the Iranians into going nuts. It's worth a try.

When that doesn't work, we will need to manufacture a pretext. The Iranians will need to attack us. It will need to be relatively ineffective, but it will need to be apparently a real attack. Sort of like the Gulf of Tonkin. Of course, given the WMD fiasco, the world won't BELIEVE us (and the world, in this case, will be RIGHT), but it won't be able to PROVE us wrong during the time period that we go and plaster the Iranian sites. We'll have the video, after all (we just need to remember to paint out the white stars on the delivery vehicles).

[Mr. Mojo]

Let's just hope Bush admin. has learned its lesson regarding the UN. Soliciting their approval for an action that relies on stealth/surprise for its effectiveness (or any action, frankly) would be foolish in the extreme. Israel didn't solicit it when they destroyed Iraq's reactor in '81; Clinton didn't solicit it when he bombed the heck out of a Christian nation in defense of Islamists. Doing so can (and often does) have disastrous consequences. .....like giving Saddam ample time to get his WMD out of the country before we arrived, for instance.

The more we TALK about it, the more we will allow the ENTIRE diplomatic community to organize into a massive anti-US alliance.

Agreed. I suspect the U.S. is talking so much right now not to get some sort of "coalition of the willing" together but as a last-ditch effort to (hopefully) put enough pressure on the Iranians to get them to abandon their nuke ambitions. .....an effort that most likely won't work on the Mullahs and their lapdog, but could very well spark the Iranian opposition elements to take some action. Hard to say. A longshot, for sure.

Yeah, if we can't goad the Iranians in militarily we can always manufacture a pretext without much difficulty. If it's going to happen it'll happen soon, imo. ....before summer.

A nuclear Iran, as I suspect you'd agree, is completely unacceptable.