Confronting Iran In A Year Of Elections -- New York TimesA DEMOCRATIC president running in a bitterly disputed presidential race faces a fateful national security decision: whether to approve an airstrike to thwart an adversary bent on becoming a nuclear-weapons state.
Conservative hawks deride the president as weak. In the West Wing, advisers debate the risks: a strike could lead to open conflict, but doing nothing would change the balance of power in a volatile, war-prone region.
The president was Lyndon B. Johnson, and less than three weeks before Election Day in 1964, the Chinese rendered the White House discussion moot by setting off their first nuclear test. “China will commit neither the error of adventurism, nor the error of capitulation,” the government of Mao Zedong told the world that morning, heralding the first Asian nation to get the bomb.
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My Comment: I do not believe that President Obama will commit US forces to strike against Iran's nuclear facilities in 2012. The unknowns are too many, and the will among Americans is simply not there to get into another war. I can say the same about America's European allies .... they just do not have the stomach to get into another war. The wild card(s) in this crisis is what will Israel and/or Iran do. Economic sanctions and the damage that it causes may force the Iranian government to embark on an aggressive campaign of terrorism and/or military strikes to distract the discontent that is rising among many Iranians to the mullahs. Israel has a long history of acting preemptively .... and they may do the same against Iran. Either way .... expect a lot of tension both in the U.S. and in the Middle East during this U.S. election cycle.
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