GATES WARNS OF IRAN - AT 8:21 A.M. ET:  Defense Secretary Robert Gates called Iran the foremost threat to global security.  But the warning came with the kind of caveats that have left many people wondering what the foreign policy of the United States actually is:

CHICAGO (AFP) – Iran's nuclear ambitions are the greatest current threat to global security, according to US Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

"Iran is the one that concerns me the most because there don't seem to be good options (or a scenario) where one can have any optimism that good options will be found," Gates told the Economic Club of Chicago.

The threat rests not only in Iran's apparent determination to seek a nuclear weapon, but in the "inability of the international community to affect their determination to do that," Gates said.

"All of the outcomes are negative," he said. "If they achieve one, the possibility of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East is very, very real.

"If something is done to prevent them from getting one, the consequences of that are completely unpredictable and frankly, very bad."

COMMENT:  So what is our policy?  Gates concedes that the Iranians are going for the bomb.  He concedes that the "international community," whatever that is, seems powerless to stop them.  He concedes that there is a strong possibility of a catastrophic nuclear arms race in one of the most stable, fanatic-filled regions of the world.  And then he tells us that if something is done to prevent the catastrophe, that's bad too. 

So what is our policy?  Only one man can decide that, and he sits in the White House intellectualizing the world.  There is the grim possibility, more likely a probability, that Iran will get the bomb and that we will wring our hands while "learning to live with it."  And someone will blame Bush.

July 17, 2009