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A specter is haunting the presidential race-and it is not just the economy. It is the specter of a nuclear Iran.
Economic downturns are wrenching but cyclical. Nuclear proliferation is more difficult to reverse, creating the permanent prospect of massive miscalculation and tragedy. America's next leader may be known to history as the president who had to deal with Iran.
This topic received glancing attention in the second presidential debate. Barack Obama called a nuclear Iran "unacceptable." John McCain said it would raise the prospect of "a second Holocaust." But neither man seriously confronted the choices ahead.
Days earlier, at an event at the Nixon Center here, the former chief weapons inspector for the United Nations, David Kay, delivered a bleak assessment of Iranian capabilities and intentions. The Iranian regime, he argues, is about 80 percent of the way toward its nuclear goals-perhaps two to four years from "effective, deployable weapons."
Kay believes that the reaction to this threat by both political parties is unrealistic. By simply saying a nuclear Iran is unacceptable, America is set up for a choice between "suicide" (a disastrous military attack on Iran) and "humiliation" (a galling acceptance of the unacceptable). Instead, Kay calls for a new round of "skillful diplomacy" to persuade Iran to stop at what he calls "virtual capability"-a global recognition that it could produce nuclear weapons in short order, without all the drawbacks caused by actually producing those weapons.
