Reply #9: Because They Cannot Be Trusted Not To Use Them Against Us, Sir

[The Magistrate]

When you mobilize crowds chanting "Death to America!" as a routine political exercise, you run the risk of being taken at your word, as an unremittingly hostile body who will do what harm is in its power to do to the object of its hatred. Whether there are good grounds for that hatred or not is immaterial to calculating the sincerity with which it is held, and the likelihood of its being given concrete expression. None of the three powers you name is currently in hands hostile to the United States, though there is certainly some danger the Pakistani weapons could come under hostile control.

There are a number of creative possibilities for delivery, that there is little point to going into here, beyond pointig out that a missile lifting off from Iran itself is hardly the only or most likely means, should there be a resolve among the mullahs to do the thing. While such an act would indeed result in the utter ruin of Iran, where persons are moved by acult of martyrdom, it is not easy to gauge how much of a check on their behavior such an extinction constistutes.

Entering into negotiations with Iran in 2003, and indeed at any number of earlier points, would certainly have been a wise course.