Mark Steyn really cuts through all the crap in his article on Iran in the current issue of City Journal:

Anyone who spends half an hour looking at Iranian foreign policy over the last 27 years sees five things:

1. contempt for the most basic international conventions;
2. long-reach extraterritoriality;
3. effective promotion of radical Pan-Islamism;
4. a willingness to go the extra mile for Jew-killing (unlike, say, Osama);
5. an all-but-total synchronization between rhetoric and action.

As examples, he cites the takeover of the American embassy in Tehran, the Salman Rushdie fatwa (which was recently renewed), and the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. The common denominator: a lack of respect for sovereignty (the American embassy sat on American soil).

So the prospect of a nuclear Iran scares the dickens out of Steyn, as it does me. His conclusion is that “Whether or not we end the nuclearization of the Islamic Republic will be an act that defines our time.” He’s right.

Steyn’s article is a must-read.