The Wall Street Journal today displayed the image on the right to show the range of Iran's Shahab-2 and -3 ballistic missiles, which they tested in last week's military exercises. Why is this important? Well, as the WSJ editors wrote, ballistic missiles are "far from the most efficient means of delivering a non-nuclear explosive payload." What they are good for is nukes.

While the U.N. dithers about how to halt Iran's uranium enrichment program, some of Iran's neighbors may be considering a more, well, proactive track. Egypt is moving forward with its nuclear energy program for the first time in 20 years and, according to MEMRI, a recent column in a Saudi daily called for a similar resumption.

I'm not accusing either country of harboring ambitions for nuclear weapons (yet) and they may have legitimate reasons for investing in nuclear energy. But as analysis of Japan's capabilities shows that an advanced civilian nuclear energy program can easily be turned into a weapons program within half a year. Adding Iran to the neighborhood's nuclear club of Israel and Pakistan would make Arab Sunnis the only major ethno-religious group in the region without a nuclear weapon and nothing says "Middle Eastern history" like a religious or ethnic rivalry. In short, we need to stop Iran's enrichment program cold lest nuclear power plants start sprouting up in the Middle East like mushrooms after a storm.

Right-wingers last Friday rejoiced in what they considered to be a concession by the New York Times that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear program as late as 2002. However, closer examination shows that the revelers ignored a case of sloppy editing in order to falsely claim that an article in the Times supported their views.

So what were the right-wing pundits saying on Friday?

The New York Times confirms that in 2002 Saddam's scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb and that they were as little as a year away." – Rush Limbaugh

"The legitimacy of this information [about Saddam's nuclear ambitions] has now been verified by the New York Times." – Little Green Footballs

"The New York Times reports that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had a nuclear weapons program after all." – James Taranto, author of the OpinionJournal.com's "Best of the Web Today"

And what was the text of article in the Times?

Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein's scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

Apologies to my friends on the right, but "at the time" means the aftermath of the first Gulf War. The writing may be awkward, but it takes a real stretch of the imagination to read those three words as a reference to 2002. The beauty part of this is that the same people who usually take pot shots at the Times for having a liberal bias and obfuscating the truth will contort the paper's words in an effort worthy of Houdini just to get a little bit of vindication.

About a month ago, Passport reported on Japanese investments in Iranian oil. In case you don't remember, Japan, one of the top oil consumers in the world (behind the U.S. and China) currently imports 14 percent of its oil from Iran. Japanese holding company Inpex, the country's biggest oil explorer, had the rights to develop the Azedegan oil field in Iran, a deal estimated to be worth $2 billion. The company recently reduced its stake in the field from 75 percent to just 10 percent. But there were still concerns that Japan was getting itself involved in a sticky situation. Here's the rub: Even though Inpex is a private company, the Japanese government is its largest shareholder. And with sanctions against Iran looming, what would that mean for the Asian country's oil-hungry economy? Well, a Japanese official told me recently that the government is urging Inpex to get out of the deal as soon as possible, because the desire for nuclear deterrence is greater than the desire for oil. Because if sanctions do take place, the Japanese government will enforce them - no exceptions.

With its nuclear weapons test confirmed (and another possibly on the way), North Korea can now claim to be the world's ninth nuclear-armed state. That could spur other states in Asia and the Middle East to join the club. Who will be No. 10? Over at ForeignPolicy.com, The List takes a look at some of the frontrunners.

This morning at the National Press Club, Foreign Policy, in partnership with Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School, hosted a series of roundtable discussions on "The Current State of North Korea and the Future of the U.S.-Korea Alliance."  U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill was the keynote speaker. One of the final questions Hill took from the audience revealed a key disconnect between the U.S.'s rhetoric regarding North Korea and reality. Watch here:

The North Korean position is clear. "If the U.S. keeps pestering us and increases pressure, we will regard it as a declaration of war and will take a series of physical corresponding measures." As Richard Spencer points out, the North Koreans have been unusually straightforward in their statements throughout the crisis. Gone are the long denunciations of Bush as “an idiot, an ignorant, a tyrant and a man-killer.”

But what if this clarity is a result of their increasing confidence? The Bush administration, as William Perry notes, has regularly told the North Koreans that its actions would be unacceptable, then done little as North Korea goes ahead and does what it wants anyway. So the question is, would North Korea feel emboldened enough to follow through on this threat if the United Nations passed a sanctions resolution?

Speculation is growing in some quarters that North Korea's big bang wasn't nuclear after all. If that view gets further support from experts, we may start to hear arguments that a strategic window of opportunity has opened. North Korea, the reasoning might go, has simultaneously demonstrated dangerous political recklessness and military incompetence. In effect, they've called their own nuclear bluff. Some reputable folks were advocating military strikes well before the test, and they may seize on the latest developments to reissue the call.

We should be wary. The fundamental strategic and moral problem with military action against North Korea is not their nuclear arsenal—it's their ability to wreak havoc on the south through conventional weapons. In this sense, the nuclear test—successful or not—has not changed the strategic picture on the peninsula dramatically. What it has done, one hopes, is create the political unanimity required to take the steps we should have already taken: namely, enhancing scrutiny of ships leaving North Korea to prevent any leakage of their fissile material and missile technology and bolstering regional missile defenses.

So why have the North Koreans decided to test? One answer, according to Brookings scholar Wonhyuk Lim, is that the North Koreans have learned that provocation gets the United States to stop dragging its feet on talks. Writing after this summer's missile tests Lim noted that:

Contrary to the expectations of many casual observers, this provocative action resulted in the first serious bilateral talks between the U.S. and North Korea under the Bush Administration. In sum, as twisted as the North Koreans' logic may be, it is based on their negotiating experience with the Americans. North Korea's brinkmanship is the evil twin of America's half-hearted engagement."

Predictably, reaction from Washington to the possibility of a test has been blusterous, warning of unspecified serious consequences. But there isn't very much that the U.S. can do if Kim Jong-Il goes ahead with the test. Indeed, if the tests are successful, playing chicken with North Korea becomes even more dangerous. 

By backing away from the recent offer to have a French consortium enrich uranium on Iranian soil, the United States and its allies are missing out on a perfect opportunity to squeeze Iran. True, the proposal raises a number of issues. First and foremost, how can we trust the Iranians with any sort of domestic enrichment program given their dubious behavior in the past? However, given the current impasse, perhaps we have no choice. With Chinese, French, and Russian opposition, sanctions on Iran are unlikely to pass the U.N. Security Council; a full-scale ground invasion is unfeasible; and a selective bombing campaign would only succeed in one thing: convincing the mullahs that they need nuclear arms.

The West should have embraced the offer today with legally-binding and internationally-recognized conditions, such as full IAEA access to all Iranian nuclear sites and final say for the French government in the screening and hiring of Iranian personnel. By explicitly tying these conditions to Iran's previous noncompliance of the NPT, the West could have assuaged any fears that all NPT-compliant enrichment of uranium will be punished. The Iranians would have reneged in the face of those conditions, but  then the responsibility is back on them. In short, the French option would add to the evidence that Iran is the belligerent party.

George Will gets it right today. This anecdote from Woodward's new book would be hilarious were it not about war:

While leading the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the summer of 2003, David Kay received a phone call from "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, who wanted a particular place searched: "The vice president wants to know if you've looked at this area. We have indications -- and here are the geocoordinates -- that something's buried there." Kay and his experts located the area on the map. It was in the middle of Lebanon.

What does the United States' closest ally in East Asia think about Iran's nuclear ambitions? With Japan's support of U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, it might seem unlikely that Japan would join the ranks of Russia, China, and now France in shunning broad sanctions against Iran for enriching uranium. But don't be surprised if there's a rift in the U.S.-Japan alliance: Japan, which imports almost all of its petroleum, receives about 14 percent of its oil from Iran. 

While the issue of nuclear non-proliferation is very important for Japan, securing sufficient oil supplies is in the national interest," Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki said in an August 23 speech to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan in Tokyo.

It's in this spirit that talks between Japan and Iran on a $2 billion deal to develop Iran's Azadegan oil field, one of the world's largest, are continuing, perhaps because Tehran threatened to pursue a deal with China or Russia if Japan continued to dawdle.

What's wrong with Western civilization? According to the former President of Iran Mohammed Khatami, a lot—and it all dates back to the Renaissance. In a speech last night at Washington's National Cathedral, Khatami asserted that the West is "the greatest victim of over reliance on reason."

I'm clearly a victim in denial, as I always thought that reason was something we should strive for. I expect most of Khatami's audience at the Cathedral last night were hoping for some coded message about Iran's nuclear ambitions and what a possible compromise would entail. Instead, they got a rather waffling philosophical speech that resembled nothing more than an essay by a wannabe intellectual. Nevertheless, the vast majority rose to give him a standing ovation at the end. This disappointed me, even if it didn't surprise me. I have no issue with Khatami coming here to speak. As the Bishop of Washington pointed out, one of the blessings of living in America is that there is freedom of speech. But it seems odd for people—many of whom struck me as the self-styled ethical types who would sit on their hands rather than clap for various members of the Bush administration—to leap to their feet for a man under whom many, and egregious, violations of human rights occurred.

It kept being stressed yesterday that Khatami was the "first reformist" president of Iran, as if this somehow made him morally unimpeachable. But as Robin Wright points out in the Post, he didn't actually reform very much. The argument that he's better than Ahmadinejad because he doesn't seem to be itching to destroy Israel at the first opportunity is obviously true on a pragmatic level. But that doesn't make him worthy of applause in and of itself. If we really want to have a "dialogue of civilizations," a better person to invite to the National Cathedral would be the Iranian political philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo. Jahanbegloo has just been released after four months in the notorious Evin prison.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel (full disclosure: my former boss) tells the Lincoln Journal Star that the Bush administration is "ratcheting up charges" against Iran, looking for "an excuse to attack."

I hope this administration thinks through this very carefully. Who's going to do the dying?"

Are you concerned that some crazy nation might fire a nuclear weapon at the United States? Maybe Iran or North Korea? The Pentagon isn't.

In fact, the Pentagon is so sure that the United States is safe from nuclear attack, it's closing down its fortified airspace and missile defense bunker, commonly known as Cheyenne Mountain, over the next two years. Located deep inside a mountain outside Colorado Springs, Colo., Cheyenne Mountain was built in the 1960s. It is capable of withstanding a nuclear blast and is equipped for medium-term subterranean living, with such features as a 6 million gallon water reservoir and air filters that cleanse incoming air of nuclear particles.

But the Pentagon believes the Mountain is no longer necessary. NORAD commander Adm. Tim Keeting says U.S. intelligence "leads us to believe a missile attack from China or Russia is very unlikely." Of course, this the same intelligence that told us Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. So just in case, the Pentagon intends to keep the mountain on "warm standby."

This is a move only the Pentagon could make. Since 9/11, it has spent some $700 million renovating and updating Cheyenne Mountain, and moving the 1,100 people who work inside the Mountain out will cost tens of millions more.