Apparently, the visit by IAEA chief ElBaredei didn't impress Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Not only did he say that Iran would not cease enriching uranium, he said they would expand the process. He didn't even bother to meet with Dr. ElBaredei. Not a very heartening series of events for those who hold out hope for a diplomatic solution.

Claude Salhani says the uranium enrichment brings Iran one step closer to a nuclear weapon. He interviewed some folks in the Iranian exile community who hope the world will support them more vigorously.

Reuel Marc Gerecht asks the question, "To Bomb, or Not to Bomb" in the Weekly Standard. He lays out the major objections to a bombing campaign and examines each in turn. His conclusion?

No matter what happens, it is long overdue for the Bush administration to get serious about building clandestine mechanisms to support Iranians who want to change their regime. This will take time and be brutally difficult. And overt democracy support to Iranians--which is the Bush administration's current game plan--isn't likely to draw many recruits. Most Iranians probably know that this approach is a one-way invitation to Evin prison, which isn't the most effective place for expressing dissent. However we go about assisting the opposition, the prospects for removing the regime before it acquires nuclear weapons are slim.

So we will all have to wait for President Bush to decide whether nuclear weapons in the hands of Khamenei, Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad, and the Revolutionary Guards Corps are something we can live with. Given the Islamic Republic's dark history, the burden of proof ought to be on those who favor accommodating a nuclear Iran. Those who are unwilling to accommodate it, however, need to be honest and admit that diplomacy and sanctions and covert operations probably won't succeed, and that we may have to fight a war--perhaps sooner rather than later--to stop such evil men from obtaining the worst weapons we know.

John Podhoretz, also mindful of the many pitfalls of military action, but skeptical about a diplomatic solution, thinks the President should convene a summit of U.S. political leaders from both parties, along with defense and intelligence officials, to find a consensus about how to proceed, since leading Democrats and Republicans all seem to agree that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable.

Turning from the war we might have to fight, to the war we are currently fighting, David Ignatius joins the chorus demanding that Donald Rumsfeld step down. His argument is the best I have read so far, which is that Rumsfeld no longer has enough public credibility and, more importantly, not enough credibility within the military's officer corps, to be effective.

Finally, here is another piece, this time in the New York Times, examining the reasons behind the stagnant economies and divided electorates in France, Germany and Italy. It seems there are a lot of people who understand what needs to be done to strengthen their economies, but if they were to enact those changes, or even attempt to enact them, they would soon be voted out of office. We can look on smugly at their plight, but a similar situation will soon overtake us here in the States when we reach a crisis point for Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security spending.