With yesterday's announcement by the President of Iran that his country has achieved uranium enrichment (albeit at a level sufficient only for nuclear power, not for a weapon), he has declared that Iran is now a member of the 'nuclear club'. That, in my opinion, is not entirely true. To my mind, membership in the club is limited to those nations that have a nuclear weapon, and the means to deliver it. Iran isn't there, yet. But it seems that the Iranian government is poised to move full speed ahead, timing this announcement to coincide with the arrival of the head of the IAEA. The Iranians know that the U.N. can't really stop them without military action, which they apparently believe is not going to happen. David Ignatius likens this to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The emerging confrontation between the United States and Iran is "the Cuban missile crisis in slow motion," argues Graham Allison, the Harvard University professor who wrote the classic study of President John F. Kennedy's 1962 showdown with the Soviet Union that narrowly averted nuclear war. If anything, that analogy understates the potential risks here.

President Bush tried to calm the war fever Monday, describing stories about military contingency plans for bombing Iran that appeared last weekend in The Post and the New Yorker as "wild speculation." But those stories did no more than flesh out the strategic options that might be necessary to back up the administration's public pledge, in its National Security Strategy, "to block the threats posed" by Iran and its nuclear program.

The administration insists that it wants diplomacy to do the preemption, even as its military planners are studying how to take out Iran's nuclear facilities if diplomacy should fail. Iran, meanwhile, is pursuing its own version of preemption, announcing yesterday that it has begun enriching uranium -- a crucial first step toward making a bomb. Neither side wants war -- who in his right mind would? -- but both frame choices in ways that make war increasingly likely.

"Who in his right mind would" want war? That is the crucial questions. Is President Ahmadinejad, he of the "wipe Israel off the map" remark and the belief in the return of the "Hidden Imam", in his right mind? In the end, Kennedy and Khruschev were both rational men. If Ahmadinejad is rational, then war is avoidable. If he is not, perhaps war is inevitable. Unfortunately, even if all the actors in this drama are rational, we could still get a war. Or we could avoid a limited war in the short term, only to be faced with a wider war later on.

Strategypage has a column by Austin Bay about the quiet war to eliminate the threat posed by Moqtada al Sadr in Iraq. Bay believes that the efforts to minimize al Sadr's influence one of the reasons why the process of forming a government in Iraq is moving so slowly.

Also via Instapundit, here is a column by Daniel Johnson examining the collective loss of will that is happening across Europe. France is unable to make even the most rudimentary reforms to get its economy moving, Italy just held an election which was so close that while Romano Prodi is supposedly the winner, Berlusconi won't concede defeat (a result that is similar to the recent election in Germany, in each case the incumbent party or coalition seemed incapable of getting the economy moving, but the voters were underwhelmed by the alternative, a prescription for continued political stalemate and economic stagnation). Johnson thinks it is worse than simply an unwillingness to deal with faltering economies.

What, though, do the events of April 10 mean for America? The loss of a small Italian contingent in Iraq, which was due to be withdrawn eventually, is not a major blow to American prestige. Nor does the failure of the French to reform their sclerotic economy in itself damage American interests. Even as two of the big four countries in Europe take the wrong direction, Angela Merkel's government is slowly but surely moving Germany in the right one.

But the Bush administration should be worried that Europe is in such disarray on the very issue that should be uniting the West: the threat of Islamism. Prime Minister Blair has a good grasp of both the internal and external danger, but with Mr. Berlusconi's departure he is now more isolated than ever and his days in office are numbered. Italy seems to be imitating Spain's ostrich-like posture. France is split. The Chiracs and De Villepins believe the threat would vanish of its own accord, if only the Anglo-Saxons would join in a European policy of appeasement, but Nicolas Sarcozy, the interior minister who hopes to succeed Mr. Chirac, is keen to put up more resistance.

Read the whole thing.

If you want more on the failure of Europe's political elites to come to grips with the rising tide of Islamism, read Bruce Bawer's "While Europe Slept". With falling birthrates, a growing community of unintegrated and unassimilated Muslim immigrants, and an inability to reach any type of consensus on how to reform their economies, the future of Europe as we know it is looking darker every day.