3. His baiting of Israel will only stall the nuke buildup.

Ahmadinejad could possess a nuclear weapon while President Obama is still in his first term, according to our latest military estimates. And since Israel knows that Obama won’t do anything drastic to stop that, our stressed-out ally will likely bomb Tehran’s nuclear facilities sometime early next year — if The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg heard correctly. Odds are, the Israelis will do just enough damage to delay Iran’s achievement until that man can be voted out of office — Obama, that is.

Will the strikes lead to a larger regional war? Hardly. Virtually every Sunni dictatorship in the Gulf will be cheering on those Sons of David, while U.S. Central Command quietly turns off all its radars. Sure, Iran will lob some missiles in return, and Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah will claim a “glorious victory” — as they always do in the Middle East when civilians die in numbers. But this pause in the action — or, rather, nuclear reaction — will change nothing in the end: Iran will simply redouble its efforts, with whoever’s in the White House come 2013 dutifully prepared to tee up yet another round of “crippling sanctions.”