Interrupting Iran

Looks like we’ve dodged the Iraq-Study-Group Baker bullet — at least for now. The best news out of the President’s speech Wednesday night is that we are not going to pin our strategy in Iraq on “talking” to Syria and Iran. Bush spelled out that “These two regimes are using their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”

Of course, Iran’s support efforts are not confined to doing murder in Iraq, or to stirring up war in the Middle East. Leaving his cohorts to tend the spinning centrifuges for a few days, Iran’s President Ahmadinejad jets off Friday on his second trip in four months to our backyard — planning to drop in on three Latin American countries. Ahmadinejad will visit Ecuador, Nicaragua and kick off this tour in Venezuela, where his best buddy, Islamic Republic medal-winner Hugo Chavez, promising “socialism or death” is now on the way to setting himself up as president-for-life.

Trying from within Iraq’s borders to interrupt Iran ‘s flow of lethal “support” is going to be hugely difficult, and still won’t stop Iran’s growing outreach program to the Islamic Republic’s pals in Latin America, neither will it stop Iran’s backing of Hezbollah’s takeover bid in Lebanon, nor will it stop the Iranian bomb program that will translate into a nuclear extortion racket in the Gulf — and quite possibly worse. Iran’s plans need disrupting all right, not chiefly in Iraq, but at the source — in Tehran.