David Frum begins to believe that we will accept a nuclear-armed Iran.

I'm not so sure of this. David is right that if we hit Iran, we're going to be alone and condemned (openly, anyway) by the rest of the world. But the President has said he won't tolerate a nuclear Iran, and I think he means it.

I found Time's latest cover story on "What War With Iran Would Look Like (and how to avoid it)," much less slanted against the military option, than I'd expected. True, the story was weak on explaining the actual dangers of a nuclear Iran. Time warned of a nuclear arms race between Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, but didn't explain how this would greatly increase the prospects of Muslim terrorists getting a bomb to plant on U.S. soil. Once many Muslim states have the bomb, the state source can no longer be traced, and it becomes a relatively simple matter to hand a nuke off to terrorists. Nor was there much here on the huge damage Iran could do by blackmailing itself into de facto control of the world's oil resources.

Yet Time acknowledged that a raid would have "a decent chance of succeeding," if at a "staggering" cost. Time also noted that the real "red line" (the ability to enrich enough uranium for a bomb) could be crossed in just a year. The biggest surprise of all was that Time rightly put little stock in the likelihood of a negotiated settlement. Time called the diplomatic approach "as much like a prayer as a strategy," and quoted an ex-CIA director saying "I don't think I've ever met an Iranian moderate." (Read that Michael Rubin piece and you'll see what he means.)

Sure, Time also covers those "staggering" costs: a huge and economically damaging oil price spike, the prospect of escalation from air raids to a major land war (at a moment when our military is already stretched to the limit) and the danger that after all the trouble and world condemnation, the raid won't even succeed. But all this is quite right.

One the one hand, we are faced with a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, nuclear blackmail and terrorist chaos at the heart of the world's Persian Gulf oil supply, and terrorist-planted nuclear weapons in America's cities. On the other hand, we can choose an economically disruptive war with Iran that will alienate us from the world, push us to and beyond our military limits, and that even then may not even succeed. The by now stock phrase, "there are no good options" doesn't quite do justice to the awful choice we face.