Cross Your Fingers, Keep Your Head Up Your Butt and Delude Yourself Into Thinking Sanctions With Do the Trick

That's the sum of U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates's ideas for tackling the nightmare scenario of crazed theocrats with nukes. An IBD editorial points to some obvious drawbacks to that approach:

...Netanyahu reportedly told Biden that sanctions may well have hurt Iran. But only the Iranian leaders' belief that a military strike is a real possibility provides any hope of action from Tehran. Gates has been doing seemingly all in his power to assure the Iranians that the U.S. doesn't have its finger on the trigger.

Israel's military intelligence chief recently privately testified to the Knesset's foreign affairs and defense committee that Tehran has enough enriched uranium to build one nuclear bomb, and will soon have enough for a second device.

If the Washington Post's Bob Woodward is to be believed, "The existing contingency plan for Iran" President Obama inherited "seemed to have dated from Jimmy Carter's presidency. It started with 90 days of bombing before a Normandy-style invasion from World War II that involved more troops than the U.S. had in its inventory."

Writing in his new book, "Obama's Wars," Woodward adds:

"No serious process had been in place for updating the many contingency plans a president needs."

What exactly is going on? Is it that a nuclear Iran is a threat so big that America's leaders have been shocked into a kind of psychosis, refusing to believe that it is really there?

Do we think, based on news reports this week, that a computer worm will painlessly immobilize Iran's uranium enrichment equipment and save the day?

Nuclearized radical Islam is unlikely to be that easy to deal with, and Secretary Gates' assurances aren't very assuring.

Or at all assuring.