A sadly predictable course of events continues to unfold unabated in the West's attempts to restrain the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea.

In case of the former, the regime's ongoing use of al Qaeda terrorists as active instruments of an aggressive Islamofascist foreign policy is well-documented. When Iran constructs a nuclear device, whether that occurs in two or three years, or ten years (or easily much sooner if Iran is able to smuggle in the fissile material it as yet appears unable to produce on its own), the threat of a hostile regime placing a nuclear weapon in the hands of a fanatical terrorist will have acquired an immediacy against which U.S. policy on nuclear deterrence should be designed to respond well in advance.

Therefore, it must now become the settled policy of the United States that:

In the event of nuclear attack against this nation, its vital interests, or its vital allies,

if each of the progenitors, executors, accomplices, accessories, and abettors of the attack cannot immediately be reasonably ascertained,

the United States shall retaliate without delay, in kind, and with disproportionate and overwhelming force,

against the territories and regimes of North Korea, Iran, and every other hostile government that has possessed, does possess, or has evidenced a volition to possess, nuclear weapons.

If articulated now, such a policy--in addition to fulfilling the absolute necessity to address in advance the apparent eventuality that a state-sponsor of terrorism will soon enough possess nuclear weapons--might also give that regime reason to pause to reconsider the utility of its present course.