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Let's be serious for a moment. President Barack Obama will not bomb Iran. This is not because he is a liberal, or because he is a peacenik, or because he doesn't have the guts to try and "save" his presidency in this time-honored manner, as Sarah Palin said she would like him to do.

The president will not bomb Iran's nuclear installations for precisely the same reasons that George W. Bush did not bomb Iran's nuclear installations: because we don't know exactly where they all are, because we don't know whether such a raid could stop the Iranian nuclear program for more than a few months, and because Iran's threatened response—against Israelis and U.S. troops, via Iran's allies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Lebanon—isn't one we want to cope with at this precise moment. Nor do we want the higher oil prices that would instantly follow. No U.S. president doing a sober calculation would want to start a new war of choice while U.S. troops are still actively engaged on two other fronts, and no U.S. president could expect public support for more than a nanosecond.

But even if Obama does not bomb Iran, that doesn't mean that no one else will. At the moment, when Washington is consumed by health care and the implications of the Massachusetts Senate special election, it may seem as if Obama's most important legacy, positive or negative, will be domestic. In the future, we may not consider any of this at all important. The defining moment of his presidency may... >>>