Another misguided missive about bombing Iran was fired from John Bolton-land just in time for the holidays, courtesy of Alan Kuperman.

Kuperman, director of the respectable sounding Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at UT Austin, clearly outlines Tehran's efforts to paralyze the international community while it marches towards developing an atom bomb. The cognitive dissonance starts when he offers his prescription for stopping Iran-- American air strikes.

Kuperman begins with a dose of reality: 

As for knocking out its nuclear plants, admittedly, aerial bombing might not work. Some Iranian facilities are buried too deeply to destroy from the air. There may also be sites that American intelligence is unaware of. And military action could backfire in various ways, including by undermining Iran’s political opposition, accelerating the bomb program or provoking retaliation against American forces and allies in the region.

But, perhaps realizing that he has just stumbled across the reasons why sane people don't advocate airstrikes against Iran, Kuperman quickly dusts himself off and trots out the classic neocon assertions: war is easy and cost-free, Tehran might hand over bombs to terrorists, and negotiations=appeasement. The main question that liberal bloggers are asking in response to this jejune repackaging of the argument for the Iraq war is why the NYTimes published it in the first place.

For a full takedown see Marc Lynch's response at Foreign Policy.