Despite the recent NIE, the US would be justified in taking military action against Iran

"There is no evidence the Iranians have directly attacked U.S. troops in Iraq, intelligence officials said." That's a direct quote from the Washington Post article you provided. This is in stark contrast to the "Act of War" which you cited earlier. "Strangely enough, we now have exactly the kind of leverage we need to conduct diplomacy, namely, our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the possibility of a successful democracy in these two countries." Our presences in Iraq and Afghanistan are quite the opposite of diplomatic leverage. As of October 2007, there are nearly 180,000 United States troops stationed in Iraq, plus another 30,000 around the Middle East. The US military has already eased its recruiting standards in order to fill its ranks, allowing high school dropouts, older adults, and even criminals to enlist in the armed forces. An invasion of a nation such as Iran would require significantly more personnel than did the invasion of Iraq. Iran is larger, more populous and has a rougher terrain than its neighbor to the west, and the current US forces would be spread too thin for such a large scale undertaking. "If Neville Chamberlain had used military force to stop Hitler's rise to power, WWII would never have happened." This is another debate in itself. However, it is completely irrelevant. I have already explained why the situation in Iran is dissimilar to the one in Pre-WWII Germany. Ahmedinajad is not the "religious lunatic" you make him out to be, nor is he even a religious leader. That post goes to Ayatollah Khamenei, who is the Supreme Leader of Iran as well as the head of their armed forces. Khamenei was one of the first Muslim leaders to condemn the attacks of 9/11, saying that "Mass killings of human beings are catastrophic acts which are condemned wherever they may happen." By labelling Iranian leaders as nothing more than religious zealots, you are simplifying the situation and painting an inaccurate portrait of the person you claim to be so "notorious". So if Ahmedinajad doesn't pose a legitimate threat to the US, then it must be the weapons, right? Not according to the people who know best. In an interview in late September with Newsweek magazine, the president of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who recently toured Iran's nuclear facilities, said that Iran posed "no clear and present danger" to anyone. He also stated that Iran is at least five to eight years away from developing the technology needed for nuclear weapons, if that is indeed their goal. There are many other nations in the world who could also acquire nuclear weapons in that time span based on their current nuclear capabilities. Should we invade them? Why don't we just invade any politically unstable Muslim country who pursues nuclear weapons against our wishes and is known to have terrorists within its borders as well as having funded them in the past? That sounds an awful lot like Pakistan, one of our principal allies in the War on Terrorism. Diplomacy is the answer. Iran is a very politically diverse country. What unites Iranians is a sense of nationalism. If we continue to belittle them in their quest for nuclear capabilities, then that is the prism through which Iranian nationalism will be seen, and we will be unable to stop them. Declaring that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons while we sit on thousands of them smacks of paternalism, and Iranians will naturally be defensive in response. We must tell Iran that we want to have relations with their country, we want them to join the WTO, we want them to be a respected nation wordwide. But we must tell them that this cannot happen without ending their support for terrorism and pursuit of nuclear weapons. While Iran's hard liners such as Ahmedinajad may reject this notion, it will no doubt produce a fiery debate among the populous, who want their nation to become a greater player in the global market. If we put that possibility on the table and Ahmedinajad rejects, it will add to the already present thought that the current government has mismanaged Iran's foreign policy, and a regime change would be imminent. Clearly this is a hypothetical solution, as is invasion. But as I have previously shown, Iran does not pose a significant enough threat to warrant an invasion of their sovereignty. Is human life so disposable that President Bush can risk the safety of hundreds of thousands of our nation's soldiers along with the lives of millions of innocent Iranian citizens simply because he doesn't want to admit another member to the nuclear arms club? Is peace so simple that it can be achieved through the mere means of bunker-busting bombs and cruise missiles? Of course not. We must be diplomatic in our approach of the Iranian nuclear program, not trigger-happy. The path to peace with Iran must be paved by diplomacy, not war.