Abu Wabu

David Frum writes in Canada's National Post "on reasons not to negotiate directly with Iran. Iran's rejection yesterday of an EU offer to provide a nuclear reactor to meet Iran's alleged energy needs makes the point only more relevant."

Last week, the President of Iran published an 18-page letter to the President of the United States. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's epistle tells us a lot we don't especially need to know: It tells us that he believes that the Jews faked the Holocaust, and the U.S. faked 9/11; that Jesus would have supported today's Islamic extremists and that the Iranian nuclear program represents a triumph of free intellectual inquiry (never mind that the hard bits were all imported from China, via Pakistan).

What it does not tell us, however, is whether there are any terms on which the current crisis with Iran could be settled peacefully. The letter does not even address that question--or the related issues of Iran's history of global terrorism, its sheltering of senior al-Qaeda figures, and its support for the insurgents in Iraq.

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We have to acknowledge this much now: The present Iranian government wants a nuclear bomb. It will not be coaxed into changing its mind. The question before the world now is: Can Iran be coerced by any means short of force? There's only one way to find out--and it is not by talking.