Iran, Le Choix des Armes,

Forbes:
War with Iran??
Want to know how a U.S. strike on a newly nuclearized Iran might actually work? Turn to page 154 of Francois Heisbourg's extraordinary new book, Iran, the Choice of Arms, published in Paris but, alas, not yet in the English-speaking world. It's frightening, but as accurate as only an insider's insider can possibly be--down to the actual weapons America might launch and their impact on the military machine and civilian infrastructure and population of the nation that is perhaps the world's most dangerous and unpredictable power.
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The irony of all this, of course, is that Iran, without a nuclear weapon, is well placed to claim leadership as the single most powerful nation of the Persian Gulf and perhaps of the Middle East itself. Yet, as Heisbourg so compellingly points out, if armed with a nuclear weapon, its advantage evaporates, as a nuclear arms race in the region would find a host of other neighboring states buying their way into the nuclear arms club and aligning themselves with the superpowers. Iran would again find itself isolated, alone, shunned and boycotted. Indeed the Iranian people, while they might accept being bashed by the Great Satan (George Bush's America), they "take badly their country being perceived by the world as a sort of leprous regime of the North Korean type rather than as a great nation," Heisbourg points out.