Sharansky wants to act....

I've always like Natan Sharansky. Hat tip: Shamthetoryman.

With Israel readying a new ground offensive into Lebanon against Hezbollah, the Jewish state's former deputy prime minister and most vocal advocate for Arab democracy says the time has come for the world to take tough action, including mounting a military strike, against Iran.

In an interview yesterday, Natan Sharansky also expressed concern about Prime Minister Olmert's hesitance to take the tough action necessary to rid Israel of the Hezbollah threat once and for all. "Even when Israel decides to fight, it still remains hesitant. This decision to only use the air force without a ground force for the first two weeks of the war is not the way to win," he said.

On the day the U.N. Security Council issued its most ominous threat yet to Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions, Mr. Sharansky said he believed that sooner or later the world would have to take drastic military action if Iran persisted in building a nuclear weapon.

He said the hesitation of the free world to make common cause with dissidents in the Muslim world is already having consequences, particularly in Iran. "I think it's unfortunate the free world did not give support to the Iranian opposition. America at times was undermining this opposition," he said. And while he acknowledged that a strike on Iran's nuclear infrastructure would have disastrous effects on the Iranian opposition, he also said that at this point, the world did not have much choice but to make the hard decision.

"On the one hand, I know enough that the greater the chances that Iran will be attacked, the easier it will be for the regime to neutralize the opposition and focus the population on an external enemy. This is what dictators always try to do," he said. "On the other hand, the world cannot afford to have the worst weapons in the hands of a terrorist regime. The world will be blackmailed. This is why the world will have to act. Nonetheless, things will be more difficult for the opposition in Iran."