The unfortunate reality is that Iran will have a nuclear weapon in three years or less, even according to the timid accounts of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Yet beyond rhetoric and economic sanctions, the West has offered no effective plans to stop this process.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal this week, even so supremely hawkish a figure as the leader of Israel’s Likud Party, Benjamin Netanyahu, has advocated a strategy hinging on “divestment” from Iran’s economy and shunning a military response as unrealistic.

President Bush’s repeated vows “never” to allow Iran to have nuclear capability sound strong, but are boastfully unrealistic. Given the military’s extensive entanglements in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the certain opposition of the American people, America cannot contemplate an invasion or sustained military action against Iran.

So the most readily available course of action is also the one that has proved time and again to have worked during the course of the last 50 years and more: to convince Iran’s ruling mullahs that the idea of using a nuclear weapon is unacceptable, indefensible, unjustifiable, and in the end can only lead to their immediate demise. This doctrine of mutually assured destruction, as it is known, or MAD for short, has worked for years to keep such monumental rivalries as the Soviet Union vs. America and Pakistan vs. India from erupting into war.

A French leader, Jacques Chirac, took the first step in introducing that idea into the Iranian sphere a few months ago in a commendable but largely unappreciated interview. In what has become a notorious observation made to American reporters, he stated what everyone knows: An atomic bomb aimed by Iran toward its most likely target, Israel, “would barely lift 200 meters off the ground before Teheran is annihilated.”

The then-president of France added that nuclear retaliation would not only come from the formidable nuclear force Israel is known to possess but also from America, France, and Britain.

Mr. Chirac should have been celebrated for his candor; instead, he was pilloried, largely by hypocrites. Worse, presented with an opportunity to build on that statement of Western resolve in the face of Iran’s nuclear intransigence, our leaders fumbled. If anything, Mr. Chirac, a man who will go down as one of the most sophisticated of Western leaders, had merely spelled out a largely apparent reality at an important juncture.

Iran is a fierce enemy but is not an illogical one. Underestimating the intelligence — and, yes, the wisdom — of the mullahs who rule the country is a serious error — one that the West, the Iraqis, and others have often made in the past. Time and again, the Iranians have proved that they get it when it comes to existential threats.

One important historical guideline comes from the bloody eightyear war against Iran begun in 1980 by Saddam Hussein, who, totally unprovoked and with Western help, initiated one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 20th century. A million people, twothirds of them Iranians, perished. With the active help of Western naval forces in the Persian Gulf, Iraqi forces wiped out Iranian ports, industrial complexes, and its whole offshore oil industry before the tide began to turn toward Iran’s advantage.

By 1986, Iran’s armies were inside Iraq, poised to push a dagger into its heart and take sweet revenge against Saddam Hussein with a devastating triumph. Then, they stopped.

The supreme leader of Iran at the time, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was one of the fiercest political leaders of the past century. Yet, in concert with other senior ayatollahs, Khomeini decided that — because a final victory would require another five years of warfare, another million dead, and certain economic ruin for the entire region, including Iran — forcing Iraq into a humiliating surrender wasn’t worth the price.

Making a now immortal comment, the late Khomeini said he would rather “drink the poisoned chalice” of making peace with Saddam Hussein, a man he abhorred and whom he referred to only as “Small Satan.” (America remains the “Great Satan.”) So the Iraq-Iran war ended in 1988 with Khomeini drawing back his forces to the international borders of eight years earlier, even though he was in a superior position militarily.

Today, Iran needs to hear reality from Israel and others in the way that Khomeini heard it from his own military commanders in the 1980s.

Firstly, Israel must stop its irresponsible coyness about its arsenal. One would have to be a certified fool to ignore that it possesses scores of nuclear weapons. Every intelligence service on Earth has documented it. Why shouldn’t Israel use this open secret to its strategic advantage?

If anything, Israel needs to launch a dog-and-pony show that makes plain to most humble Iranian exactly what would happen if Iran’s mullahs carried out their dream of attacking Israel with nuclear arms. The objective should be to capture the tone of those New York City street signs that read: “Don’t even think about parking here!”

Years after the Iraq-Iran war ended, the wartime president of Iran, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, confirmed that the ayatollahs had made their decision to make peace based on “Iran’s realistic understanding of the international situation.” Their ability to come to such an understanding is as keen today as it was then.

Most importantly, the existential reasoning evident in the conclusion of that war made it clear Iran fully understands the doctrine of mutually assured destruction.

That kind of realistic governance has been the key factor in keeping the peace all over the world ever since the end of World War II.

ymibrahim@gmail.com