If you can't beat them...

Tense? Nervous? Having sleepness nights about the possibility of a nuclear armed axis of evil?

No more. Boris Johnson, everyone's favourite Tory, has a solution. Let's switch sides:

The Iranians are one day going to possess a nuclear bomb; there is almost certainly nothing we can do about it; all our blustering and threats are pointless. Indeed, if all else fails, there may even be a case for giving the Iranians the bomb — that's right: maybe it is time for the Americans to take control themselves of this unstoppable programme.

If I am right in thinking that an Iranian bomb is not only inevitable, but also corresponds to the wishes of the people of Iran, then perhaps we could turn this whole thing on its head. Perhaps it is time to end the sense of terror, and suspicion, and escalating menace. Perhaps the Americans could actually assist with the technology, as they assist the United Kingdom, in return for certain conditions: that the Iranian leadership stops raving about attacking Israel, for instance, and that progress is made towards democracy, and so on.

The Iranian public might feel grateful, and engaged, and not demonised. Would it mean the end of Israel, which has 200 warheads of its own? Of course not. The logic of mutually assured destruction still applies, and even the mullahs are not mad enough to take on a country that could turn their desert into molten glass. (...)

The tragedy of growing up is that human beings acquire the means of killing themselves and others. (...) The Iranians will join in soon enough. It might be sensible if they did so in an atmosphere of co-operation and understanding, and not amid intensifying threats and hysteria...

The argument makes a kind of sense. America, thanks to Iraq, Afghanistan and the public's waning taste for war, no longer has either the resources nor the stomach for an invasion. And while a bombing campaign is feasible, it Lebanon taught us anything it's that bombing a country back to the stoneage isn't going to make their people like their leaders less and the west more. Indeed, it might only prove Ahmadinejad's point that Iran needs the bomb to defend itself.

The Republicans aren't going to go for it - hell, no one's going to go for it. But they're deluding themselves if they still think they can bomb their way to peace.