Kathleen Parker chides Senate Republicans for their letter, but goes on to make the following absurd statement:

Thus, an attempt at a diplomatic agreement is more than a hedge against the unthinkable — a nuclear-armed Iran. It is a message to the world that, if and when we do take military action, it will be as a last resort [bold mine-DL].

Perhaps this is what supporters of attacking Iran tell themselves, and maybe some of them even believe it, but it’s important to remember that it isn’t true. If there should someday be a military attack on Iran for the purposes of destroying its nuclear facilities, it won’t be a last resort or anything close to it. There is no way for a preventive war to be waged as a last resort. It is in the nature of a preventive war that it be fought long before all other options have been closed off. The value of seeking a diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue is not that it gives the U.S. political cover later on to start a war in the event that the current round of talks comes up short. As long as there are options for resolving the dispute that don’t involve the use of force, the U.S. is obliged to exhaust them all first.

Even when all those options are exhausted, that doesn’t mean that military action would be wise or effective. And it bears repeating that attacking Iran over its nuclear program would be undeniably illegal under international law. The other nations of the world aren’t going to be interested in whether the U.S. first tried diplomacy before resorting to preventive war. If the U.S. ever makes the horrible mistake of waging another preventive war in the region, its previous attempts at diplomacy will be forgotten and overshadowed by the indefensible decision to attack another state on the basis of exaggerated suspicions of what it might do one day. Most other nations don’t remember or care about the pre-war maneuvering by the U.S. before the invasion of Iraq. They remember the disastrous decision to invade. Diplomacy with Iran isn’t a means to gain support for a future attack on Iran, but has to be concerned solely with avoiding an unnecessary and illegal war.