Iran is preparing to launch two satellites into space but, as the Washington Free Beacon notes, the trump administration is pretty sure that it’s a cover for an ICBM program. The nightmare scenario being mulled by national security experts involves the Iranians launching a nuclear warhead to explode over the central United States. The resulting EMP pulse would send much of North America back to the Middle Ages, killing tens of millions of people by inches as technological civilization is destroyed. This prospect is a gift that Barack Obama gave the country he used to govern thanks to his misbegotten nuclear weapons deal.

Team Obama has been beating its collective chest about how the deal allegedly denied Iran a nuclear arsenal. In fact, the deal enabled it. Things were not helped when Obama sent planeloads of cash to Tehran that the Iranians are now using for a military buildup and for fomenting terrorism.

The Trump Administration is conducting a thorough review of the agreement and of how to handle Iran going forward. None of the options going forward are very appealing.

No doubt planners in the Pentagon are running scenarios for a military strike to take out Iranian missile and nuclear sites. Such an operation would be hazardous and even if successful would result in armed conflict with Iran that could only end with regime change.

Speaking of regime change, Team Trump is likely exploring ways to support resistance groups inside Iran. Most Iranians would like to live in a country where people are not threatened with being whipped to death for making a music video.

Reinstituted economic sanctions is another option. But how to convince the Europeans, now falling over themselves to make business deals with the mullahs, to go along?

Finally, augmenting missile defenses is a given. Anyone who opposes that has to explain why they want to expose Americans to a nuclear strike, by either Iran or North Korea.

Elections have consequences. The same American electorate that put an appeaser in office in both 2008 and then kept him there in 2012 elected a man four years later with a somewhat more forthright view of how to deal with enemies of the Republic.

The voters made a wise decision in 2016.

Still, the next few months and years are likely to be fraught with danger. Dealing with threats like Iran without having to go to a full-scale war and all the carnage that implies is going to take considerable finesse. The Iranian threat should serve as a warning to Americans never to elect an appeaser again.