Secretary Gates may be walking back the implications of his memo, but, embarrassment to the Obama administration aside, it was certainly useful to focus the debate about the United States’s strategy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran. Frankly, we have been without a cohesive strategy for the better part of at least three administrations, and it shows: Iran acts and we react. They play chess; we play checkers.

Military force can certainly set back Iran’s nuclear program, albeit at prohibitive cost. That politicians or pundits would advocate bombing to achieve a delay in the Islamic Republic’s program without having any strategy in place to take advantage of that delay is the policy equivalent of kicking the can down the road and, in my opinion, is an abuse of the U.S. military.

A few months ago, John Podhoretz, probably after hearing me whine about it too much, asked me the $64,000 question: What would you do?

The result has been behind a firewall for the last three weeks or so, but now is available.

Agree with me or disagree with me, the focus for policymakers should be how to fracture the Revolutionary Guards. Not only would they have command and control over any nuclear weapons but they remain the chief impediment to meaningful reform and regime change. And, frankly, the problem is less Iran’s potential nuclear arsenal — although the proliferation aspects of it are too dangerous for acquiescence — but rather the regime which would have its finger on the button.