Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen said yesterday that though the administration still considers a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities a last option, it would go “a long way” toward halting the program:
“Military options would go a long way to delaying it,” Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters after speaking at a forum at Columbia University in New York. “That’s not my call. That’s going to be the president’s call,” he added. “But from my perspective … the last option is to strike right now.”
That last bit is agonizingly ambiguous. Does the admiral mean the last option at this point is to strike? Or does he mean we have to strike right now for the “last option” to be effective?