

Now that Newt Gingrich has won the South Carolina primary, the Republican presidential hopeful and former speaker of the House can return to one of his decades-long interests: plotting to overthrow the Iranian government.

There isn't much time. Iran's nuclear program is advancing. That's a "mortal threat to the United States," Gingrich believes. But the problem isn't limited to the Iranian bomb: The weapon is merely a symptom of the malignancy of the Iranian government, which Gingrich believes must be toppled if America is to be saved from nuclear bombs detonating in unsuspecting heartland supermarkets.

How to overthrow the Iranian regime? Gingrich has floated a variety of tactics. Some days, he suggests unleashing bombs and cyber attacks. Other days he thinks all you need are a few radio broadcasts, deniable assassinations, the good intentions of the Iranian people – and, just maybe, the moral force of the leader of the Catholic Church. Either way, Gingrich is promising a reckoning with Tehran. And he's going to have "so much fun" doing it.

The choice for Gingrich is between that campaign and a global catastrophe. Earlier this month, Gingrich foresaw an economic nightmare if the Iranians follow through on their threat to close a waterway through which a fifth of the world's oil flows. "If they close the Straits of Hormuz, you have an industrial depression across the planet within 48 hours," Gingrich said in a debate earlier this month.

The military may think otherwise. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said Iran can only close the strait for "a period of time" before the Navy "can defeat that" effort. But in a confrontation of this magnitude, are mere generals' words enough?

The bottom line for Gingrich is the U.S. military's got to be ready to forestall that global economic calamity. "If we get to a point where the military believes that they are truly on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon, I would be prepared to use military force," Gingrich told a New Hampshire editorial board in November.

Only it won't just be a bombing campaign. The U.S. ought to also "wage real cyber warfare," Gingrich told the board. Maybe he means something like the Stuxnet worm; he didn't really elaborate.

But it also sounds reminiscent of the Israeli plan to spoof and jam Iranian air defenses as a bombing campaign unfolds. And it would go hand in hand with a broader effort at "maximum covert operations to block and disrupt the Iranian program," Gingrich proposed in a November debate, "including taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems, all of it covertly, all of it deniable."

Still, Gingrich hardly thinks a military strike is the only way to bring down the Islamic Republic. There's an inescapable economic component to it: "We ought to have a massive, all-sources energy program in the United States designed to ... literally replace the Iranian oil." Yes, the U.S. already produces more than four times the amount of oil Iran exports; but there's still more to be drilled, Gingrich contends.

And there's also a role for religion. Back in 2007, Gingrich seized on a florid religious reference in an open letter Ahmadinejad penned in 2006 to ask, "Is the dictator of Iran threatening to attack unless we convert to Islam?"

More recently, Gingrich and his wife produced a documentary lionizing Pope John Paul II's 1979 visit to Poland as a Cold War turning point leading to the downfall of the Soviet Union. He told Fox News last March that could be a template for Iran's downfall. All it would take would be a "very powerful Voice of America program" to get that inspiring moral message into the ears of the Iranians. "I think you would have so much fun," he said, "it would be dangerous."

How Gingrich would find a Shiite equivalent of the pope who shares his enthusiasm for the downfall of the Islamic Republic went unsaid. (The Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who was born in Iran, has made no such John Paul-esque statements.)

The irony is that Gingrich wasn't always so bellicose. Back in 2002, he predicted that the Islamic Republic's days were numbered, and outright dismissed the prospect of bombing. All it would take is a little diplomatic outreach to inspire Iran's natural pro-American tendencies, he told an audience in Melbourne. "I believe you are likely to have a modernizing, democratic Iranian regime within a year or two," he said. Call it an evolving position.

Either way, most politicians run for president promising to bring or preserve peace. Newt's "fun" campaign against Iran isn't exactly part of that trend. "If somebody's willing to put on a body bomb and walk into a bus or a mall or a restaurant and blow themselves up in order to kill you," Gingrich mused last month, "why would you think they wouldn't put on a nuclear weapon with great enthusiasm to blow up lots of people?" Don't say you weren't warned.

Photo: Flickr/Gage Skidmore