This should scare people.

At Forbes.com, John Mauldin notes a very ominous sign for Iran's future: Net oil exports in that country are projected to drop down to zero by around 2014, largely because of problems inherent in the government that the mullahs have set up. Economically, the country is set to self-destruct.

Mauldin seems to believe that this is all to the good--that, as he puts it, "I expect Iran to be the new friend of the U.S. sometime next decade." To which, I can only pose two questions:

1. What are you smoking?
2. Can I have some?

What's likely to emerge from the ruins of the Iranian theocracy isn't a US-friendly country. What's likely to emerge from the ruins of the Iranian theocracy is a failed state--something along the lines of what happened to Russia in the 1990s (and what the left wing in this country is pushing to have happen to Iraq) magnified.

Here's the real scary part: By 2014, Iran is virtually guaranteed to have gone nuclear.

We're still worrying and fretting about the nukes that scattered every which way when the USSR went under, some of which might have or may eventually fall into the hands of terrorists.

How much easier--and how much more likely--would it be for the likes of Hezbollah to pluck nuclear weapons out of the wreckage of a country that, more than any other in the world, has made its name as a state sponsor of terrorism?

--Shack