Does anyone doubt that the United States would respond militarily to an attack on Israel by Iran? Even knee-jerk doves know that such an attack could not be allowed to pass unanswered. Certainly, Iran knows it.

But Sen. Hillary Clinton, candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, overstated the case when she told ABC's "Good Morning America" last month that if Iran attacks Israel, "we would be able to totally obliterate them."

Of course. We're the only nation with the weaponry and the delivery systems to obliterate any other country in the world. It goes without saying. But statements like Sen. Clinton's are useful during presidential campaigns.

Clinton's opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, accuses her of saber rattling, of adopting the threatening "bluster" and cowboy diplomacy of President George W. Bush. In response, Clinton says that U.S. leaders "have to be very clear about what we would do" in the event of an attack on Israel by Iran.

But how clear was Sen. Clinton? She was careful not to say that the U.S. would obliterate Iran, only that it would "be able to." And the clarity of her language wasn't enhanced by her use of the unnecessary and redundant adverb "totally," the sense of which is carried entirely in the verb "obliterate." It's like saying "completely destroyed" or "fatally electrocuted."

And would we truly be willing to "obliterate" Iran? Even by itself, "obliterate" is a powerful verb that denotes the destruction of any trace of existence. In fact, it implies a Hiroshima-like mushroom cloud over Tehran and the deaths of many innocent men, women and children.

I don't think that this is what Sen. Clinton has in mind. It's more likely that we would hit military installations and the industrial and petroleum infrastructure. Or maybe we would preserve the petroleum infrastructure, since important countries depend on it. Precisely what any president would do in the event of an Iranian attack on Israel depends on circumstances beyond the powers of any leader to predict accurately.

In any case, maybe it's time to start thinking -- and talking -- about Iran differently, before we reach the point of this sort of crisis. Bad guys and nutcases have managed to acquire power in Iran, and we've helped them maintain and consolidate it by serving as a convenient external threat that makes it hard for Iranian moderates to resist them.

Iran has benefited strategically from our presence in Iraq, but it must be feeling threatened. It's surrounded by the military forces of the world's most powerful nation, which happens also to be avid for its oil at a time when the world's supply is diminishing. We've called the Iranians "evil" and threatened them with regime change. And who knows how a verb like "obliterate" translates into Persian?

But there are two good reasons to develop better relations with Iran: because they're necessary and because they're possible.

They're necessary because stability in the Middle East is unlikely without Iran's participation, and an unstable Middle East will be an unceasing source of problems for us, at least until we become more serious about reducing our dependence on oil from that region. Under these conditions, Iran always will be a world and regional player, with too much pride to give in to threats and too powerful to obliterate.

And better relations are possible; in some respects, Iran is a natural ally. Its democratic tendencies, which go back about 100 years, were derailed by a CIA-sponsored coup in 1953, and it's had terrible leadership ever since -- first the U.S.-backed Shah and then various versions of the current crop of radicals.

But there's considerable evidence the Iranian populace contains a critical mass that's inclined favorably toward the West and the modern world. Persian is the third-most common language on the Internet and Iranians maintain over 80,000 blogs. The writings of Immanuel Kant and other westerners sell well in Iran, and many Iranians desire to be a part of a modern secular world. (Evidence of this can be found in the work of experts like Elaine Sciolino, Sandra Mackey and Vali Nasr.)

Words have power, and the Iranians are listening. Perhaps it's time to find ways to use words to ratchet the tensions down, rather than up.

nJohn M. Crisp teaches in the English Department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. E-mail him at jcrisp@delmar.edu For more news and information, visit www.scrippsnews.com.