Has the time come?

"Has the time come?"

Maybe. According to "The Inheritance" by David Suskind, Iran's strategy was to have the know-how to build a nuke on short notice, which is what the linked article also says.

But so what? Is there much we or anyone else can do? I've read that a military strike would be hard to carry out, and even if successful it would only delay things a few years while radicalizing the leadership and giving it more support among the public. So it seems to me that the military option makes things worse, not better.

And prospects of getting Russia and China to support sanctions seem dim.

So I suspect we'll learn to live with the situation. I always thought the idea of Iran lobbing a nuke at Tel Aviv was pretty ludicrous since it would mean the end of the Iranian regime (I think even Russia and China would draw the line at that point). The greater danger is someone giving a bomb to some non-government actor. If anyone has ideas on that, I'm sure there are people in the Obama administration who would like to hear them....

Apparently their nuclear infrastructure is too dispersed to be taken out with a single F16 strike, Israeli style. Too bad - such a strike could have been successful years ago.

I think we'd be relatively happy with accurate knowlege that they would limit themselves to the ability to to build a nuke on short notice. What we wory most about is that one stored soemwhere will get into the "wrong" hands.



Agreed

Two items.

First, "The Inheritance" is by David Sanger (sorry about that).

Second, the Washington Post says there's an updated State Department intelligence bureau report stating that Iran is unlikely to have weapons grade uranium before 2013.

For an article critical of the efficacy of sanctions against Iran, try here.