I agree. Some action, Osirak-like, could have been done several years ago. Now it's way too late. There is no way to know where enriched Uranium is stored; and you can bet that it's not in any one place - just out of concerns of general safety. The frame of the device is already done and had been dry-tested many times. Measurements that were hard in 1945 are trivial today, and you only need a couple of high accuracy instruments to do that; those instruments can be simply stolen from Western companies who bought them legally.
Nobody outside of a very small group of Mullahs knows for sure how much material had been produced - and how much can be borrowed from NK or Pakistan. Sure it'd be illegal to share the Uranium, but something tells me that King Kim the 3rd is not particularly concerned about that. But without that knowledge an external observer cannot say with certainty what Iran has or doesn't have.
On top of that, the same reasons that prevented an attack years ago are still there. The nuclear plants of Iran are deep underground and cannot be disrupted by anything short of a nuke... and clearly nobody is willing to propose that. Nobody even has the complete list of nuclear sites; hard to do that when any abandoned mine can become an assembly workshop overnight. Israel resorted to annoying, pinprick attacks - sabotage with a virus; hits on scientists; maybe an explosion or two... but none of that had a chance to stop a much larger process; it was merely a delaying tactic which may have bought a few months - or not.
I think Israel is transitioning into the MAD mode, where Iran's nukes are a part of the regional war machine. Most likely Mullahs of Iran will never dare to use those nukes. After all, they are sitting pretty right now. They may say fiery words to the public from time to time, but they have no intention to ever risk their own comfort. The nukes are only to make sure the USA never confuses Iran with Iraq or Afghanistan. I cannot envision any other use of them.
MAD may not work with Iran as many in that country believe in the Mahdi and want to usher in his return by going apocalyptic....
But, our policies and penchant for foreign interventions has definitely taught potential enemies that the only way to avert complete destruction by the U.S. is to get the bomb. If we were going take action against Iran we should have done so right after Baghdad fell. Instead, we allowed ourselves to get bogged down in nation-building. If we are going to act like an Empire we had better improve at it.
Nice thoughts, and don’t forget the Saudis. Some analysts think that the Saudis will buy bombs from Pakistan once Iran has their bombs.
The nuclearization of the middle east is well underway, and its house of cards now has a few more stories added to it.
For the CURRENT regime, I’m absolutely with you. The Mullahs in charge right now may greenlight a schoolbus being blown up now and again, but a full-on assault would see their entire empire blown to radioactive kibble if things got desperate enough for Israel...and they darn well know it. And nukes are about the only deterrent that will keep the USA from trying another Iraqian “liberation”.
The real worry IMHO is that a more-fiery, less-intelligent faction will bowl them over, hand everyone with a John Thomas and a hate for Jews an Ak-47 and point them toward Israel, and let fly with the “instant sunrises”.