Thanks gandalftb. This has been a steady drumbeat for four or five years now; between countermeasures like Stuxnet and piffin’ some Iranian bombbuilders, as well as technical issues that rose from time to time, and even some resistance in the upper echelons to the idea of building nuclear weapons, success has remained out of reach. My wild guess is, six to seven months is the timeframe because there’s no longer any countermeasures that will do the trick, other than making the whole nuke program go kablooey.
Yup, we’ve been nipping at Iran’s heels fairly well but their leaders are not going to be re-educated by us or Israel.
Authentic and permanent political change has to come from the Iranian people or the leadership we kill off will be replaced by worse.
What no one is talking about is the true reason Iran wants nukes: They are not going to bomb the US or Israel and see themselves invaded by us.
Iran wants to demonstrate to Islam that Shiism is the true faith and leader for all muslims.
Iran fully understands that having the Shiite nuke elevates them to at least a peer in muslim prestige to Pakistan’s Sunni nuke.
Israel’s strategic reality is this:
They know Iran is not going to nuke them. But, if Iran gets the bomb, then the Saudi’s and Egyptians and Iraq’s and Syrians will demand nukes.
That nuke weapons pressure, of having border neighbors that Israel has already had several wars with, would be far more intimidating to Israel’s dream of annexing all of Palestine.