Tellingly, ignoring what should be any wary American's first instinct following the Iraq War debacle, no one has asked whether the referenced Intelligence Assessment is wrong or misleading, and whether CBS News got even their version right. This makes a crucial difference, to me, because the timeline projected in the news article would make the Iran-nuke issue much more immediate and subject to legitimate attention by the Bush Administration. With a longer timeline, much of the heavy-lifting (read: thinking, foremost) could be left to succeeding administrations.
But the report does give us cause to brush off the cobwebs on our brains. Characteristically, JS offers us both insightful and helpful observation, to a minor extent about the global milieu Iran is operating in, but much more profoundly the great potential for internal amelioration that could spread from the crosscurrents of modernization in Iran, which are more like a riptide than a tsunami but are real and potent nonetheless.
With time, we might be able to rely on these political forces, not so much, perhaps, to sandbag the nuclear effort but to see it placed in more responsible hands. (Nuclear proliferation is one of the curses of the modern age, and even now I see no sure way to satisfy the drive short of acquisition.) However, and this is preparing for a worst-case scenario (a self-destructive, omni-destructive, rogue regime), we must "game out" both an air campaign to wipe out the nuclear facilities, with a follow-on ground campaign (if feasible) to hold our gains, or else even a nuclear attack -- the horror of horrors -- but, in our most sober assessment, maybe "less harmful" than a first-strike by an enemy. To fathom such a problem, the thinkers would have to use game theory and utility analysis, but most of all, I suggest, favorable winds from the Almighty.
