I don’t think public announcements and Iran’s program have a strong relationship.

But what our intelligence services have been saying:

nytimes.com

Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies.

At the center of the debate is the murky question of the ultimate ambitions of the leaders in Tehran. There is no dispute among American, Israeli and European intelligence officials that Iran has been enriching nuclear fuel and developing some necessary infrastructure to become a nuclear power. But the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies believe that Iran has yet to decide whether to resume a parallel program to design a nuclear warhead — a program they believe was essentially halted in 2003 and which would be necessary for Iran to build a nuclear bomb.

Eventually, every country with any sort of budget will be able to buy nuclear weapons. We can’t have a plan of “We’ll make sure the bad guys never get nukes”. It’s not a long-term solution. There is no easy path to a liberalized and free Iran, but that’s the real long-term solution.