re: #467 Obdicut

So the alternative is what exactly? Hope that the UN does its thing, knowing that it has failed time and time again and that the more time Iran gets, the closer it gets to achieving nuclear weapons and makes dealing with it militarily all the more difficult (including the nuclear blackmail that would occur on the region thereafter).

No, the only alternative other than to deal with the regime’s nuclear program via airstrikes (a la Osirak) is to wait out the regime and hope that their technological prowess on nuclear technologies isn’t sufficient to have the nuclear weapons that they have all too frequently hoped for. Hope that the regime collapses from within by decay, because overthrowing it isn’t an option.

That assumes that they wont have nuclear weapons by then - again that’s a function of time as they already have the centrifuges and declared capabilities to run the enrichment up to LEU - short of weapons grade, but sufficient for proof of concept where the only hurdle is time.

And therein lies the problem - that’s a whole lot of wishful thinking to base a strategic and tactical position on.