Iran is trying to build and weaponize a bomb.
It’s really too bad that Powell had to waste so much of his international credibility on justifying the administration’s WMD red herring; that should give Europe the perfect excuse to ignore this statement. (Which, thanks to what I’ll politely call a combination of pusillanimity and financial considerations, they would very much like to do)
But the best I can say for this is “no shit?” I mean, did someone not get the hint from their (a) developing longer-range missiles, (b) developing more advanced missile guidance systems, and (c) pushing their isotope enrichment program into high gear? Does the rest of the world need an engraved invitation to an A-test?
What galls me most about this is that we encouraged it so strongly. The run-up to the Iraq war and our subsequent dealing with North Korea made it very clear to everyone in the world that someone who’s about to get major weapons is likely to get invaded by the US, but someone who already has them is permanently sacrosanct. Then we left them to their own devices and stopped all engagement with even the moderates, and turned a blind eye to their programs and their deals with NK for several years. I really do not want to have to deal with even a regional nuclear war because of high-level official fuck-ups…
Yonatan Zunger’s Blog 