The most grotesque possibility in the war to prevent an Iranian bomb is that the war itself may manufacture the bomb.

Washington has spent years declaring that Iran must never conclude nuclear weapons are necessary for survival.

It has now furnished Tehran with the most persuasive argument for exactly that conclusion: remain non-nuclear, remain inspected, remain inside the Non-Proliferation Treaty — and get bombed anyway

It has now furnished Tehran with the most persuasive argument for exactly that conclusion: remain non-nuclear, remain inspected, remain inside the Non-Proliferation Treaty — and get bombed anyway

There is still no verified evidence that Iran has made the political decision to build a nuclear weapon. That fact matters. The distinction between having the technical capacity to approach weaponisation and deciding to produce a bomb is not diplomatic hair-splitting. It is the entire distinction between threshold capability and proliferation.

But strategy is not theology. Doctrines change when conditions do.

But strategy is not theology. Doctrines change when conditions do.

Iran now confronts the nuclear question after repeated attacks on its facilities, the erosion of international inspections, direct military confrontation with the United States, and an ever more explicit Western determination to keep the country permanently vulnerable. Before inspectors lost continuity of knowledge, Iran held roughly 441 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent — not weapons-grade, but alarmingly close to the final enrichment stage.

And so preventive war has produced its own little masterpiece of absurdity: bomb the nuclear facilities, degrade the inspection regime, lose visibility over the enriched stockpile, then announce that one has improved nuclear security.

Washington’s Iran war: Three tracks, one deadlock, and a revolution that never forgot 1953

Apparently, in the new theology of........

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