I trust them. These idealogical noobs have been so right on everything else, why shouldn't they be just as accurate on this, too? Jack wagons.Anyway, this article talks about how our vaunted CIA is putting together another just as vaunted NIE. I'm sure it will be much better than the first because it is supposed to have input from some new sources. Maybe the guy who just ran back to Iran mailed us a postcard with a status report on it or something.
Oh, and I'm sure the Nork/Pakistani/Iranian nuclear-bomb development program is about to try their latest design somewhere in North Korea since we held the wargames there off their front porch where they could watch our tactics up close and personal. It'll be all our fault that they were forced to do that, of course. Funny, if I were afraid of a guy with a gun shooting me, I personally wouldn't be flipping him off, but maybe that's because I've had a fairly nutritive diet over the course of my lifetime and am not intimately familiar with the different kinds of bark and grass that won't kill me when I eat them.
In any case, in one year the reactor will be be fueled and operational. Iran will have several more processing sites up and running, their nuclear infrastructure buried deeper and more spread out, and will have had another year to strategize. Hezb'Allah and the "Palestinians" will have more advanced weapons and more of them. And they too will have had another year to stragegize and prepare as well. Iran may have something up its sleeve and might have handed material or completed bomb(s) off to the next player in the chain, who may just be a se><-starved terrorist with a cargo container at his disposal.
It'll be sorta like blackmail. "I got one nekkid picture of you, and now I want another or I'm going to send it to all your friends at work." Well, what's one more. And then another. And another. Whoops, there when Israel, but they haven't come after us. Well, OK. Wow! Where did our port go? Was it these guys or those? The Iranians fervently deny they did it. They're even sending us another container-ship full of hankies to replace the first one that got blown up. Suppose there will be another? Better check with China to see if they have a problem with us nuking Iran if it turns out they did it and not the Norks. Who happen to have a similar warhead design.
In any case, I don't really care if their stupid reactor is fueled, working, or not. Stick a 2000# bomb right up their cooling tower while running at full power and be done with it for all I care. More importantly, take out their nuclear sites, including storage, development, and as much as they can related to manufacturing. I'd like to see their government bombed during a full session, and the Republican Guard screwed up simultaneously, too. Too bad all these things can't happen at once in the middle of the night. Maybe the pros can figure something out. Might just cut off half their food supply and tell them we'll send them more if they let us in and behave themselves. Of course, that may be tough since Nutjob says they'd be happy to be the nation that has to sacrifice half their population just to wipe Israel off the map. Whatever that means.
In any case, I think it will take US backing to keep Iran from striking back at Israel directly. And even with that, the local players like Hamas, Fatah and Hezballah will likely have to be dealt with by Israel alone for the most part. For the next ten years unless Iran has a revolution. And then and only then might there be peace in the area.
Maybe Israel could use a few F-22s. For peaceful defense-related purposes, of course. And maybe some external fuel tanks. For even longer-range peaceful defense-related purposes.