Edward N. Luttwak presents Three Reasons Not to Bomb Iran — Yet:
- Iranians are our once and future allies. Except for a narrow segment of extremists, they do not view themselves as enemies of the United States.
- In essence, we should not bomb Iran because the worst of its leaders positively want to be bombed — and are doing their level best to bring that about.
- The regime certainly cannot produce nuclear weapons in less than three years, and may not be able to do so even then because of the many technical difficulties not yet overcome.
Addendum: Dan Drezner looks at the same article, and one of his readers offers this comment:
We know that Pakistan, without much of an industrial base to speak of, developed nukes. Ditto for North Korea. One doesn’t need a vast industrial base to produce nukes, one just needs solid focus and some talented scientists, and some smuggling.