Today, U.S. President Barack Obama signs into law the next round of unilateral sanctions taking aim at Iran’s energy sector. With this bill, Washington is seeking to stem what many view as Tehran’s imminent nuclear future. But how imminent is that future, exactly?
Some would say it is very imminent. On June 27, CIA Director Leon Panetta estimated that it would take Iran approximately two years to build a nuclear bomb if it made the decision to do so. The Wall Street Journal seized on his statement, on June 29 that “Iran stands barely two years from an atomic bomb that could target Israel, Europe and beyond.”
Pundits, too, have consistently claimed that Iran is just around the corner from acquiring nukes. Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, for example, urgently in July 2004, “Iran will go nuclear during the next presidential term.” In January 2006, he, “Iran is probably just months away.” A few months later, in September, when no bomb appeared, he >>>
