horse of george

That so many left leaning foreign policy voices are trying desperately to convince themselves and anyone who will listen that there is indeed a deal here to be made with Iran viz its nuclear ambitions is pretty much all the proof I need that Iran getting the bomb or developing a breakout ability to do so is essentially a fait accompli at this point, at least as far as Obama is concerned [actually, what happened in Syria probably settled the issue, but this makes it official I think]. I don't believe for one second that Iran sees negotiations and any deal that may come of them as anything other than cover that allows them to finish their work and forestall an Israeli attack - and so the question becomes: given that, will Israel then take it upon its lonely self to attack even though the sham of a deal or negotiations thereof would cast such an attack in an ugly light and undermine the Obama presidency? All depends on the conclusion the inner sanctum of Israeli strategic thinking has reached about possibility of living with a nuked up Iran: if the answer is it's possible, then no attack; if the answer is not possible, then expect an intervention sometime within the next year regardless of the unfavorable optics and potential repercussions. Of course the strong preference for Israel [and most Arab states] is a nukeless Iran - but that doesn't mean, all things considered, that come the end of the day they haven't concluded finding a way to tolerate such a thing is the least bad option when measured against the fate they'd be tempting with a solo intervention. There are a lot of unknowables here, the central one being: if Iran gets the bomb, how will that alter their behavior and how will that altered behavior impact the troubled dynamics of the region? It's not impossible that Israel could see an upside to a nuke enabled Iran in so much as the disconcerted Arab states might then be inclined [sotto voce of course] to view Israeli power as a good thing, ie a constraint on Iranian aggression.