The traditional media is not doing a good job of providing context to the Iran situation. Drumbeats of concern from the administration, echoed through the press, dominate the news headlines.
So one must go to books for a clearer picture of the process. So I recommend the book "India's Nuclear Bomb," by George Perkovich (Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, 1999) for an examination of what it takes for a country to join the nuclear club.
India took many years to go nuclear. Even with the technological capability, the book shows that politics and science and diplomacy play a big role. Some of those same forces apply in the Iran situation (cont'd).
One of the more essential insights is that scientists tend to exaggerate the speed at which a country can actually carry out a nuclear program. India was said to be 18 months to three months away from a bomb, yet the actual scientific task proved to be much harder in reality.
Another insight is that even with a successful bomb test, a country needs to have a considerable infrastructure to pose a credible threat. In the case of India (1964 figures) it was estimated that it would take $800 million to develop an intermediate range missle to deliver a bomb, plus $1 million cost and maintenance over a 5 year cycle. To have an arsenal of 50 weapons was estimated to cost $52 million to build, plus $21 million/year maintenance.
More significantly, there were considerable political and economic costs that would have to be borne. Once started on a path of an arms race, India would have to choose increasingly to short-change much needed programs in agriculture aimed at feeding its people, and could easily become involved in an expensive arms race, to the detriment of the hungry masses.
Similar choices face other major powers, including the former Soviet Union.
In short, estimates of Iran's nuclear capability or lack thereof still put it short of a working nuclear bomb, and well short of even a defensive arsenal.
Moreover, press accounts fail to remind the public that at the beginning of the current Bush administration, there were significant cuts in nuclear non-proliferation efforts.
In looking solely at Iran, the press is omitting the guns-and-butter trade off that the US is making. The US could itself be eventually compromising the food needs of its own country if it continues to escalate nuclear arms races, country by country. At the end of the Clinton Presidency, the US had a major opportunity to have a peace dividend, and apply the economic surplus to domestic needs.
That is one part of the debate that still continues to get short shrift.