the most likely outcome, or so it is now argued,

In cases like this the passive voice is used to convey a certain vagueness concerning the identity of the people by whom the arguing is being done. This is no doubt intended by the author.

I’m just going to keep on saying what I’ve been telling JED for months. The Iranian regime is doing a fine job of screwing itself up.

I say this as something of a dissenter on the evilmongering right, since I’ve long wondered whether there was a real world scenario, short of a major conflict started by someone else, under which the U.S. could and would act decisively. Meanwhile, JED’s analysis tended to reinforce my belief that what Israel seemed likely to achieve on its own in a unilateral action might not justify the political cost.

However, many of the terms in the discussion change over time. What seemed impossible for us to contemplate a year ago may not, depending on intervening events, seem so a year from now. Iran’s at a milestone point, but is still likely years away from having usable weapons.

There’s some doubt among experts about the real weapons capacities of countries at similar or more advanced stages of technological development like Pakistan, India, and North Korea. The duds and misfires that the Norks have had aren’t unusual from the history of nukes. It took the French several tries to get the missle tech right.

So we might boiling this frog in one way or another for a decade if not decades.

http://archive.gulfnews.com/region/Iran/10333853.html

We also think that we have a couple of years before it happens.

http://www.televisionwashington.com/floater_article1.aspx?lang=en&t=3&id=12915

It’s hard to see any domestic political advantage to the Obamanauts in a nuclear Iran, and in a complete rebuff of the “unclenched fist” policy. Before the Iranian election, I think that at least some in the WH thought there was a chance that Iran would give them a superficial political victory – see it in their interests – that could be portrayed, truthfully or not, as a step toward a Grand Bargain.

There are too many unknowns. Anyway, I thought that the interestingly contentious part of the piece wasn’t in its observations on the US and others re Iran, but in the notion that the betting now favors a “polynuclear” ME.

…[A] mood of defeatism appears to have settled over the White House.

Well, that’s the most misleading sentence I’ve run across in days.

I started off thinking that, finally, the Jøker had clued in to the fact that the American people don’t want the IRS in charge of their health care.

Instead I’m treated to a farrago of nonsense about how the Jøker and his clown-car refugees are ‘resigned’ to a nuclear Iran.

[Expletive deleted].

The Democrat party, including the then junior senator from Illinois, did everything within its power to stymie the (admittedly less than all-out) Bush administration’s efforts to build a coalition with which to pressure Iran (not something likely to have succeeded in the immediate term, but it would have provided a base from which to build a firm opposition).

There is no evidence besides their public pronouncements (sound and fury signifying nothing) that this pack of crooks and liars has any problem with Iran nuclearising.

As with anything associated with the Jøker, ignore the speechifying and pay attention to the associations.