"The event "Countering a Nuclear-Armed Iran" will focus on how we might develop new options to counter Iran beyond the choice of acquiescing to Iran obtaining a nuclear weapons break out option or using military force to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities."

How about, instead, we figure out how to counter you people's God damned fear mongering? This piece of crap and his monstrosity of a VP in the Oval Office scares me one hell of a sight more than a nuclear armed Iraq does.

Besides, do you know something the IAEA doesn't?

I don't want to "counter" the Iranians. I want our government to open diplomatic relations with Iran, and get to work post haste on building a new Middle East security framework and regional balance of power in which a US-Iranian cooperation will be a key anchor.

I have no interest in listening to another DC centrist suit from the Part of the Problem Brigade, with their pathologically compulsive need to split every difference and hide in the middle. For every ten lying talking points from the administration they hear, they reject five, accept the other five and call the result "wisdom". It's pathetic.

I think a few more of these centrist policy professionals need to develop a renewed appreciation for the moral power of binary choices. The time for appeasement is over.

Could someone please explain to me, again, why the Iranians seem to be the one people on earth who 'can't have nuclear weapons'? Is there some legal basis (violations of international laws/treaties) for this concern?

perhaps it isot proper to post this comment here
but as an evidance of double standards of the west and un honest way of teir act see:
http://www.presidentofpakistan.gov.pk/PRPressReleaseDetail.aspx?nPRPressReleaseId=1406&nYear=2006&nMonth=5

see how Columiba president introduce Mosharaf
the dictator of pakistan (who is pro BUSH)
you know there is huge differnce between Ahmadinejad and musharf,first i elected(probably in in proper way) but the second gain the power with a coup and pakistan is the main private court in the world

As Carroll would say "Spot on, POA"

While I don't wish to "pull a Bollinger". and assert prematurely that Samore and Lewis "don't have the intellectual courage" to address the broader - and more important- issue of whether it would be better to address the issue of the U.S.A. attempting to produce a whole NEW GENERATION of nuclear weapons, useful not as a deterrent, but small enough to offer an opportunity to break the ban on their use, to use preemptively.

While some of the TWN posts on Cheney and war have been quite informative, the posts on TWN re to Iran display the lack of critical thinking that beat the drums of war towards Iraq. Had we listened to el Baradei and the AEIA, rather than the U.S. pundits, we would not be in the mess we are today.

All this saber rattling and clinging to U.S. nuclear primacy is accomplishing, is to drive China and Russia into the Iranian camp, and chose up sides for WWIII.

If we are REALLY to discuss nuclear non-proliferation objectively, I suggest we start with U.N. resolution number one, the U.S. violation of both the NPT and the International Court of Justice, rather than Iran.

Anyone know where one might get a copy of Dr. Samore's "Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Net Assessment (2002)"?

Or sans that, be able and willing to share the salient points?

Would somebody please ask Dr. Samore why the group thinking DC crowd refuses to entertain the possibility that Iran is being honest when it says it is not seeking a nuclear weapon? Why don't they consider the fact that Iran doesn't need a nuke if it can attain the deterrence equivalent of Mutually Assured Destruction simply by getting enough conventional fire power to take out the Persian Gulf oil industry, all conveniently located within a couple hundred miles of its shores?

The whole nuclear issue is a red herring designed to spook the American people, who seem to have an insatiable appetite for being spooked and have learned nothing from the false pretenses used for the Iraq war.

"Would somebody please ask Dr. Samore why the group thinking DC crowd refuses to entertain the possibility that Iran is being honest when it says it is not seeking a nuclear weapon?"

Because AIPAC would spank their soft shiny cowardly lily white asses if they dared speak such sacrilege.

POA: Exactly. The foreign policy elite/national security mob have a good thing going. Asking such questions might disrupt their sweet little war machine. Which is why no one in DC dares to think outside the neocons' frame. Fortunately it's still not too late for people outside the beltway to think for themselves.

"Fortunately it's still not too late for people outside the beltway to think for themselves."

But we better think fast.