love will steer the stars

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revalation
And the mind's true liberation

Confused about Iran?

Doc Foland at Nuclear Mangos explains it all.

FWIW, I broadly concur with him.
The published NIE is if anything more dovish than I'd think. In fact it is hard to reconcile the Iranian public posture on enrichment with it the NIE in its entirety, and Iran is clearly moving closer to "breakout" capability - where they don't have a nuclear weapons program, but could put one together real fast, if they decided to, and all went to plan, and they actually could make some fissiles of sufficient purity.
Like, say, Sweden, or Canada, or Germany, or Japan, or the Netherlands or...

Anyway, ultimately it is all about intent, and the Iranian may feel they have p3wnd their adversaries adequately by conventional means and don't need no steenkin' nukes. Plus not letting Daddy Warbucks pre-empt might amuse them enough as is (sorry, reading 3rd part of Stross's Clan Corporate series right now).

In the meantime, the USS Enterprise has left the Gulf, and a bunch of helicarriers are in harbour or out of area, and despite what paranoid Israeli websites say, the USS Nimitz appears to be 5000+ miles from the Gulf.
Still a lot of carriers out exercising for spring, but no unusual number of subs, and the USAF can focus on tracking Santa Claus for the rest of this year.

Phew.

Now, nobody do nothing stupid. Like have a mixed up nasty incident where blame is assigned wildly in haste and knees jerking all around. Nice and quiet, please.

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