According to the AP:

Iranian negotiators on Wednesday expressed support for a deal that — if accepted by their leaders — would delay Tehran's ability to make nuclear weapons by sending most of its existing enriched uranium to Russia for processing, diplomats said…[The agreement] would commit Iran to turn over more than 2,600 pounds (1,200 kilograms) of low-enriched uranium. That would significantly ease fears about Iran's nuclear program, since 2,205 pounds (1,000 kilograms) is the commonly accepted amount of low-enriched uranium needed to produce weapons-grade uranium.

But, as always, the gods live in the details.

First, no one really knows how much low-enriched uranium Iran has stockpiled. So, it could turn over the 2,600 pounds and still have enough low-enriched uranium to produce the amount of weapons-grade uranium needed for a bomb.

Second, even if they have not stockpiled more, the best estimates are that it will take Iran about a year to replace 2,600 pounds (1,200 kilograms) of low-enriched uranium.

So, the best case scenario is “we” bought some time. The worst case is we lulled everyone to sleep while Iran gets nuclear weapons.

“States like these [Iran, Iraq and North Korea], and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.”

President George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 29, 2002

In the years since President Bush labeled the “axis of evil”, liberals and Democrats have made much fun out of this “rhetoric” and Mr. Bush’s cowboy foreign policy.

Today, Iran is pursuing atomic weapons and killing its people in the streets. A U.S. navy vessel is tracking a North Korean ship which maybe carrying nuclear materials (perhaps to Iran) and North Korea is threatening nuclear war.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, George Bush said: “I'm not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say, ‘This is the way it's got to be.’”

He was right. 

Unfortunately, driven by 9-11, President Bush adopted the policy of nation building.

President Obama, in Cairo, spoke of his “unyielding belief” in a set of universal principles, including “the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed, confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice, government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people, the freedom to live as you choose”.

Unfortunately, as with his predecessor, reality bites.

When it comes to the suppression of the protests in Iran, Mr. Obama seems unwilling to speak out for the protester’s rights to speak their minds and have a say in how they are governed, or confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice.

There is not always an American solution to every problem in the world. Certainly, America should not try to impose solutions.

Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a defense strategy that suggests that two rational nations, each of which possess the nuclear capability to totally destroy the other, would not start a nuclear war because each is certain it would end with the total destruction of both (and the rest of the world). MAD may have been well named, the United States and the Soviet Union never did engage in a nuclear war.

In the 21st century nuclear weapons age, two of the underlying assumptions of MAD are clearly called into question.

First, are those who possess nuclear weapons rational? Is North Korea’s Kim Jong Il rational? Is Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rational? If Pakistan should fall to the Taliban, will Pakistan’s Taliban leader be rational?

Second, if North Korea, Iran, or some other country sells or gives a nuclear bomb to a terrorist group and that group uses it to attack the United States (or Great Britain, or Israel, etc.) what targets are destroyed in the mutual retaliation? We may suspect North Korea or Iran as providing the bomb, but they would claim innocence and the world would condemn the United States if it launched a nuclear attack on either country without overwhelming public proof. Unlike the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, terrorists do not live in nice near targets (cities).

To paraphrase Klaatu: