Crook tries to part the veil by focusing on the detailed case ("detailed" for a speech, anyway) Obama made that Iran's obtaining a nuclear weapon would be a severe blow not only to Israeli security but to American interests, middle east stability, and global antiproliferation. He has thus set himself against the case, laid out by intelligence veteran Paul Pillar, that fears of an Iranian bomb are overblown and that a nuclear Iran could be effectively contained. He has laid out the stakes in such a way that Iran's obtaining nuclear capability can be seen as nothing other than a colossal failure of his own policy
Whether Obama is committed to attack if Iran is seen to be building a bomb may be beside the point, however. Or rather, it's not in itself news. If it's true that an American president can't be exposed to have bluffed, as Obama said, it's equally true that an American president under current political conditions can't suggest that a nuclear-armed Iran would not be such a catastrophe. The real nub was captured, as Spencer Ackerman pointed out, is captured in a tweet by anything-for-Israel neocon Noah Pollack:
Obama policy = preventing Iran from getting nuke. Israel policy = preventing capability to build nuke. There's the rub.Obama may be seeking wiggle room, not only for a perhaps-unlikely negotiated settlement with Iran, but for a protracted stalemate. I'd like to ask nuclear arms experts: how precise a concept is 'breakout capacity'? Is it possible to clearly parse this statement of Obama's to Goldberg:
