Hold Your Horses, Neocons

Matthew Yglesias urges caution amid the recent Iran concerns-

Think Again: Iran is a Problem, Not an Emergency

...Based on such pronouncements, the reasonable reader, while perhaps disagreeing with the neoconservative pundits' preferred "bombs away" policy, would no doubt conclude that, at a minimum, the Iranian nuclear program is, if unchecked, less than a year away from producing a usable nuclear weapon.

The reality, as Dana Linzer reported in the news pages of the Post last August, is rather different. Rather than being months from a bomb, a National Intelligence Estimate reflecting the consensus view of America's intelligence agencies concluded "that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon." This report revised earlier projections that, while more alarmist, still pegged the figure at five years, not months, and brings American estimates into line with analysis from British and Israeli intelligence. In addition, while manufacturing a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium (what Iran is thought to be about ten years from doing) is, indeed, the most difficult step in building a nuclear device, it is not, in and of itself, a usable weapon and building workable warheads and delivery systems are non-trivial engineering challenges on their own terms...

Pssst, Matthew, don't tell Drudgey, he's been getting so excited.