The U.N. nuclear watchdog expressed "serious concern" Thursday over
Iran's resumption of activities that could lead to an atomic bomb, and diplomats said Tehran has a Sept. 3 deadline to stop or face another possible referral to the Security Council.

Oh no, I'm sure they're just shaking over this. Not because the UN in impotent (the UN dropping Iraq level economic sanctions on Iran would do very bad things to them) but because they know two things. One, military action is not going to happen. The UN, more specifically, the US, doesn't have anyone to send. Two, they won't be looking at Iraq level sanctions because they didn't invade any of their neighbors.

Having watched the reports on this, the decision about restarting their nuclear program was made before the new administration went in, the new guys are perfectly happy to stay that course, so blaming this on the new group is misleading at best.

The Iranians are going to go through with this. Why? Because they are looking at their oil reserves dwindle, and want a long term option. They're not making a good choice in going with the nuclear option, that's a secondary point, but the options that have been presented to them by us and the EU are ones that would make them dependent on someone else for their energy. They're not going to do that. They also see that North Korea was able to join the nuclear club with opposition, but no military action and think they can do they same.

What can we actually get? We can probably get them to accept IAEA paid watchdogs to keep an eye on their uranium stocks to try to make sure that they aren't using it to build bombs, and try to prevent MUF's, but that's about it. They're going to do it and the only way to stop it is invade. Well, we already shot our wad in Iraq.

By my count this makes the US, Russia (and maybe Ukraine and Georgia as well out of the former USSR), Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea all nuclear capable right now, with Germany, Japan, and soon Iran, all able, but probably without bombs. I'm still curious about South Africa, I haven't seen any reports on what happened with their capability, but they were suspected to have the ability 20 years ago. Where that sits now I have no idea.

Here's another question, how will the Israeli's react to Iran, which has been supporting Hamas and Hizbollah all these years, moving into a position to counter Israel's nuclear trump? When Iraq was moving that direction in the 80's, they bombed their reactor. That doesn't seem to be an option here because of logistics.