In the past few years, various experts on nuclear weapons and military matters have declared that attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities will do little to prevent the Islamic Republic from producing atomic bombs; even if successful, they claim, such strikes will only turn back the clock a few years. Lee Smith argues that there is much evidence to the contrary:
[Building a bomb requires] not only the facilities, equipment, and personnel necessary to run a nuclear-weapons program, but also . . . [a] nation’s industrial and technological culture, its economy, and perhaps most important the society that produces them. The Islamic Republic of Iran comes up short in all these vital areas. And that’s why it has taken Tehran 25 years to buy, steal, and smuggle a nuclear-weapons program from the outside world. The notion that it would take Iran only two to three years to restore a program it has taken more than two decades and tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars to build does not add up.
Read more on Weekly Standard: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/iranian-vulnerability_892768.html