Iran and its nuke

Yesterday, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said that Iran has enough fissile material to build a nuclear weapon. A few hours later, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that Iran isn't close to having a nuke.

So who's right?

Technically, both - but you have to suspect that Gates' timeline is very short. Just having the material doesn't mean you can use it for a bomb. But as far as we know, no country that has enough bomb material has stopped itself from going to the next step. There are certainly a host of technical difficulties involved in transforming the material into a bomb. But all of those difficulties have been overcome before.

One of the reasons that Gates says there's still time to stop the program is the fact that, if you're Iran, you're not going to test a weapon as soon as you have enough material for one bomb. You're going to make sure you have two or three - or five or six - just in case the rest of the world decides it doesn't like the results of your test.

Maybe my imagination just isn't very powerful, but I have a hard time seeing why Iran would abandon the program now.