Iran's Nuclear Reality

Every day, Iran comes one step closer to the potential acquisition of nuclear weaponry, which of course, they continue to deny is their aim. Today's NYTimes reports:

Inspectors Cite Big Gain by Iran on Nuclear Fuel - David E. Sanger
Inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency have concluded that Iran appears to have solved most of its technological problems and is now beginning to enrich uranium on a far larger scale than before, according to the agency's top officials. In a short-notice inspection of Iran's main nuclear facility at Natanz on Sunday, conducted in advance of a report to the UN Security Council due early next week, the inspectors found that Iranian engineers were already using roughly 1,300 centrifuges and were producing fuel suitable for nuclear reactors, according to diplomats and nuclear experts.
    "They are at the stage where they are doing one cascade a week," said one diplomat familiar with the analysis of Iran's activities. A cascade has 164 centrifuges, and experts say that at this pace, Iran could have 3,000 centrifuges operating by June - enough, if the uranium were enriched further, to make one bomb's worth of nuclear material every year. Tehran may, the diplomat said, be able to build an additional 5,000 centrifuges by the end of the year, for a total of 8,000.

Israel's decision as to whether - or not -  to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, as they did Iraq's Osirak in 1981, will be one of the biggest gambles in its history, according to Commentary Magazine's Gabriel Shoenfeld.