Robert Zarate writes at the Foreign Policy Initiative:
Eager to jumpstart stalled negotiations for a “nuclear deal” with Iran, President Obama is reportedly mulling direct talks with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani when world leaders converge at the U.N. General Assembly next week. Yet despite a decade’s worth of diplomacy and non-military pressure, the United States and other world powers have failed so far to persuade Iran to halt its drive to nuclear weapons-making capability. Instead, the potential threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program has only grown. Even if it is true that Iranian leaders have not made the final decision to assemble a nuclear weapon, Iran not only holds all of the raw ingredients required for an atomic bomb, but also is making technical advances that could rapidly shorten the amount of time it would need to build a nuclear weapon to a matter of months, if not weeks.
