This is not good

NYT:

Iran’s president remained defiant today on the eve of a United Nations deadline for his country to stop enriching uranium, as tensions between Iran and the United States continued to mount in various ways.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country will halt its uranium enrichment program, a prerequisite for building nuclear weapons, only if Western powers do the same. The U.N. Security Council has imposed limited sanctions on Iran, and has said it would consider further sanctions if the enrichment program is not stopped by tomorrow.

A second U.S. aircraft carrier group is just arriving in the Sea of Oman, south of Iran. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says there is no plan to go to war with Iran. Of course, the Administration repeatedly said the same thing in the months before the invasion of Iraq. Given the disastrous course of the Iraq War, it might fairly be said that the Administration really didn't have a plan for Iraq, because they clearly still lack one; but there is now an abundance of evidence that they had every intention of going to war with Iraq, plan or no. The same dissembling illogic may pertain to Iran, but this is what's most important:

Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency... was quoted as saying, American and British intelligence services estimate that Iran is still 5 to 10 years away from developing a workable nuclear bomb.

Iran is making great strides in developing its nuclear weapons capabilities, and its government is not one that anyone wants to see with nuclear weapons; but there is plenty of time to figure out what to do about it. Watch the Administration try to convince you otherwise...