Hostility between Washington and Tehran have intensified since May 2018, when Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA), under P5+1, with the presence of the U.S., the U.K., France, China, Russia, and Germany.  That agreement pushed Tehran's nuclear ambitions to rest (but not really).

The Iran nuclear deal was simple: Tehran had to agree to limit its nuclear capacity, and in return, the economic sanctions would be lifted.  That easy!  But the devil is always in the details.  The Obama administration foolishly permitted Iran flexibility for ballistic missile testing.  Security Council Resolution 2231 certified the deal, replacing the embargo with encouraging language: "Iran is called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons."

Also, under the deal, the Islamist regime would gain access to more than $100B in assets frozen overseas and was able to resume selling oil on international markets and using the global financial system for trade.

The inspection of the sites came with some stipulations.  The Iranian mullahs must completely comply with IAEA.  (Highly unlikely!)  Iran's rulers have a long history of cheating and lying about the country's nuclear program, and there is no reason to believe them now.

After President Donald Trump abandoned the Iran nuclear deal, the global nuclear watchdog the IAEA says Iran has already increased production of enriched uranium — but it is not known by how much.

Back a Decade Ago...

The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities," contained a bombshell: the conclusion that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.  It is not known what prompted this unprecedented reversal of intelligence analysis, since the unclassified report contained only a summary of key judgments and excluded the evidence on which the judgments were made.  Already, however, several knowledgeable experts have charged that the NIE is critically flawed.

As time went on, President Bush vowed that Iran would never be allowed to achieve its goal on his watch.  Bush kept using all kinds of threats and promises in order to persuade the mullahs to drop the project, to no avail.  When a belligerent end-of-the-worlder, Holocaust-denier Ahmadinejad, became the Islamic Republic of Iran's president, things started heating up a great deal.

Time and again, the bellicose Ahmadinejad vilified the Great Satan and its sidekick Israel for having the gall to demand that Iran abandon its program while his two main adversaries had their own arsenal of nuclear weapons.  Ahmadinejad informed the world that what the Islamic Republic does is within its own national rights.  He shored up his credibility cleverly by dispatching an endless series of negotiators to meet with the Europeans.  He was successfully stalling for time while working around the clock to get to surge capacity. 

The NIE report assured us that the IRI had abandoned its nuclear weapon program some three years ago.  So there is really nothing to fear and even less reason to maintain the dangerous game of brinkmanship with the mullahs.  Upon superficial reading of the report, one may get the impression that the mullahs are not exactly the saints of Allah, as Jimmy Carter had thought them while he helped bring them to power.  Yet neither are they as scheming, un-repenting, villainous zanies that their enemies portray them. 

The best predictor of the future is the past.  The religious fanatic mullahs' record is one of deception, dissimulation, treachery, violence, and much more.  These Quran-trained and directed agents of a wrathful Allah have been at the business of scheming for centuries.  They have perfected the art of deception, doubletalk, double-dealing, and treachery.  Hence, for the NIE's report to be based primarily on supposed interception of secret conversations of high-ranking Iranian leaders, it is nothing more than a practice in gullibility.  Prudence demands better proofs, much better proofs.

If indeed the IRI has abandoned its entire program to achieve Surge Capacity, then why is it that it did not allow the IAEA unimpeded access to over some 30 known facilities?  The IAEA is allowed to visit only a handful of them, and only with prior notice. 

Bleeding-heart liberals, otherwise known as the useful idiots, cite the NIE demand in chorus that we should immediately begin negotiating with the mullahs with no pre-conditions at all.  We never had much leverage with the mullahs.  What little leverage we had is wiped out by our own NIE.  What these useful idiots don't seem to understand is that one can negotiate only with a party indeed interested in negotiation. 

In short, yes, the mullahs are mass killers.  Civilized people cherish and celebrate life.  The Islamists relish death, as stated in their ideology and practiced daily.  Recall what Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon's Hezb'allah, had to say about why his people would prevail in the war with Israel.  He said, "Israelis love life.  We Muslims love death."  These fanatics firmly believe in an incomparably magnificent pleasure-filled next world that awaits the faithful Muslim.  To them, this world is nothing but a heap of dust, while the next is a paradise of eternal lust.

No, Iran's mullahs must never be allowed to acquire a delivery system to carry their nuclear bomb.  That would be the end of the world.