The Arms Control Association has made available the transcript of a discussion it sponsored last Monday on Iran’s nuclear program. Moderated by ACA Executive Director Daryl Kimball, the discussants were Admiral Joe Sestak, a former congressman; Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the nonproliferation and disarmament program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London; and ACA senior fellow Greg Thielmann. The main purposes of the session were to assess how far the Iranian nuclear program has progressed and how quickly Tehran might be able to “break out” and build a bomb, what we know about Iran’s nuclear decision-making and how much we can influence it, and the risks of military intervention.
The long discussion is well worth consulting in detail. But its take-away message, as summarized in a blog by Thielmann, is that “an Iranian bomb is neither imminent nor inevitable.”