Word: bomb
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Like many physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project, Richard Feynman could not get the Bomb out of his mind after the war. "I would see people building a bridge," he wrote. "And I thought, they're crazy, they just don't understand, they don't understand. Why are they making new things? It's so useless...
...finally invented something that he could not control and that would ultimately destroy him. For six decades we have suppressed that thought and built enough history to believe Feynman's pessimism was unwarranted. After all, soon afterward, the most aggressive world power, Stalin's Soviet Union, acquired the Bomb, yet never used it. Seven more countries have acquired it since and never used it either. Even North Korea, which huffs and puffs and threatens every once in a while, dares not use it. Even Kim Jong Il is not suicidal...
...start with a simple proposition: no one wants Iran to have the Bomb. The country doesn't actually possess nukes yet, but much of the world suspects that it is hell-bent on building them under the cover of its nuclear-energy program--and the loose-cannon bluster of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad only reinforces that conviction. That's why diplomats and nuclear watchdogs in the U.S., Europe and other parts of the world have spent so much time trying to stop Iran's nuclear program in its tracks...
...Meanwhile, Tehran has sped up research work on the uranium enrichment that lies at the heart of the dispute. Diplomats who have been briefed on Iran's program by international inspectors say the country has developed the ability to enrich uranium, the first step on the pathway to the Bomb. "They're progressing much faster than we thought they would," says a knowledgeable U.S. official. "They seem to know what they're doing...
...deal has always been compromised by Iran's unpredictability. At this point, there are few outside Tehran who consider its behavior anything but destabilizing, if not sinister. The West is operating on the assumption that the Iranians are trying to develop the technology and expertise required for building a bomb as rapidly as possible--and that given the regime's support for terrorism, its stated desire to destroy Israel and the prospect of a new arms race in the Middle East, the world can't afford to let them succeed. Yet there is still nothing close to unanimity on what...