Iran’s nuclear ambitions and questions over Tehran’s intentions are going to occupy a good portion of an Obama administration’s foreign policy and national security team. It is all well and good to try diplomacy, but it is a myth that it is a strategy that is yet to be tried: The Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations each talked to Iran, and each failed. So too did the Europeans.

In a worst case scenario, there are many that argue that a nuclear weapons-capable Islamic Republic can be contained or deterred. The problem here is that, so far, Obama, Biden, and their advisors treat deterrence and containment as rhetorical strategies, and ignore the nuts-and-bolts military preparations that underlay both deterrence and containment. Perhaps hot air works in the Senate; but it does not in the real world.

So, a brief essay examining whether a nuclear Iran can be deterred or contained, here.