The Financial Times, citing U.N. officials, reports that Iran has enough weapons-grade uranium to build a bomb, although acquiring the HEU and building a warhead are two separate things. Bush swore that Iran wouldn’t get this far on his watch. That he was right was more a matter of timing than policy. Obama clearly won’t be so lucky.

Analysis gets confused with advocacy, especially when a national security issue becomes a political football. That’s why so many reports come out urging diplomacy, but so few ask about the next steps and what happens if diplomacy doesn’t work. It’s also why advocates try to taint any discussion of what can go wrong with accusations. Accusers will claim that analysts who do not embrace grand bargains, or who do not see the Iranian leadership as sincere, are advocating either failure or a resort to more forceful means. Former Carter-aide Gary Sick, for example, does this quite a bit. So do several folks at the Center for American Progress.

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s report (I was a drafter for the group project but not the expert on nuclear issues) has gotten the timeline and the issues right. They also go into significant detail about how the Natanz configuration would need to be changed to produce more, quickly, something the Financial Times hints at. The BPC report is worth a read now, especially for the technicalities. (PDF here).