It is only a matter of time.   Iran will get the A-bomb.   The Europeans aren't doing a very good job at even holding reasonable discussions.   They pretend to put pressure on Iran but the country isn't having any of it.   The Russians are making overtures to the country suggesting that maybe they can enrich their uranium in Russia so the world doesn't have to worry about them putting some to use in bombs.   Iran barely acknowledged the Russian suggestion.   They likely won't agree to it unless they can get enough of a guarantee from Russia that some of the material might be able to be diverted.   The UN is completeless toothless on this one because neither China nor Russia will allow the security council to put any kind of pressure on the country.   And at this point, you have to believe that sanctions are an absolute joke.   So what can we do other than just wait to learn that Iran has the bomb?

Well, we could try to figure out what might happen after they get the bomb.   I suppose they could hold onto at as a deterrent against their enemies who potentially threaten to invade them.   But they really don't have any such enemies - not since Saddam was removed from power and it looks like an Iran friendly regime will be in power in Iraq for some time.   So why might they want a bomb?   What might they use such a device for?   The only thing which comes to mind is actual use, and actual use against a particular Jewish state nearby.   So what happens if they send a few missiles at Israel?   I guess Israel fires back.   And what then?   Where will the radioactive fallout spread to?   I imagine much of the Middle East will be a wasteland and then if there are any superpowers left on Earth, we'll have some really ugly wars to try to take over the wasteland under which lots of oil will still lay.

Maybe that's too gloomy of a picture.   Maybe one side or the other will win.   Say the Iranians win and succeed at wiping Israel off the map - their publicly stated goal all along.   How do you suppose the US would react?   I doubt there would be any hesitation to remove Iran from the map of the Middle East.   Most likely we've already got a few hundred missilespointed their way.   We've got the whole country mapped.   We employ thouands of people to calculate where to best hit countries like this with bombs.   It would be over inside on a few minutes once the bombs start to drop.   So Iran's voctory might last a few days at most, perhaps it would just be hours.   But what then?   It is entirely possible some country like Russia or China which has sufficient missiles might strike back.   But this is a big country.   Russia hasn' tested their weapons in years.   Many of their devices would probably end up hitting their own country!   Heck, they might go off in their silos.   I don;t know about China.   Their missiles might launch although they don't have that much success with this sort of thing.   And the US is far ahead of them in terms of keeping an eye on their silos.   We'd probably hit them really hard as soon as they began to launch.   But the problem is there would be all this fallout floating around our atmosphere.   Maybe it's time to pull out those fallout shelter plans we all had in the 1950s & 60s and give them a good updating.