This is just. so. precious:

Netanyahu, declaring "It is us or no one," said this week that his job was to "eliminate" Iran's threat. Israel's shifting "red line" on Iran, now avowedly months away, is at odds with U.S. intelligence, which holds that no Iranian decision on bomb production has been made and capacity is likely two to five years distant. It's essential that Obama cleave to an American framework that affords the time to overcome a 30-year impasse. He might remind Netanyahu that if anyone had asked five years ago if an Iran with 6,000 centrifuges, more than a ton of low-enriched uranium and a genie-out-the-bottle level of technical nuclear know-how was over Israel's "red line," the answer would have been, "Damn right."

Cohen and his Iran Lobby ilk spent a decade downplaying Iranian nuclearization. Whenever anyone highlighted the urgency of the threat, they waved around reports like the NIE - which State Department washouts had dutifully politicized - as the most sophisticated analysis evuh. And now that Obama's obnoxious "Bush continues to not let facts get in the way of his ideology" preening has given way to "of course Iran is building a nuke" - now that that's happening, they turn to Israel and say "well you didn't attack when everyone agreed that Iran was nuclearizing!" If nothing else, you have to admire the sheer gall of it.

And yes of course they're nuclearizing:

Short of the tremendous cost and risk of war, what would it take to get Iran to stop producing the nuclear material that one day could be used to build weapons? The short answer, according to an emerging consensus among arms inspectors, diplomats and Iranian officials struggling with the issue of Iran's nuclear program, is nothing... [Francois Nicoullaud, who served from 2001 to 2005 as Paris' envoy to Iran]... says the key to a solution is for the international community to accept Iran's production of enriched uranium and for the Iranians to accept an intrusive monitoring system that would set off alarm bells if they made any move toward weaponizing their avowedly peaceful program.

Which is weird, because when Ahmadinejad declared this week that Iran was going nuclear I thought he was kidding. Ditto for the 1,200 mile range missile Iran just tested, which I thought was exclusively for domestic consumption and not for geopolitical saber-rattling. That's how liberal foreign policy experts usually explain these things. Maybe some signals got crossed or something.

Though I am interested to know - when those alarm bells go off, presumably in the context of crisis triggered by a hot war, what will Obama's response be? I'm guessing more openness to the possibility of sanctions.

References and previously after the jump...