Essentially, you seem to be saying that no matter what Iran might do or say, we still won’t know what else they might be hiding. Very reminiscent of “you can’t prove a negative” — and ultimately an impossible threshold to overcome.

You are basically correct. But reading Jeffrey Lewis at Arms Control Wonk, it seems there is a body of opinion over there that the Qom facility is probably just one in a string of unknown facilties. US intel evidently believes this as well as is searching very hard for more. For instance, the wonks point out that a secret enrichment facility wouldn’t be very useful unless there was a secret processing plant for the Uranium hex. And secret mining operations to supply the processing plant.

Until Iran gets a smidgen of credibility, nothing they say can be realistically believed.

ed.

For a country that supposedly wants “peaceful” use of nuclear energy, the Iranians do seem to be taking the hard road… why the secrecy? after all that was only for “peaceful” purposes right ?

Economic sanctions wont do a damned thing. Iran basically played its cards to perfection. Now the Israelis have even lesser room than before to pre-emptively attack their facilities..

Who knows ? Obama may very well not mind a nuclear armed Iran to force Israel into even more concessions.

Well played Dinnerjacket.

Reducing Iran’s acknowledge stockpile of uranium and inspections now is a great first step and certainly something we have neither the manpower, material, or funds on hand to achieve by force.