War with Iran in 2008? in Global Forecast: the Top Security Challenges of 2008

From the earliest days of the Bush presidency, Iran has been one of the target states in the president’s “axis of evil.” Early administration thinking had it that Iran would collapse of its own weight if only the United States could establish a vibrant democracy on its border in Iraq. Of course, it has not worked out that way.

Iran has been a festering problem in U.S. foreign and security policy for years. We have long suspected that Iran is carrying out a covert program to build nuclear weapons, hidden within an explicit effort to develop commercial nuclear power. We knew that Iran was having (and may indeed continue to have) serious difficulties with various technical stages in converting natural uranium into reactor-useful material. Iran has continued to work at this steadily, however, and in 2007 claimed to have enriched small amounts of U235 (the active isotope in nuclear reactors).

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