Agreed.

But I don't think the issue is so much building of nuclear power plants, as it is building uranium enrichment plants. The latter really doesn't make much sense for a country that is barely starting to build its first reactor. There are lots of countries operating LWRs, that don't have their own enrichment plants -- among them Sweden, Finland, the Czech Republic, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Slovakia, Netherlands, Ukraine, Slovenia, Taiwan, Mexico, Armenia, South Korea, and I think even Japan (although they are building an SNF reprocessing and MOX production plant).

I'm convinced that the religious fanatics in Iran's government want the bomb. That can't be allowed to happen.

I too am more than a little suspicious of Iranian enrichment activities--given their past (and presumably present) hostility toward the West; given their propensity to support and sponsor international terrorism; given the fact that Pakistan, just on the other side of Afghanistan from Iran, has nukes.

I don't fear a nuclear armed Iran achieving nuclear parity with the West--not like the Soviets did during the Cold War. What I do fear is a culturally hostile Iran with religeous extremists at the reigns of power willing to share or sell (or otherwise disseminate) nuclear weapons technologies, materials, and support to anyone with an agenda hostile to the United States or the West in general. The wide disbursement of freely available weapons materials and technologies to all sorts of political and religeous extremists, rebels, or criminal elements is a recipe for the loss of several of our cities and the murder of millions of innocent people. Chaos on an almost biblical scale. Clearly this cannot be allowed or tolerated

I suspect that the Israelis will act first if they even think Iran could be a threat.

Interesting times, indeed.