I think it’s reasonable to say that while the undeclared site was not a surprise, there was a development this week regarding the site which was a surprise. I’m certain Iran took a calculated step here, and there’s little way any administration could have been ‘prepared’ for that.

The article (which I’m sure everybody here read before pronouncing judgment) did describe ‘hasty’ preparations and meetings regarding dealing with it. In other words, something was surprised or forced.

Wrong? Well, not really. A lie? Again, not really… well, unless people are presumed not to RTFA and instead just take a heading and made asinine assumptions.

Your article talks straight past this point, and past the article’s point.

On a completely separate point:
Personally, I think we all have to gamble on the actions of a nuclear armed Iran. There has been no meaningful progress towards stopping them from developing nuclear weapons, and the *only* steps even being considered here are sanctions, which have much more often than not proved to be useless in curtailing efforts of “rogue regimes”.
While I guess sanctions are still ‘arguable’, they’re still not available even with the strategic ‘handout’ to Russia. China is not predisposed towards complying, and it would probably require threats of a trade war to get them to do so. Unfortunately that’s a huge gamble for everybody involved.

Sanctions are unlikely to make a significant dent in Iranian politics due to lack of enforceability, its relatively unsophisticated economy and the corrupt nature of such international business to begin with.

Economic sanctions would require years, if not decades, to work, which will provide Iran with plenty of time to finish building their initial stock of weapons. It wont be easy for Iran, but it’s definitely within their goals and abilities. (Remember, this is the country which defeated Saddam’s tanks and land mines which masses of soldiers, some of whom may not have even hit puberty… economic sanctions aren’t even a pin prick to the historical steadfastness of Iran/Persia.)

Perhaps a radical overhaul of the NPT is in order to deal with this mess. There’s no political will for stopping Iran, much as there was no political will for stopping North Korea. They both built clandestine nuclear programs under the watches of both Republican and Democratic administrations. Our current anti-proliferation efforts clearly have problems to which I don’t have a solution.