Watch this space.

One of the salient points of George Orwell's description of Big Brother in 1984 is that the Party was able to rewrite history as it saw fit. We have already seen this with the Iraq war, how Bush and Blair switched their justification for invasion from finding WMDs as the No.1 reason, to regime change and "liberation" as the main objectives. Now we're seeing it happen with Iran:

Aug 2nd 2005, Washington Post reports that the US National Intelligence Estimate predicts it will take another 10 years for Iran to build a nuclear weapon.

Dec 27th 2005, Israel Insider quotes the Chief of Mossad, Israel's Secret Service as saying that it could be 2 to 9 years (2008-2015) before Iran has the bomb.

Jan 12th 2006, the BBC News Website reports that the International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates Iran would not be able to produce a nuclear weapon until about 2014; they don't have enough centrifuges.

Jan 16th 2006, the BBC News website quotes Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency: "If they have the nuclear material and they have a parallel weaponization programme along the way, they are really not very far - a few months - from a weapon."

This is not exactly a scientific study of what's been reported in the media, but some of the articles on the first page of results from a Google search on Iran's nuclear capability. What's probably closer to the truth is that nobody fucking knows how close Iran is to producing a nuclear bomb, but since we need to consolidate control of the oil, then fuck it, let's bomb them anyway. And we certainly don't want to let them start trading in Euros instead of Dollars as they plan to do in March (see this article). The article even claims that Cheney has made preparations to attack Iran with conventional weapons and tactical nuclear weapons should there be another 9-11 style attack on the US. Even if Iran is not connected.

And the best thing about all this is that we can make it all look like it was their crazy leader's fault too. How convenient that the relative reformist Khatami is gone, we could never have pinned it on him.