My understanding is that actually making a bomb once you have the material for it just isn't that hard. Her statements are only contradictory if it is hard (and slow).
Facilities deep in a mountain, no IAEA access, refusal to negotiate, October 7th, ... You'd have to be quite naive to think it's all above board. (Instead of under a mountain).
Let's be clear Iran is the bad guy. But so was Saddam Hussein and he didn't have the weapons they said he did.
On Fox News they'll tell you nuclear war is imminent but they say that because they want to bomb, not because it's true or not. They're only justifying their actions, not reacting to a threat.
I don't watch Fox News. Blair and Bush lying about Iraq, doesn't mean Iran isn't working towards weapons. I'm all for prosecuting Blair and Bush, always have been. This is not a matter in which you can just sit back and say "well, hopefully it's all innocent". Iran had to be open - they were the opposite.
> Blair and Bush lying about Iraq, doesn't mean Iran isn't working towards weapons
You're correct. However, Netanyahu also claimed that Iran was behind the two assassination attempts on Trump during the campaign trail. A laughably transparent lie obviously designed to woo Trump. Then there's that this war is politically very convenient for him as it distracts from some Knesset political drama, increasing international criticism of the Gaza situation, and it obstructs Trump's attempts at a politician solution with Iran.
I don't know if Iran has nuclear weapons. Clearly they've been playing with fire for a long time but that doesn't mean they actually have nuclear weapons. But I consider anything the Netanyahu government says as deeply and profoundly untrustworthy. So colour me highly sceptical on it all.
Iraq was also not giving sufficient access to inspectors, which was one of the reasons people were convinced he did have WMDs. Things like "you can just sit back and say 'well, hopefully it's all innocent'" is pretty much what people were saying at the time as well.
Wars have unpredictable outcomes, all of this may very well cause more problems than it solves.
The alternatives were that they were enriching well beyond peaceful thresholds primarily for leverage in negotiations, or that they wanted "breakout" capability, so they could build multiple bombs quickly, if they ever chose to. But these alternatives can still be unacceptable from the standpoint of arms control and nuclear nonproliferation.
Iran is one of the top producers or radiopharmaceuticals from highly enriched materials including uranium. This should be unsurprising because Iran has a natural abundance of radioactive isotopes- the background radiation of spots in Iran is extremely high: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Iran
There are some ridiculous pro-palestine/anti-israel takes out there that says that the politics of the region are more stable when Iran has nuclear weapons.
