Micah Zenko provides a reality check on Iran, its nuclear program, and a possible Israeli attack on Iran:

In other words, according to the heads of the IC [Intelligence Community] and DIA: 1) against all odds, the supposedly “mad Mullahs” of Tehran are endowed with the capacity for rational human thought, and thus there might be diplomatic or economic inducements that could compel an agreement on outstanding questions regarding the nuclear program; 2) the United States has at least a year; 3) Iran is not looking to start a war with the United States; and 4) Israel has not yet decided to undertake a preemptive war with Iran.

Debating the rationality of Iran’s government with people convinced of its self-destructive irrationality sometimes seems futile. For one thing, those who insist on portraying Iran’s regime as insane and suicidal are very slippery in the way they use the word rational. According to them, a rational regime would never be antagonistic or threaten other states as Iran has been, and from there they leap to the conclusion that a state that is antagonistic is therefore willing to invite its own destruction. They make this leap even when all the evidence points to a regime intent on preserving itself. Somehow we’re supposed to believe that the Iranian government is the only one on the planet that is unwilling to preserve itself and incapable of knowing what its self-interest is.

U.S. and Israeli media regularly discuss how and when to start an unprovoked war against Iran to punish it for its “crime” of enriching uranium. The American and Israeli governments leave the door open to starting that war. Despite the significant costs such a war would impose on the U.S., Israel, the region, and world, it is not the governments contemplating how to start this war that are considered to be acting irrationally. Instead, it is still the Iranian leadership that is viewed as unhinged and dangerous.