>>508496905 (OP)Iโd just like to interject for a moment. What youโre referring to as Iran, is in fact, Iranโs nuclear facilities, or as Iโve recently taken to calling them, Iran plus nuclear infrastructure. Iran is not a country unto itself, but rather another physical host of a fully functioning nuclear program made meaningful by the uranium enrichment plants, centrifuge arrays, and vital research centers comprising a complete nuclear state as defined by international monitoring standards.
Many commentators refer to a modified version of Iran every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of Iran which is widely discussed today is often called โIranโs nuclear program,โ and many of these people are not aware that it is basically just Iran, developed by Iran.
There really is an Iran, and people are talking about it, but it is just the host of the facilities they mean. Iran is the territory: the nation in which the centrifuges spin and the enrichment takes place. The territory is an essential part of a nuclear program, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete nuclear infrastructure. Iran is normally discussed in combination with its nuclear facilities: the whole concern is basically Iran with nuclear facilities added, or Iran/nuclear. All the so-called โIranian nuclear threatโ discussions are really discussions of Iran/nuclear.