Lessons from Vela

Yesterday's cross-country plane ride gave me the chance to catch up with Jon Lee Anderson's sobering dispatch from Iran, which pretty much cements the notion that the Islamic Republic will never give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Not that I didn't already know that on some level—as Anderson so eloquently puts it, Iran seems hard-wired to strive for membership in the global elite:

In the Iranian imagination, a nuclear weapon is essential if the country is to assume its rightful place...