“The only thing that you can really achieve by trying to bomb Iranian nuclear sites is to provoke a reprisal by Iran that helps escalate the situation into a larger war and draws in the United States. That’s what any purported effort to bomb away the Iranian nuclear program is actually aiming at.”

“Iran has never built a nuclear weapon. That is a choice that successive leadership in that country has made. But the way to ensure that they do try to sprint to a nuclear weapon is to make them feel that they have no other choice.”

— Harrison Mann, former U.S. Army Major and Executive Officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for the Middle East/Africa