you say that as if the international concern about iran acquiring nuclear weapons was an intermittent activity. because that concern is constant and on-going i would say your hypothesis is unsound

what i would offer instead is to look at what is happening in the middle east as a civil war between shiia and sunni which is igniting across the region. egypt and saudi arabia are the major sunni players (and in my personal estimation they have been the more moderate sect of the two). we upset the sunni applecart in iraq when saddam was overturned, allowing the shiites to fill the iraqi power vacuum. iran seems to be only too willing to add whatever fuel it has available to grow these fresh fires.
i believe the reason the house of saud snubs the appeals from dubya bin lyin to pump more oil to reduce prices is because he refused to heed the saudi warning not to topple the iraq sunni leadership. that has made the saudi bastards more than a bit more vulnerable to overthrow.
that shiite hezbollah has seized control of beruit today, while nasrallah rejected the western-backed sunni government offer for compromise, appears to underscore the growing forment. this civil war among the two religious factions appears to be on the verge of exploding into something major. we may soon have the Islamic equivalent of long raging Christian conlict in northern ireland between protestants and catholics. isn't it great how mans' fervor for God leads us into so much killing and mayhem

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There have been wiser men than Diogenes
- but they were too wise to be noticed.

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
Winston Churchill