HA HA HA! Iran is a threat to my armpit and that's about it!

[Don Corleone]

While we are at it, what is with this obsession about the atomic destruction of Israel? How could Imadinnerjacket or the Revolutionary Guard benefit if the third most holy site in Islam was turned to rubble or rendered uninhabitable for the next few centuries?

Don't ask me, ask him. I'm not the one that keeps talking about "wiping Israel off the map" and Israel's annhiliation.

Is that because Israel is protected by U.S. Patriot missiles (failure rate 60%)?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but any one Patriot has a 60% failure rate, but they launch a barrage from a battery at each incoming missile. The odds of any one missile intercepting is 1 minus the odds of all of them missing. The odds of a missile failing is 0.6, and when you fire multiple missiles at them, the odds of all of failing is (0.6)^n. So if you fire a barrage of 10 patriots at the incoming Shalahb, the odds of success (assuming your 60% failure rate of each Patirot is correct) is 99.39%. Make the number of patriots 20, and the success rate goes up to 99.99634% (or the success rate of the Shalahb getting through drops to about 1 in 27,000.

How many SCUDs actually found their way into Israel? But my comment was more in line with Iran's offensive distance-strike capability than Israel's counter-measure capability.

I have a hard time, using the ultimate principle of sovereignty, which I hold quite strongly to, denying Iran the 'right' to nuclear armaments, provided they are able to develop the technology on their own. Anybody giving or selling it to them should be held accountable.

But I also know that within 6 months of Iran having the bomb, Hizbollah will let a nuke off in some backwater ghetto apartment in Haifa.