8 years is not an imminent threat

Creature at State of the Day read through Bush's speech on his intention to deploy a missile defense base in Poland with the tracking radar in the Czech Republic and pulled out a very interesting statement:

In his speech here, Bush said intelligence estimates show that Iran could have the capability to strike the United States and many European allies by 2015.

Even if one assumes that the Iranian strategic leadership either is not rational and thus not deterable today, or that there is a significant probability that its future leadership will not be deterrable in the future, and thus poses a significant strategic threat to the United States or its allies despite the highly credible threat of either a conventional or nuclear retaliation, even the 'best' Bush picked intel does not think that the Iranian government will have the capacity to do anything for a while.

Besides the fact that press reports since at least the late 90s have estimated that Iran is continually seven to ten years away from building an ICBM/MRBM capacity, the statement that the best guesstimate is eight years in the future means that at least half of the public relations roll-out for at least brinksmanship, if not escalation into overt military conflict is called into severe doubt.

Good catch Creature