However, within the intelligence community and among its retirees there are some experienced analysts who believe that Iran’s leaders with nuclear weapons wouldn’t be much different than they are today, with their first concern being holding onto power, not using a weapon to wipe out Israel and thereby bring about their own destruction.

That approach has been sensibly put forward by Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA intelligence analyst and national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005. He was deeply involved back then when internal doubts about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction programs were low-keyed by CIA leaders and ignored by the Bush White House.

“An Iran with a bomb would not be anywhere near as dangerous as most people assume, and a war to try to stop it from acquiring one would be less successful and far more costly than most people imagine,” Pillar writes in the current issue of “Washington Monthly.”