So it seems that due to imprecise language people disagree on the exact place of the red line the US (and Israel) were drawing. The post you responded to was indicating that the red line was, as a sibling comment mentioned, the breakout time from political decision to working nuclear weapon. Many other people, yourself included, seem to consider the red line to be the political decision itself. This red line now may be crossed in response to our first strike after their violation of the breakout time red line. If we were successful it seems as though the message is clear, we will use overwhelming military force to prevent them from having a nuclear weapon. So even if the political decision gets made to build one, any attempt to restart the process - which isn't exactly stealthy - will be met with similar force. If we failed though, then we might get to see a nuclear weapon being used in modern times.

> they were not working actively towards a bomb

I think this becomes a definitions game again. I'd consider a country to be "working actively towards a bomb" when it's taking costly steps that provide no commensurate benefit except towards a nuclear weapons program. At that point, there's no rational explanation for their actions except that they're working towards the bomb.

So e.g. enrichment of uranium to <3.67% (as permitted by the JCPOA) is not such a step, since that's also economically useful for civilian nuclear power. Enrichment to 60% is such a step--the only conceivable civilian uses are niches for which the cost would far exceed any benefit.

It seems you agree they're enriching in the latter way, but you don't count that as "working actively towards a bomb". So what definition are you using for that phrase? We obviously can't just let the Iranian government decide, or they'll define everything short of a successful test as part of their "peaceful explosive lenses program" or whatever.

My general sense is that the JCPOA was working reasonably well, and it's unfortunate that Trump exited. To the extent these strikes were a necessary solution, they might be to a problem of his own making. I agree that Iran could be emboldened and merely delayed here. That may imply an inevitable endgame of either regime change or near-total destruction of Iran's economic capacity, big escalations and risks.

“Intelligence community” can be wrong. It’s not as if they are infallible.

A small team of skilled physicists relying only on public knowledge can design a nuclear weapon (and did, back in 1964; their work product was classified, the demonstrated futility notwithstanding). The only reason that random grad students don't have the bomb is that enrichment of uranium requires state-level resources. So why focus on the easier part of building a nuclear weapon that they haven't undertaken, while choosing language ("lowering latency", not "building") that minimizes the much harder part that they have? This view is prevalent, but it seems exactly backwards to me.

As to intent, the concept of "deterrence, but never going over the edge" doesn't really exist--if you're never going over the edge, then where does the deterrence come from? At best it's a bluff, like threatening someone with an unloaded gun. But would you really want to bet your life that Iran has put maybe a quarter of their GDP (including sanctions impact; the program itself is much less) into a bluff? We can't read minds, and their costly actions seem like much more reliable signals than our guesses at their intent.

Switzerland is an odd comparison, since they got their capabilities in what they openly described as the initial stages of a nuclear weapons program. Since abandoning that, Switzerland has been divesting its enriched uranium. If Switzerland were instead building up its stockpile while funding proxies to (conventionally) strike its neighbors, then I'd expect some combination of sanctions and military action there too.