The Playbook

For those keeping tabs on the creeping mendacity about the Iranian nuclear issue, we just got a new twist:

Iran is only months away from joining the club of nations that can make a nuclear weapon, Israel's prime minister said in a recent interview.

"The technological threshold is very close," Ehud Olmert said on CNN's "Late Edition" in an interview taped Thursday and broadcast Sunday.

"It can be measured by months rather than years."

Note the clever use of the term "technological threshold." The broadest definition of that is the nexus between knowledge and equipment that may allow Iran to assemble a nuclear device one day. "One day," according to the U.S. intelligence community's most recent estimate, is about a decade away. But because the word "years" fails to conjure up the necessary sense of urgency, expect to see anything and everything tried that might whittle down the operative timeline for public consumption to months, weeks, days, or hours.

Don't think it will work? Here's the CNN headline on Olmert's comments: "Israel: Iran 'months' from making nukes." And Bloomberg: "Olmert Says Iran 'Months' Away From Nuclear Weapon."

Expect the term "technological threshold"---accompanied, of course, by breathless headlines---to appear with increasing frequency.