Having a good constitution is far more important than having an immediate constitution.

Iran uses terrorism very instrumentally as an element of foreign policy they are not just intent on just killing as many people as possible, like al Qaeda. There's no reason to believe that would change.

The Iranians are very skilled terrorist, and we'd have to expect that they'd hit at us as hard as they could. Especially in Iraq, where they have a great deal of power and influence.

It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars.

The US has just consistently tried to ignore Iran. And this is ironic because the Iranians believe that the United States is as obsessed about them as they are about us.

The basic problem with the Non-Proliferation Treaty is there's no teeth in it, no penalties for countries that don't comply. Worse, as you say, the very naïve structure of the NPT has actually made it helpful for countries who want to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq, North Korea, Iran, all used the NPT to build up their nuclear programs.