http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=2438&l=1
links to the iran page(s) from the international crisis group--they provide an interesting, useful and short set of background papers on the situation that pits the americans and the iranians against each other at the moment.
this:
http://first.sipri.org/index.php
is to a much larger set of databases on the international arms trade, both governmental and private, which has been, is and will remain a central motor in crises like this. the data is extensive and sobering, though it requires a bit of thought to access (the link is to an interface).
the exchanges of "well this sounds like x [fill in the political position you do not like]" seems played out...the interpretations of this quite strange letter can only go so far without access to an expanded set of contexts...these contexts are not being given you on television or in the print press (in any systematic way), so maybe the above will help switch the terms of debate.
in general, you have the official positions of states on questions of armaments and you have the realities of the international arms trade on the other. the latter operates both within and at cross purposes with the former. you have parallel general scenarios in the context of nuclear weapons development programs.
the united states is the worlds largest armaments exporter--larger than all other countries combined. the us is involved heavily in the transfer of technologies related to nuclear power development, which is a preconidition for fabricated nuclear weapons.
the general set-up----wherein your have state and private suppliers selling whatever they can to whomever they can----creates obvious problems of control.
this makes state policies into little more than a set of shifting boundary conditions within international markets for weapons that exceed the control of states. this is a system that we have created, in general terms, and if you are worried about the consequences of it, the problem lay in the nature of the international arms trade itself--in the assumption that private firms should be allowed to seel weaspons systems direct, say....but the nature and extent of such markets is quite complex and requires more information than messageboards usually can accomodate to be discussed coherently. the above database can give access to information that coudl inform a more coherent discussion, one less predicated on illusions as to the roles of states within the trade and the relative importance of state actions/policies within that trade.
suffice it to say that, in the present context (which, btw the bush people did not invent) all problems of proliferation of weapon systems, conventional and not conventional, can be seen as the chickens coming home to roost.