Iran missile crisis as destiny

I was perusing yesterday's USA Today editorial on Iran's nuclear program, and two paragraphs stood out that really bothered me. If these two thoughts are widespread, we are destined for an Iranian missile crisis. Here's the first paragraph in question:

For all the present sense of crisis, though, the moment of real urgency — one where Iran is churning out nuclear weapons — has not arrived. This can, and ought, to be turned into a time for a concerted and public debate about the reality of the situation and options. The unilateral rush to war in Iraq on faulty intelligence has underscored the dangers of acting precipitously and alone.

Talk about turning logic on its head-the real time for urgency is after Iran is creating nuclear weapons? That's way too late. Urgency turns into full out despair at that point.

Here is the second concerning paragraph:

In historical terms, this might be a slowly-unfolding moment of crisis, in which a deadly mix of fundamentalism and nuclear weapons is emerging. The key is to act to manage and avert the crisis. A good model: the diplomatically averted Cuban missile crisis.

What does that mean? Honestly. If a key is to avert the crisis, how is the Cuban missile crisis a good model? By definition, we averted no crisis back then, we were fully in one. Americans were terrified that we were on the brink of nuclear war. Is that really what the USA Today wants? We averted disaster during the Cuban missile crisis only because both the United States and the USSR had a modicum of sanity. Is the USA Today willing to literally bet their lives on the hope the Iran has enough sanity to avoid nuclear warfare?