The people in power are simply creating enemies to go to war against. A continuous state of war helps them maintain control over economic resources, power, and influence. And they do it in our name and claim its for the common good when in actuality, they're stealing the fruits of our labor and diminishing the control we have over our own lives.
CNN Poll 71% of Americans Believe that Iran Has Nuclear Weapons (error 3%, 1000 sampled) Looks like the disinformation campaign is working. I don't believe for a second that Iran will not seek nuclear weapons given no change to the present course, but all reports have them developing enough fissile material for nuclear weapons by 2015 at the earliest, possibly later. This is reminiscent of the polling about Saddam and 9/11. Thank god we have what appears to be a cooler head and a steadier hand at the tiller this go-around.
At this rate, they might as well have nuclear weapons. It can't be worse than Pakistan, which I find a real analogous case. If anything, I think Pakistan would still be the biggest nuclear threat.
I think one of the tricky things about Iran is that there are really 3 different relevant dates: 1. Now: What do they have? 2. When will they have enough material to build a nuke? 3. At what point is it too late to stop them with a simple air strike? #3 is the tricky one - it's both the most important and the most speculative and fungible. A pro-war group is going to make this date earlier and vice-versa. But this is the date where the world loses leverage, and where Israel is going to be looking at to determine whether to take unilateral action.
Major, number 3. is irrelevant at this point and we haven't been able to completely stop them with a simple airstrike since before 2007. See National Intelligence Estimate. We cannot stop them with a simple airstrike. If we want to stop them we will likely need to destroy their infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities country-wide or make it so politically impracticable or undesirable that Iran choose to stop on its own. While the estimate is somewhat dated, the predictions still seem to be right on the mark as for 1. and 2.
Or just someone who didn't screw up so much of his youth and early-to-middle adulthood (without actually having to deal with the social or professional consequences) that he felt the need to recklessly overcompensate in his 50s.
U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb By JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI Published: February 24, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/w...cies-see-no-move-by-iran-to-build-a-bomb.html WASHINGTON — Even as the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said in a new report Friday that Iran had accelerated its uranium enrichment program, American intelligence analysts continue to believe that there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb. Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies. At the center of the debate is the murky question of the ultimate ambitions of the leaders in Tehran. There is no dispute among American, Israeli and European intelligence officials that Iran has been enriching nuclear fuel and developing some necessary infrastructure to become a nuclear power. But the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies believe that Iran has yet to decide whether to resume a parallel program to design a nuclear warhead — a program they believe was essentially halted in 2003 and which would be necessary for Iran to build a nuclear bomb. Iranian officials maintain that their nuclear program is for civilian purposes. In Senate testimony on Jan. 31, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, stated explicitly that American officials believe that Iran is preserving its options for a nuclear weapon, but said there was no evidence that it had made a decision on making a concerted push to build a weapon. David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director, concurred with that view at the same hearing. Other senior United States officials, including Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have made similar statements in recent television appearances. “They are certainly moving on that path, but we don’t believe they have actually made the decision to go ahead with a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Clapper told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Critics of the American assessment in Jerusalem and some European capitals point out that Iran has made great strides in the most difficult step toward building a nuclear weapon, enriching uranium. That has also been the conclusion of a series of reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors, who on Friday presented new evidence that the Iranians have begun enriching uranium in an underground facility. Once Iran takes further steps to actually enrich weapons grade fuel — a feat that the United States does not believe Iran has yet accomplished — the critics believe that it would be relatively easy for Iran to engineer a warhead and then have a bomb in short order. They also criticize the C.I.A. for being overly cautious in its assessments of Iran, suggesting that it is perhaps overcompensating for its faulty intelligence assessments in 2002 about Iraq’s purported weapons programs, which turned out not to exist. In addition, Israeli officials have challenged the very premise of the 2007 intelligence assessment, saying they do not believe that Iran ever fully halted its work on a weapons program. Yet some intelligence officials and outside analysts believe there is another possible explanation for Iran’s enrichment activity, besides a headlong race to build a bomb as quickly as possible. They say that Iran could be seeking to enhance its influence in the region by creating what some analysts call “strategic ambiguity.” Rather than building a bomb now, Iran may want to increase its power by sowing doubt among other nations about its nuclear ambitions. Some point to the examples of Pakistan and India, both of which had clandestine nuclear weapons programs for decades before they actually decided to build bombs and test their weapons in 1998. “I think the Iranians want the capability, but not a stockpile,” said Kenneth C. Brill, a former United States ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency who also served as director of the intelligence community’s National Counterproliferation Center from 2005 until 2009. Added a former intelligence official: “The Indians were a screwdriver turn away from having a bomb for many years. The Iranians are not that close.” To be sure, American analysts acknowledge that understanding the intentions of Iran’s leadership is extremely difficult, and that their assessments are based on limited information. David A. Kay, who was head of the C.I.A.’s team that searched for Iraq’s weapons programs after the United States invasion, was cautious about the quality of the intelligence underlying the current American assessment. “They don’t have evidence that Iran has made a decision to build a bomb, and that reflects a real gap in the intelligence,” Mr. Kay said. “It’s true the evidence hasn’t changed very much” since 2007, he added. “But that reflects a lack of access and a lack of intelligence as much as anything.” Divining the intentions of closed societies is one of the most difficult tasks for American intelligence analysts, and the C.I.A. for decades has had little success penetrating regimes like Iran and North Korea to learn how their leaders make decisions. Amid the ugly aftermath of the botched Iraq intelligence assessments, American spy agencies in 2006 put new analytical procedures in place to avoid repeating the failures. Analysts now have access to raw information about the sources behind intelligence reports, to help better determine the credibility of the sources and prevent another episode like the one in which the C.I.A. based much of its conclusions about Iraq’s purported biological weapons on an Iraqi exile who turned out to be lying. Analysts are also required to include in their reports more information about the chain of logic that has led them to their conclusions, and differing judgments are featured prominently in classified reports, rather than buried in footnotes. When an unclassified summary of the 2007 intelligence estimate on Iran’s nuclear program was made public, stating that it had abandoned work on a bomb, it stunned the Bush administration and the world. It represented a sharp reversal from the intelligence community’s 2005 estimate, and drew criticism of the C.I.A. from European and Israeli officials, as well as conservative pundits. They argued that it was part of a larger effort by the C.I.A. to prevent American military action against Iran. The report was so controversial that many outside analysts expected that the intelligence community would be forced to revise and repudiate the estimate after new evidence emerged about Iran’s program, notably from the United Nations’ inspectors. Yet analysts now say that while there has been mounting evidence of Iranian work on enrichment facilities, there has been far less clear evidence of a weapons program. Still, Iran’s enrichment activities have raised suspicions, even among skeptics. “What has been driving the discussion has been the enrichment activity,” said one former intelligence official. “That’s made everybody nervous. So the Iranians continue to contribute to the suspicions about what they are trying to do.” Iran’s efforts to hide its nuclear facilities and to deceive the West about its activities have also intensified doubts. But some American analysts warn that such behavior is not necessarily proof of a weapons program. They say that one mistake the C.I.A. made before the war in Iraq was to assume that because Saddam Hussein resisted weapons inspections — acting as if he were hiding something — it meant that he had a weapons program. As Mr. Kay explained, “The amount of evidence that you were willing to go with in 2002 is not the same evidence you are willing to accept today.”
Despite my Obama loyalties, this gives me no comfort at all. I don't think we'll go into a direct war with Iran. I think we're being prepped to be okay with Israel when they go to war with Iran. Then, we may have to go in to help our friends.
It goes like this. Back when the former administration was getting us all hyped up for war, the speeches went like, "Al Qaeda is the most despicable etc etc on earth. Saddam Hussein must not have the potential to use WMD on peaceful nations." Put the two sentences together in the same sentence and you get people thinking it was Saddam who attacked us on 9/11. There was no love lost between Bin Laden and Saddam. Years after the fact, in a quick camera moment, Bush looked like a little girl caught on the toilet when he said that it wasn't Saddam who attacked us on 9/11 (I don't have the exact words). Not that I miss Saddam, mind you. But this is how they play the game.
Iran seems to be doing what they can to limit the possibility of attack and trying to signal to the world that they are acting rationally. I also think it signals that Iran does not think that either the oil embargo will last, or that non-western countries will be able to comfortably make up the difference. The hope from Iran being being that Western oil companies will force a break in an oil-embargo not wanting to be completely excluded to the benefit of China. I think this bodes well for continued stability as long as Israeli and US Hawks don't win out. Notice how this statement is limited to assurances that an oil embargo by Western Nations only. If China stopped importing Iranian crude, then the straight of Hormuz would likely be on the table again.
An update on the recent news regarding sanctions and military action against Iran. http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontev...y-theres-3-aircraft-carriers-headed-for-iran/ http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreig...torpedo-Israeli-deal-for-a-base-in-Azerbaijan http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=116543
One has to wonder why the admin would leak this info. Obama's pitch for israeli restraint is basically " trust me, i got this" and leaking this info only serves to undercut that trust, making an israeli strike more, not less, likely.
I don't think "trust us" has been the administration's position. Nor do I think Israel such a "trust us" position would be realistic given Israel's bunker mentality. The administration has been doing what it can to buy more time to hopefully give more of a chance for peaceable negotiations. Israel knows that we do not want them to attack. Given that we want more time, it makes perfect sense for us to leak info about an Israeli staging ground if we think it will stop rash action. God knows Israeli hawks would leak whatever info they could if it would drive us to war with Iran. Israel's interests ≠ United States interests.
