Iranian Nukes: Who To Believe?

Two breaking stories couldn't seem more dissimilar in a sense. The New York Times is telling us of GOP frustration with US Intel sources playing down the threat from Iran while concluding they are from 5 - 10 years away from having a bomb.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 — Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more ominous warnings about the threats that they say Iran presents to the United States.

Some policy makers have accused intelligence agencies of playing down Iran’s role in Hezbollah’s recent attacks against Israel and overestimating the time it would take for Iran to build a nuclear weapon.

The complaints, expressed privately in recent weeks, surfaced in a Congressional report about Iran released Wednesday. They echo the tensions that divided the administration and the Central Intelligence Agency during the prelude to the war in Iraq.

Meanwhile the Jerusalem Post has a new story suggesting a surprise regarding Iran's nuclear program in the next few days. Interesting times.

A senior official in Teheran said Wednesday that in the next few days, a "surprise" was expected regarding Iran's nuclear program, Al-Jazeera reported.

Teheran's apparent refusal to suspend uranium enrichment set the stage for a showdown at the UN Security Council later this month.

The United States said Wednesday that a proposal by Iran for nuclear negotiations falls short of UN demands for a halt to enrichment, and began plotting "next moves" with other governments.

Comments

[one Israeli]

oh well, if you see a huge mushroom-like blaze coming from Israel, then you'll know.

[OR]

"oh well, if you see a huge mushroom-like blaze coming from Israel, then you'll know."

It may be true, way back when they bought technology from China in the 90's our best president ever put sanctions on them. As you know sanctions always scare the ME into doing whatever we want. But now that we have a president who is liable to send in tanks quicker than Janet Reno would burn children alive, they no longer fear our wrath. As far as mushroom clouds over Israel goes, I doubt the Israelis wait that long......unless of course the NEXT administration holds them down with sanctions.

[rwilymz]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0608240188aug24,1,1982129.story?coll=chi-news-hed

Seems way back in the 60s the US gave the Shah a nuclear plant, and enriched fuel. Seems also this is providing the basis for at least a significant share of Iran's current nuclear "energy" production.

Now, if we were, say, the Soviet Union, or even Russia, or China, or [dare I say it?] France, our government's attitude would be, "yeah? so?" and the people would walk around and shrug, "yeah? so?"

But we are not France [et al]; we are America. Guilt-bearers of the world. We couldn't say "yeah? so?" if our lives depended on it. And they might.

It does not matter what we did in the past; it matters what we do about what we did in the past.

Yet I predict that there'll be oodles of self-loathing merde-feet pouncing on this as proof of how self-serving the US is -- as if self-serving is an indictment instead of a life-insurance policy. [Clue: nations, societies and civilizations survive through serving themselves].

These hair-shirted recriminators will insist that we flog our own backs, indulge auto-bastinado and look backwards to our inglorious past because something we did didn't work out right, instead of doing something that could fix it.

After all, it's more important to rail on and on about Rumsfeld shaking Hussein's hand in '83 than it is to take out Hussein. Because Hussein is a bad guy, and we'd be just as bad to take him out, because doing so would be in our national interest. And we don't take out tyrants just because they're mean [unless the tyrant's name is Milosovic, and we have a Democratic administration, of course], cuz it'd be illegal.

So they'll dither and shed crocodile tears about our past, refuse to accept us undertaking current action, and backbite all the way.