What We Know About Iran
TomPaine.com, D.C. David Isenberg
David Isenberg is a senior research analyst at the British American Security Information Council, a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, and an adviser to the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information. The views expressed are his own.
Is Iran’s nuclear program really an immediate threat? There is reason to be doubtful. In fact, the entire debate over the prospect of Iran getting nuclear weapons has been unduly alarmist, if not outright hysterical. Recent media reports indicate that the Bush administration has gone beyond mere saber-rattling and is now deep into contingency planning for military strikes against Iran.
But the evidence, even from within Bush’s own administration, doesn’t support the claim that Iran poses any imminent threat. For example, on April 20, 2006, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte testified before Congress that, “even though we believe that Iran is determined to acquire or obtain a nuclear weapon, we believe that it is still a number of years off before they are likely to have enough fissile material to assemble it into, or to put it into, a nuclear weapon—perhaps into the next decade, so that I think it’s important that this issue be kept in perspective.”
The Bush administration is making noises that if the U.N. Security Council doesn’t give it authorization for a military strike, it might just ignore it, proceed unilaterally and do it anyway. That might sound like bluster, but again, remember Iraq. Nobody knows for certain whether these threats are sincere or just psychological pressure from an administration that thinks talking tough is the only way to go.
But the recent news reports, such as the April 9 Washington Post report that Pentagon and CIA planners are considering a strike on the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan, coupled with the media drumbeat from the usual war hawks at The Weekly Standard, Wall Street Journal and Fox News, are alarming enough to consider the pros and cons of military action. [more]