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Filed: Timeline
Posted

Israeli officials Tuesday took a darker view of Iran's nuclear ambitions than the U.S. intelligence assessment released Monday, saying that they were convinced that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons and that it has probably resumed the weaponization program the Americans said was stopped in autumn 2003.

Ehud Barak, the defense minister, came close to contradicting the American assessment of "moderate confidence" that Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program by mid-2007 and that the halt to the weapons program "represents a halt to Iran's entire nuclear weapons program."

"It is apparently true that in 2003 Iran stopped pursuing its military nuclear program for a certain period of time," Barak said on Israeli Army Radio. "But in our estimation, since then it is apparently continuing with its program."

In other words, while the Americans think Iran has stopped its nuclear weapons program while continuing to enrich uranium as rapidly as it can, Israel thinks that Iran has resumed its nuclear weapons program with the clear aim of building a nuclear bomb.

Israel must act in accordance with its intelligence estimates, Barak suggested. "It is our responsibility to ensure that the right steps are taken against the Iranian regime," he said. "As is well known, words don't stop missiles."

Assessments may differ, Barak said, "but we cannot allow ourselves to rest just because of an intelligence report from the other side of the earth, even if it is from our greatest friend."

Barak also said that the apparent source for the American assessment on the weapons program was no longer functioning.

"We are talking about a specific track connected with their weapons building program, to which the American connection, and maybe that of others, was severed," Barak said cryptically.

It was only on Tuesday that Israel received and began to assess a copy of the classified American report, which is believed to run about 130 pages, Israeli officials said.

Mark Regev, spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said that diplomacy remained the correct path for now to deter Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.

But he was explicit about the Israeli conclusion that Iran's intention is military, not civilian.

"We believe that the purpose of the Iranian nuclear program is to achieve nuclear weapons," Regev said. "There is no other logical explanation for the investment the Iranians have made in their nuclear program."

Some of the differences on estimates for when Iran could be capable of producing a bomb are slight, a matter of a few months, between Israel's late 2009 or early 2010 to Washington's 2010 to 2015.

"A lot of it is splitting hairs," Regev said. "Is it 2009 or 2010? Is it likely or very likely? These words are vague."

Olmert, who had been briefed on the new assessment in Washington last week, tried to play down the gap in judgments with Washington.

"According to this report, and to the American position, it is vital to continue our efforts, with our American friends, to prevent Iran from obtaining nonconventional weapons," he said.

The American assessment said that Iran probably halted the weapons program "primarily in response to international pressure," a judgment Israel embraced as a call for further diplomatic action.

But Israeli experts on Iran said that the American report will make any action against Iran less likely, whether diplomatic or military, and would probably kill or dilute American-led efforts to pass another sanctions resolution through the UN Security Council.

Efraim Kam, a former Israeli military intelligence official, deputy director of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University and an expert on Iran, said the report "makes it very hard for anyone in the United States or Israel who was thinking of going for a military option."

If American intelligence thinks there is no military nuclear program, "that makes it harder for Israel to go against it," he said, since an Israeli attack would require operational coordination with Washington, "and will also make it harder to pass tougher sanctions - a lot of countries will be happy to go along with that - Russia, China - it's a gift for the Iranians."

Kam said the American assessment surprised him. "The report says its assessment is correct for now - but it could change any time," he said. "Maybe the Iranians assessed that it was better for them to halt the military program and concentrate on enriching uranium," which takes a long time, "and then go back to it."

Efraim Halevy, former head of Israel's foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, asserted that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapon. The American report, he said, "provides no reason to say the threat is gone - it's not."

Weaponization can wait while time-consuming enrichment proceeds, he said.

"They can stop on the edge of the project to weaponize and decide to proceed at any time," Halevy said. Even if the Americans are correct about a halt in the weaponization program, he said, "they're referring to the final stage, while the enrichment continues and accelerates."

He added: "The prevarications of the Iranians, their strategy of deceiving the international community continues. It's not as if they halted something in 2003 and came clean about it."

Halevy concluded: "I don't think there's any change in Iran's intention to have weapons. If at all, there is a change in procedure. The Iranians may have decided it was safer to phase it. You can't ignore the rhetoric of the regime, and that rhetoric in combination with enrichment and actions on the ground creates the threat."

The new assessment, however, Halevy said, may make it more likely that the Americans would begin negotiations with Iran, which Washington has refused to do unless Iran stopped enrichment. "You should be willing to talk before you shoot, to say you've exhausted all channels."

As for the role or weight of Israeli intelligence in the American assessments, both in 2005 and now, Halevy said that no country, and especially not the United States, would rely on a foreign assessment, or even foreign intelligence, without making its own.

"No matter how close allies are, you don't as a rule rely solely on the information of others," Halevy said.

Oded Brosh, a senior researcher at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, said that the American report "doesn't change the basic facts," that Iran is enriching uranium, which the international community opposes, and is also "constructing a 40 megawatt heavy-water reactor in Arak that would give them the possibility of weapons-grade plutonium."

Another UN sanctions resolution is thereby possible, Brosh said.

"Despite differing assessments, the facts are the same," he said.

http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=8586378

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.

Posted
gooooo israel! :dance::dance:

woot!!

Plan for the worse (Iran builds a nuclear weapon) and hope for the best (Iran has a little 'accident' with said weapon).

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies."

Senator Barack Obama
Senate Floor Speech on Public Debt
March 16, 2006



barack-cowboy-hat.jpg
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Filed: Timeline
Posted
The pacifists in this country are neutering our ability to defend ourselves.

I would have said it was the neo-cons by stretching and tying our military up in a needless and illegal adventure in Iraq. ;)

Oh, an I didn't know that an attack on ourselves by Iran was imminent. Not even Faux News has claimed that yet. :whistle:

 

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