 |
This is the third of several excepts exclusive to WND from WND senior staff reporter Jerome R. Corsi’s new book entitled “Why Israel Can’t Wait: The Coming War Between Israel and Iran,” available from WND Books.
What evidence is there that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program?
On June 17, the BBC reported that Mohamed ElBaradei, in an interview with the BBC’s Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen, said, “It is my gut feeling that Iran would like to have the technology to enable it to have nuclear weapons, if it decides to do so.”
This was the first time ElBaradei had gone so far as to deny that the sole purpose of Iran’s nuclear program was to generate electricity.
“[The Iranians] want to send a message to their neighbors, to the rest of the world, don’t mess with us,” ElBaradei continued. “But the ultimate aim of Iran, as I understand it, is that they want to be recognized as a major power in the Middle East.”
“This is to them the road to get that recognition, to get that power and prestige,” the IAEA head continued. “It is also an insurance policy against what they have heard in the past about regime change.”
The BBC also reported that Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA said ElBaradei was “absolutely wrong.”
“We don’t have any intention of having nuclear weapons at all,” Soltanieh told reporters. “But we are going to have nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. We will continue fuel-cycle activities without any interruption because Iran has a legitimate need.”
Iran has used the IAEA’s term “fuel cycle” as code language justifying Iran’s right as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty to develop nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes. Since the Bush administration, Iran has rejected U.N. – and IAEA – supported offers from Russia to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. Instead, Iran has insisted upon the right to enrich uranium in Iran under Iranian direction and management as part of the nation’s right to the “full fuel cycle.”
National Intelligence Estimate
In November 2007, the combined intelligence agencies of the United States issued a surprising National Intelligence Estimate that reported with “high confidence” that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003. Nonetheless, a statement by ElBaradei published on the IAEA website on June 15 suggested Iran has resumed its nuclear-weapons program since that date.
“Although sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies said Iran stopped alleged work on nuclear studies in 2003, we do not know whether it has stopped or not,” ElBaradei said. “We continue to receive new information. We also do not know whether the information is authentic or not.”
Israeli intelligence is also convinced that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003 and also that Iran resumed the weapons program shortly after that time. Two former Mossad heads confirmed this point in private interviews held in Israel in June.
Danny Yaalon, director general of Mossad from 1996 to 1998 and chief of staff for Prime Minister Ehud Barak from 1991 to 2001, unequivocally asserted that Iran is currently pursuing a nuclear-weapons program. Shabtai Shavit, director general of Mossad from 1989 to 1996, agreed. Shavit attributed Iran’s temporary cessation of the nuclear program to “hudna,” a word in Arabic that means “truce” or “armistice.”
The concept, Shavit explained, was that “hudna” is considered a tactical cessation of hostilities that Islamic law authorizes in times of stress such that the continuing world struggle can be resumed more aggressively once circumstances return to being more favorable.
“When Iran realized the United States was willing to send 150,000 troops to Iraq, Iran was frightened the U.S. would not hesitate to go onto Iran,” Shavit explained. “This decision was based on the concept of ‘hudna.'”
Gen. Yaalon also agreed.
“If we have to look back to what is the best strategy to deal with Iran today, there was a precedent and we have to look back to 2003,” Yaalon told the author. “Then Ayatollah Khamenei decided to suspend Iran’s nuclear-weapons operation for a while.”
When questioned directly on this issue, Yaalon insisted a second time that Israeli intelligence supported the conclusion that Iran did stop their nuclear program “for a while” in 2003. “The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate was correct in that Iran stopped the nuclear program in 2003, but the NIE neglected to mention that by 2006, Iran renewed their nuclear-weapons program at a higher level.”
Why did Iran suspend the program? “Because in 2003, the American strategy of the Bush administration after 9/11 was an offensive strategy of pre-emption,” he explained.
“Phase One was Afghanistan and Phase Two was Iraq,” he continued. “The main question among rogue leaders in the region was this: ‘Who might be next?’ At that point Libya’s Muammar Gadhafi decided to give up his nuclear project. And at that point Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei decided not to give any excuse to President Bush to attack.”
This, to Yaalon, made an important point that Iran was susceptible to international pressure, as long as the international pressure included a credible threat that Iran would suffer serious harm if Iran refused to comply.
“So, for those who claim the military option is not an option, there is no way to discuss any issue with the Iranian regime or with any other extremist in the region without having a credible military option as a very big stick,” he stressed. “You might achieve the same effect by economic sanctions of sufficient magnitude that the Iranian regime would be threatened with economic collapse. But there is no way to convince Iran to stop their nuclear-weapons program without a very big stick.”
Iran advances nuke program
A credible nuclear program must have three components:
1. A source of weapons-grade enriched uranium or plutonium;
2. A medium- or long-range missile system capable of delivering a nuclear weapons payload reliably; and
3. The technology to weaponize the weapons-grade enriched uranium or plutonium into a miniaturized warhead capable of being delivered by a medium- or long-range missile.
Since 2006, Iran has made progress on all three components.
On Feb. 19, the New York Times reported that IAEA inspectors had discovered an additional 460 pounds of low-enriched uranium, a third more than Iran had previously disclosed. The Times further reported that Iran had amassed more than a ton of low-enriched uranium, enough with added purification to make at least one atomic bomb. Then, on June 5, the New York Times reported Iran had increased its number of installed centrifuges to 7,200, more than enough to make fuel for up to two weapons a year, if the Iranian government decided to use its facilities for that purpose.
On May 20, the Associated Press reported that Iran had test-fired successfully a missile that could hit Israel. Iran’s solid-fuel Sajjil-2 surface-to-surface missile has a range of 1,200 miles, according to the AP. A solid-fuel missile has two strategic military advantages:
1. Solid-fuel missiles can be fired immediately, reducing the time anti-missile systems have to detect a launch; and
2. Solid-fuel missiles tend to be more accurate than liquid-fuel missiles of similar range.
“Defense Minister (Mostafa Mohammad Najjar) has informed me that the Sajjil-2 missile, which has very advanced technology, was launched from Semnan and it landed precisely on target,” the AP quoted Iran’s President Ahmadinejad as saying on state radio. The Sajjil-2 missile is a significant improvement over the Shahab-3 medium-range ballistic missile Iran has had in its arsenal since at least 2004.
The IAEA has charged that Iran is not cooperating with its requests for an answer to questions about possible studies on nuclear warheads Iran has carried out in the past, according to a report published by the BBC in May.
A May Senate Foreign Relations Committee report entitled “Iran: Where We Are Today,” issued by the committee’s Democratic chairman Sen. John Kerry, reported that: “Potentially damning evidence surfaced in 2004 when U.S. intelligence obtained a laptop computer from an Iranian engineer.”
The Senate report said the computer contained thousands of pages of data on tests of high explosives and designs for a missile computer it said had come from an Iranian engineer. “The computer contained thousands of pages of data on tests of high explosives and designs for a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead,” the report continued. “It also contained videos of what were described as secret workshops around Iran where the weapons work was supposedly carried out.”
The Senate report also pointed out that the Iranians denounced these computer documents as “fakes.” Still, senior U.N. officials and intelligence officers who saw these documents told the committee staff that “the documents come from more than just the laptop and appear to be authentic, right down to the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the workshops in Iran.”
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee concluded that “Iran has moved closer to completing the three components for a nuclear weapon – fissile material, warhead design and delivery system.”
President Obama’s assessment
President Obama has left no doubt the White House has concluded Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.
On Nov. 7, 2008, in his first press conference after winning the 2008 presidential election, then President-elect Obama said, “Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon, I believe, is unacceptable. And we have to mount an international effort to prevent that from happening.”
In the press availability following President Obama’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on May 18, President Obama said, “I indicated to Prime Minister Netanyahu in private what I have said publicly, which is that Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon would not only be a threat to Israel and a threat to the United States, but would be profoundly destabilizing in the international community as a whole and could set off a nuclear-arms race in the Middle East that would be extraordinarily dangerous for all concerned, including for Iran.”
But what precisely were President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu envisioning?
